![]() ![]() These people studied aerodynamics and built and flew gliders. They believed that the future of manned flight depended on heavier-than-air machines. ![]() A New Bird in the SkyĮven as balloons and dirigibles floated through the skies, there were some inventors who had given up the study of birds. For a while people thought this a fine and very modern way to travel. The dirigible was popular, especially in Europe. This kind of air ship was called a "dirigible". He then attached a propeller to the rear of the balloon and a rudder to control the direction. Travel by balloon improved in 1900, when a French scientist put one of the newly invented gasoline engines on a cigar-shaped balloon. Ballooning was good sport, but no good for transportation. They could only go where the wind took them. ![]() Once up in their baskets, balloonists found they couldn't fly where they wanted. So the first people to fly were lifted in baskets hung from huge balloons filled with hot air. Using hydrogen, which does not cool off, a balloonist could stay up longer but he had to be careful because hydrogen is extremely flammable. ![]() Scientists knew it was lighter than air and decided to use it in a balloon. Not long before this time the gas called hydrogen had been discovered. (Hot air rises because it is lighter than the cold air around it.) When the air in the bag cooled, the balloon came down. They soon learned, however, that it was not the smoke but the hot air that caused the balloon to rise. In 1783 two Frenchmen who had noticed that smoke always rises decided to see if smoke could lift a balloon into the air. Some fools-and a few geniuses like Leonardo da Vinci-thought that people would one day build wings. As early as the 1400s inventors were studying birds and experimenting-trying to learn how man could fly. For thousands of years humans gazed in wonder at the birds in the air and dreamed of flying. ![]()
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