The history of flight goes back to ancient times, when humans first dreamed of being able to fly like birds. From Greek mythology we have the story of Daedalus making wings out of wax and feathers, and of heroes riding on Pegasus, the winged horse. Many centuries would pass, however, before people actually traveled through the air.

History of Flight Timeline

• 1500s – Leonardo da Vinci draws designs for possible flying machines
• 1783 – Montgolfier brothers pioneer hot air balloons
• 1895 – Otto Lilienthal makes first successful glider flight
• 1900 – Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin makes first dirigible flight.
• 1903 - the Wright brothers first flight in a motorized airplane
• 1909 - Louis Bleriot flies across the English Channel
• 1919 – first passenger airliner, between London and Paris
• 1919 – first trans-Atlantic flight, Newfoundland to Portugal
• 1924 – first flight around the world
• 1927 – Charles Lindbergh makes first solo trans-Atlantic flight
• 1937 – first jet powered airplane
• 1947 – first plane to break the sound barrier
• 1952 – first jet passenger service, London to Johannesburg

As the timeline history of flight shows, at first developments in aviation came very slowly, but then once people got the idea of how to keep a plane aloft, things started to happen very quickly. The history of flight is full of the stories of heroes, like Charles Lindbergh who flew his Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic alone, and Amelia Earhart, the courageous woman flier who disappeared on a round-the –world flight.

To a great extent the history of air flight is the history of how a plane works. At first people thought that a successful flying machine would have to flap its wings like a bird. Only when engineers began to grasp the science of aerodynamics did they realize this was foolish. Flight history was made when the first engineers figured out the relationship between wings and propellers. Indeed, engineers and pilots would be partners in flight history. A history of flight timeline really should show the names of the great engineers as well as those of the famous pilots.

The history of flight is an ongoing story. Airlines constantly search for ways to improve on customer service. For example, in order to keep every flight ontime, history was made by Delta when the airline made radical changes in flight schedules.

No history of flights is complete without a mention of the history of space flight. A history of space flight timeline would have to include such names as Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong. A brief history of the Goddard Space Flight Center on the center’s website will provide plenty of information on this topic.