User talk:24.18.7.141

"Air glider"

I have never heard of an "air glider". The term "glider" is used to describe unpowered aircraft and so the word "air" is superfluous. The article on First flying machine gives a useful list of people who were crazy enough to launch themselves into the air without first understanding aerodynamics. I am not sure that they were inventors, perhaps merely madmen. There is a blurred line between just plummeting less quickly and genuinely controlled flight. The latter needs an understanding of the basics of aerodynamics. Perhaps the Turk, who is listed as one of Turkey's great achievers by another Turk, also achieved controlled flight, but the first person who is recorded as having applied scientific method to the problem of heavier-than-air flight was George Cayley. I think that gives him the right to be called the inventor and he has been called the "father of flight". Cayley's coachman certainly flew his glider and two replicas of his glider have been flown in the recent past to show their practicality. Furthermore Otto Lillienthal knew of Cayley's work and based his designs on it. However he also made great advances and many flights, and so was one of the people who in turn inspired the Wright Brothers. As with many inventions, the answer is not quite so simple as you might think. Penicillin and steam engines are other examples. The French even dispute that the Wright Brothers were the first with powered flight. JMcC (talk) 12:10, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

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