Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Airplane and the Way It Developed

There is evidence that Chinese made kites 2800 years ago. However, they came to Europe only in the 16th and 17th centuries when sailors returned from Japan and Malaysia. Later Europeans used them for scientific experiments. Kites made people to think of developing a craft that could fly. Ultimately in 1903 Write brothers Wilbur and Orville were able to produce a flying machine. From then onwards experiments on making the perfect airplane went on unabated.

After the important experiment made by Wright brothers, many experiments have been made to manufacture better aircraft but it was during World War I when lots of experiments were made on the manufacture of better aero planes. In 1919 Alcock and Brown crossed the Atlantic Ocean on an airplane. In the same year passenger air craft started flying between the U.S. and Canada. During World War II aero planes were used in every battle. Germans manufactured the first jet airplane in 1939 and the first to have broken the sound barrier was made in 1947.

It was in 1952 when the first jetliner de Havilland Comet was introduced. Boeing 707 that was produced in 1958 was the first successful passenger jet and it served for over 50 years until 2010. Boeing 747 was the largest airplane in the world but it was surpassed by Airbus A380 in the year 2005.

There are different types of airplanes. The most basic two categories are the propeller driven airplanes and jet airplanes. While the propeller driven aircraft have two, four or six propellers driven by engines the jet aircraft have jet engines with the same configuration. Generally, jet engines are much more powerful than engines that turn propellers. Therefore, they use high speeds for takeoff and landing. Even the cruising speeds of jet aircraft are higher than those of propeller driven aircraft.

When it comes to safety, travelling by airplane is very much safer than cars, busses or railway when the calculation is made with passenger miles made. However, if you calculate on the number of journeys you will find that it is not as safe as travel over ground. This is why air travel insurance is so expensive. Insurance companies do their calculations depending on the number of journeys made and the number of accidents taken place leading to loss of lives. However, it has been established that flying with larger jetliners is 8.3 times safer than flying in a smaller airplane.

After the first flight made by Wright brothers airplane was improved by leaps and bounds. Today you have huge passenger jets as well as supersonic fight jets.

Source: http://toddsblogs.com/referenceandeducation/2012/08/15/airplane-and-the-way-it-developed/

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