STEPS TO THE JETS

[Music] [Music] oh you lucky bird gee I wish I could fly man has felt that way from the earliest times turn of man probably just looked an Envy but when man came to understand the rudiments of mechanics he tried to imitate the birds first he made himself wing like contraptions and he flapped and he flapped but he didn't fly birds can fly that way but even if man had wings he would need chest muscles four feet thick to flap his way up into the air around him the earth is surrounded by an ocean of this air which behaves in many ways like an ocean of water for instance things that are lighter than water rise to the surface of the ocean things that are lighter than the air surrounding them rise through it in the South of France about a hundred and seventy-five years ago two brothers named Mon Gaultier watching smoke as it rose briskly from their fireplace decided that it must be lighter than air and that if they could fill a bag with it the whole thing would rise the idea worked and the montgolfiers began making balloons and in 1783 among golfy a balloon carried two passengers on man's first flight over the rooftops of Paris after that similar balloons began drifting in the air over Europe and increasing numbers in January 7 1785 the frenchman jean pierre blushøj balloon carried the first airmail letter in the world from england to france it was delivered to Benjamin Franklin then US ambassador to France in 1853 are we sheep are attaching a steam engine and a propeller to a balloon made a dirigible which really worked by this time advanced experimenters in England and France had developed motor driven model planes others actually flew in gliders large enough to support a man [Music] in 1890 the Frenchman Lamar Adair built a plane powered by a steam engine in which he got off the ground for a few yards although the flight was not a sustained one 13 years later Orville and Wilbur Wright with a biplane powered by a light gasoline motor made aviation history their plane had to push of propellers there was a wing warping device for lateral control small surfaces or elevators in front for up and down control and two runners at the back to control horizontal sideways movement with this plane in 1903 Orville Wright made Man's first sustained powered heavy than air flight at Kitty Hawk North Carolina so man joined the birds in the air [Music] inspired by reports of the Wright brothers flights French aviation circles burst into such furious activity that by 1906 two brothers named woz and went into business as the world's first professional manufacturers of aircraft building gliders and later planes to the specifications of their clients one of these clients a Brazilian named Alberto santos-dumont is seen here making the first airplane flight in Europe in that same year two years later Wilbur Wright demonstrated the right plane in Europe for the first time at a war Neela mom before I does a wing hold a plane up in the air in 1906 neither the Wright brothers santos-dumont or anyone else could answer that question yet much research had been done on the movement of air Gustave Eiffel the Builder of the Eiffel Tower to study what effect the shape of structures had on their behavior in high winds had developed a wind tunnel before 1900 I felt fellow-countrymen each engine RA developed the technique of using streams of smoke in the air current to facilitate the study of the flow of air in 1907 an Englishman named Frederick Lanchester taking the facts developed by Eiffel Mary and others came up with a theory explaining the phenomenon of lived air surrounding any object pushes against it equally on all sides but if the air is moving past the object it doesn't push as hard sideways against the object and the faster it flows past the less it pushes if air flows faster on one side than on the other the sideways push of the slower air will be greater and the object will move toward the faster moving air now back to the wing the motor moves the wing forward creating a flow of air around it because of the shape of the wing the flow of air over its top surface is faster than the flow over the bottom surface therefore the pressure against the bottom of the wing is greater than the pressure against the top and the wing moves upwards this push or lift is small on each square inch of wing but multiplied by the number of square inches on a large wing surface it can amount to thousands of pounds Manchester's theory became the basis of most modern aerodynamics but in the early days that still belong to practical experimenting fliers like louis blurry or frenchman who flew across the English Channel from France to England on the nine this plane was a mono chlorine plane it had a single propeller on the front driven by an air-cooled motor and enclosed fuselage and rudder elevators and stabilizes at the end of the body frame in back they that same year at Raths France 40 planes took part in the world's first air meet one which was prophetic of the airplanes future role in peace and war speeds of 48 miles per hour and altitudes of hundreds of feet were quickly to be exceeded as planes improved in power and range before the First World War the French aviator Roland Garros made a brilliant 550 mile flight in less than eight hours from the south of France to Tunisia crossing the Mediterranean for the first time French military interest in aviation had been shown as early as 1794 when at the Battle of Fleurus the army of the republic used balloons for observation balloons were used again for observation in the American Civil War but the most notable use of them was in 1870 when Paris surrounded by the Prussians was cut off from the rest of the world a balloon factory was set up and over 60 balloons left the city carrying tons of mail and over 100 people at the start of World War one planes were used for observation but by the end of 1914 pilots were using pistols and rifles soon machine guns were added and war in the air had begun by 1918 the British Bristol fighter the German Fokker d7 and the famous French spanned the plane flown by the American Lafayette Escadrille and pushed the speed ceiling and maneuverability of planes to hide some thought of four years earlier by 1919 the American nc4 flew from Newfoundland to Lisbon with a stop at the Azores Britain's Alcock and brown flew nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland and Frances Lucien goose crow had started the first regular international passenger service in a fallen Goliath in the next few years courageous men all over the world shrank the frontiers of distance the great writer flier Antoine de saint-exupéry the pilot hero Jean memos and the other almost legendary man of France's Aeropostale conquered the Pyrenees the Andes and the stifling sand cloud air above the Sahara American male and military pilots pioneered in the treacherous air over the Alleghenies the Rockies and the Sierras and Admiral Richard II bird flew over the North Pole the British tackled long routes to India to Cape Town and to Australia but the flight which captured the imagination of the world more than any other of the period was Charles Lindbergh's non-stop solo from New York to Paris in 1927 Lindbergh received an overwhelming ovation from the traditionally air minded people of France in the same year Jordan a Causton Joseph LaBrie flew from North Africa to Brazil three years later cost with Maurice pelant made the first east-west crossing of the North Atlantic non-stop from Paris to New York in 1919 eight years before Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris passenger airline service had started in Europe with regular flights by French and later English companies between Paris and London by 1927 Airlines criss-crossing Europe were carrying 200,000 passengers a year and providing them some of the luxuries of life while in the air in the US Airlines carried mostly mail a few local lines concentrated on passengers but the yearly total for the whole country was only about 6,000 air travelers it took Lindbergh's flight to make the american public air minded overnight in the next 12 years European and American Airlines grew and grew planes became larger and larger airports increased a number to accommodate over 3 million passengers a year this growth was helped by the development of effective systems for making air travel possible in almost any weather for instance it is important for a pilot always to keep on his true course in the early days he did this by contact flying checking landmarks on the ground but if fog rain or snow prevented him from seeing the ground along the route he usually turned back to his starting point and waited for the weather to clear in 1925 the radio beam was devised for a given route it had three signals all three of which could be heard distinctly in any weather if the pilot was on the route he heard this sound in his radio receiver if he was off course on one side of the beam he heard the Morse a and on the other side he heard the Morse end so he knew which way to head to get back on his course and land safely modern airports are equipped with a complex communication system which tells the pilot exactly where he is radar informs the control tower of the position of every plane in the vicinity of the airport and when the plane approaches voice radio guides it down to a safe landing in any weather but the most revolutionary recent development in aviation is without doubt the modern jet engine the first attempt to use a jet motor in an aircraft was made by our weeka Wanda in Paris in 1910 conda's motor was powerful for its time however after one short flight Coanda dropped the project for lack of funds but others including leduc Milou von Ohain and Whittle continued their experiments and in 1939 the first successful jet airplane was flown in 1954 and 55 the first passenger jets to maintain permanent service were getting their first flight tests they were the Boeing 707 and American design and the graceful French Caravelle built for medium-range service Man's first successful airplane was driven by propellers fifty years after the first flight he had flown the propeller driven plane as fast as far and as high as it could go and was well into the development of a method of driving planes faster farther and higher the revolutionary jet engine but how does this engine work air forced into a toy balloon under pressure is pushing the balloon from the inside but since the push is the same in all directions the balloon doesn't move if the stem is open the balloon will move in a direction opposite to the side that the stem is on the balloon seems to be moved forward by the stream of the exhaust pushing against the outside air this is not so what actually takes place is the application of Newton's law which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction thus the action of the air moving from the front to the rear of the balloon creates a forward and opposite reaction and the balloon moves forward balloon stops moving when there is no more airflow but if we're possible to keep up the air flow inside the balloon the balloon would continue to move thus we have the elements of a simple jet engine in the actual jet engines which have to move a 140 one-ton airplane the inside air flow must be tremendous this movement is accelerated by the compressing of air and by added expansion through fuel combustion here's how the most common type of jet engine the turbojet works air comes in the open front and a pump or compressor at the front raises the pressure of this air the air under pressure passes into a chamber where it is combined with fuel the combination of fuel and air is lit by a flame and in the combustion that follows the expanding gasses rapidly create an air flow of tremendous force inside the motor the greatly accelerated rearward action of the escaping gases sets up a powerful forward reaction within the engine the turbojet gets its name from a turbine in the rear of the engine which is spun by the force of the escaping gases and which supplies the power to drive the compressor in front the turbojet engine the basic unit of modern jet transportation has cut long-range flying times in half passengers taking off from New York for instance can be in Paris in seven hours [Music] modern jet planes fly high above the clouds and above the storm level of the atmosphere with the reduction in weight affected by the jet motors more space and comfort are gained for passengers flight is vibration lists and incredibly smooth at the altitudes Jets maintained in intercontinental travel [Music] passengers relax fully as the hours speed by then an early morning glimpse of Paris and the quick crossing nears its end Aviation is still the youngest of occupations and man's dramatic steps to the jet age have taken them only a few decades though the future of aviation surely lies beyond the frontiers of our present imagination today's Airmen can already be proud of their triumphant achievements which have won them the confidence of the whole world [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]