Timeline of aviation - 18th century

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Timeline of aviation
pre-18th century
18th century
19th century
20th century begins
21st century begins

[edit] 18th century aviation

• 1700-1799'
  • The kite is popular during the century.
• 1709
  • Father Bartolomeu de Gusmão designs a model hot air balloon and demonstrates it to King John V of Portugal.
• 1716
  • Well thought-out glider-project of the Swedish scholar Emanuel Swedenborg. Basis for his construction are bird flight and the glider kite.
• 1738
  • In his Hydrodynamica the Swiss scholar Daniel Bernoulli (1700-1782) formulates the principle of the conservation of energy for gases (Bernoulli's principle), the relationship between pressure and velocity in a flow.
• 1746
  • English military engineer Benjamin Robins (1707-1751) invented a whirling arm centrifuge to determine drag.
• 1766
  • British chemist Henry Cavendish determines the specific weight of hydrogen gas.
• 1772
  • Abbé Desforges unsuccessfully tries to fly an apparatus with a basket and oars made of bird feathers.
• 1777
  • In St.Louis, the prisoner Dominikus Dufort jumps from a high building with a parachute garment and is rewarded with a spontaneous collection of money.
• 1781
  • Italian scientist Tiberiua Cavallo, then living in England, sends up soap bubbles filled with oxygen.
• 1783
  • June 5, unmanned flight of the Montgolfier brothers hot-air-balloon (Montgolfière) in Vivarais, France. The Montgolfiers demonstrate a hot air balloon in public, at Annonay.
  • August 27, flight of an unmanned experimental hydrogen-balloon in Paris (built by Professor Charles and the brothers Roberts). It flies 25 km (15 miles) from Paris to Gonesse and is destroyed by frightened peasants.
  • September 19, the Montgolfiers launch a sheep, duck, and rooster in a hot-air balloon in a demonstration for King Louis XVI of France. The balloon rises some 500 m (1,700 ft) and returns the animals unharmed to the ground.
  • October 15, Pilâtre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes rise into the air in a Montgolfière tethered to the ground in Paris. de Rozier becomes the first human passenger in a hot-air balloon, rising 26 m (84 ft).
  • November 21, in a flight lasting 25 minutes, de Rozier and d'Arlandes take the first untethered ride in a Montgolfière in Paris, the first human passengers carried in free flight by a hot-air balloon.
  • December 1, Charles and his assistant Robert make the first flight in a hydrogen-filled balloon (Charliere). On his second flight, Charles reached an altitude of 2,700 m over Vivarais. They travel from Paris to Nesles, a distance of 43 km (27 miles).
  • Sebastian Lenormand does several parachute jumps from the tower of the observatory in Montpellier.
• 1784
  • September 19, the brothers Robert and Colin Hullin take a balloon ride over 186 km from Paris to Beuvry.
  • Jean-Pierre Blanchard fits a hand-powered propeller to a balloon, the first recorded means of propulsion carried aloft.
  • Pilâtre de Rozier and the chemist Proust rise with a Montgolfière up to 4,000 m.
  • Jean Baptiste Meusnier makes an oblong balloon to explore unknown areas, with an airscrew driven by muscle power.
• 1785
  • June 15, Pilâtre de Rozier and Jules Romain become the first known aeronautical fatalities when their balloon crashes during an attempt to cross the English Channel.
  • July 1, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American meteorologist John Jeffries cross the English Channel from Dover to Guines in a balloon.
  • Richard Crosbie makes several unsuccessful attempts to cross the Irish Sea in a helium-filled balloon.
• 1793
  • Military use of a captive balloon at the siege of Mainz (Germany).
  • Jean-Pierre Blanchard makes the first balloon ascent in the United States
• 1794
  • April 2, establishment of the first airship company in the French Army who use a balloon named Entreprenant for reconnaissance of the Austrian forces at the Battle of Fleurus. Two companies of balloon observers are formed, but disband the following year.
• 1797
  • October 22, André-Jacques Garnerin jumps from a balloon from 3,200 feet over Parc Monceau in Paris in a 23-foot-diameter parachute made of white canvas with a basket attached. He was declared "official French aeronaut of the state".
• 1799
  • Englishman Sir George Cayley (1773-1857) sketched a glider with a rudder unit and an elevator unit. His manuscript is considered to be the starting point of the scientific research on heavier than air flying machines. It was Cayley who helped to sort out the confusion of that time. …

"He knew more than any of his predecessors … and successors up to the end of the 19th century." - Orville Wright. Even so his ideas did not affect further development very much.