From Greek mythology to modern engineering, the history of the flying machine known as the ornithopter has come a long way.
“He may thwart our escape by land or sea….but the sky is surely open to us: we will go that way: Minos rules everything but he does not rule the heavens” Such were the words of Daedalus, the father of Icarus, spoken as the two of them sat, trapped in a tower by the evil king Minos of Crete. Daedalus saved them by creating a set of wings for both himself and his son using the feathers of birds. According to the Greek mythology, he was actually quite successful, except for the tragic mistake of binding the feathers together with wax, which melted when his son flew too close to the sun, with fatal results. Perhaps you’re familiar with the story already, which is often repeated today in the spirit of symbolism.
This was a long time ago, to be sure, though one must assume that man’s desire to fly predates even the story of Icarus considerably.
The History of Flight
Daedalus had sought to imitate the motion of birds in order to achieve successful flight. It was a wise decision, to be sure, for the flight of birds are proven in their success, so why not use them as the model? Flying machines built using the model of light-weight flapping wings, are called ornithopters (from the Greek: Ornith=bird, pteron=flight). The Franciscan Friar Roger Bacon was one of the first scientists known to have given serious thought to building this form of flying machine in the 1260’s. Leonardo DaVinci more than 200 years later gave even further thought to such a practical invention, though he only got so far as to create a miniature model of the ornithopter.
The Modern Reality
It was not until the 20th century, when the laws of aerodynamics and flight had both finally been developed on a wider scale, that the first successful ornithopter flights were performed (a few had been attempted prior to this, but none of them successful enough to deem consideration). In 1929 and 1959 two separate semi-successful ornithopter flights occured, the first in Germany, the second in England. Neither of them may be counted as complete successes, because both of them had to be towed into the air first by a second aircraft, and therefore did not lift off under their own power. The closest, in fact, that humans, despite great inventiveness and wisdom, have come to truly being able to achieve manned flight in an ornithopter, occurred in Toronto in 2006. The craft, built by a professor at The University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, had been in the design and production phases for several years before finally achieving a jet-assisted take-off, followed by a 14 second flight on July 8 of that year. This may not seem like much, but consider the fact that the flight lasted two seconds longer than the the Wright Brothers' historic first flight just over a hundred years earlier. Maybe that means that in another hundred years aviation designers will have come as far with ornithopters as they have with fixed wing aircraft... but probably not.
Unmanned Ornithopters
Apart from these full-sized machines, many successful ornithopters have been built and flown in recent times, but all of them on a much smaller scale than would be necessary for manned flight (some as small as insects, potentially useful for spy applications). But the success of even these small machines shows that maybe Daedelus wasn’t all talk after all. His idea to fashion a set of wings out of feathers may have been impractical at the time, but after two thousand years of scientific research, it turns out that his idea might have some merit after all.
Sources
Ovid. Metamorphoses, Book VIII.
