飞机发展史英文版介绍，好学英文网分享出来，希望大家参考。对飞机的发展历程能有个全方位的认识。不懂得单词可通过http://www.hxw.red/fy/获取帮助。

飞机发展史
The dream of flying is as old as mankind itself. However, the concept of the airplane has only been around for two centuries. Before that time, men and women tried to navigate the air by imitating the birds. They built machines with flapping wings called ornithopters. On the surface, it seemed like a good plan. After all, there are plenty of birds in the air to show that the concept does work. Click on a picture to enlarge it.

An ornithopter -- it's every bit as impractical as it looks.
The trouble is, it works better at bird-scale than it does at the much larger scale needed to lift both a man and a machine off the ground. So folks began to look for other ways to fly. Beginning in 1783, a few aeronauts made daring, uncontrolled flights in lighter-than-air balloons, but this was hardly a practical way to fly. There was no way to get from here to there unless the wind was blowing in the desired direction.
An early balloon.
It wasn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that an English baronet from the gloomy moors of Yorkshire conceived a flying machine with fixed wings, a propulsion system, and movable control surfaces. This was the fundamental concept of the airplane. Sir George Cayley also built the first true airplane — a kite mounted on a stick with a movable tail. It was crude, but it proved his idea worked, and from that first humble glider evolved the amazing machines that have taken us to the edge of space at speeds faster than sound.
This wing of the museum focuses on the history of the airplane, from its conception in 1799 to our hopes for its future. Because we are a museum of early aviation, we don’t spend a great deal of time on those years after Orville Wright closed the doors of the Wright Company in 1916. We concentrate on the development of the airplane before World War I, when flying machines were odd contraptions of stick, cloth, and wire; engines were temperamental and untrustworthy; and pilots were never quite sure whether they’d be able to coax their machine into the air or bring it down in one piece.
The First Airplanes (1799 to 1853) -- The first gliding experiments with fixed-wing craft.
Powering Up (1854 to 1879) -- The first attempts to build powered airplanes. From hxw.red.
Pilots & Chauffeurs (1880 to 1898) -- The controversy between those that believe airplanes should be inherently stable (like boats) and those who believed that a pilot or an airman should keep them balanced.
The Road to Kitty Hawk (1899 to 1903) -- The events leading up to the first sustained, controlled powered flight.
The First to Fly, 1904 to 1909 -- The Wright Brothers develop their temperamental Kitty Hawk Flyer into a practical airplane, then they show the world how to fly. Meanwhile, airplane builders on both sides of the Atlantic air making tentative flights of their own.hxw.red