Pioneers of Flight Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pterosaurs - 190 million years ago.

Pterosaurs appeared about 225 million years ago.

Rhyniognatha hirsti, found in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, is the oldest known insect, dating back to 400 million years ago. Though it shares features with winged insects and not with wingless insects, the fossils that have been found are without wings. Those fossils were found in ancient hot springs so the wings could have been dissolved. The fossils consist mostly of some jaws a tenth of a millimetre across. There has been some confusion as the jaws have been described as looking like tiny birds wings, which has lead to reports of wings being found.

Answer: His father Daedalus

Deiphobus was the brother of Paris and married Helen of Troy after he died. Daedalus, whose name means "Skillfully Wrought", built, among other things, the Labyrinth of King Minos of Crete. Daedalus was imprisoned so he could not reveal the secret of the Labyrinth so he fashioned wings of wax and feathers and escaped with his son Icarus.

Minos searched for Daedalus by travelling from city to city and challenging people to run a thread through a spiral seashell. When he reached Camicus, where Daedalus was living, the King Cocalus called Daedalus. He tied the string to an ant which, lured by a drop of honey at one end, pulled the thread through. Minos then demanded Daedalus be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince Minos to take a bath first, where Cocalus' daughters, or in some versions Daedalus himself, poured boiling water on Minos and killed him.

Answer: Eilmer of Malmesbury

Eilmer made a flight from the tower of Malmesbury Abbey in 1010. It was recorded in William of Malmesbury's book 'Gesta Regum Anglorum'. William, who could have heard the story from monks who knew Eilmer, was principally interested in Eilmer (who was born in 980) due to the fact that he had seen two comets; possibly the first was Halley's Comet in 989 and the second definitely was Halley's in 1066.

Eilmer flew about 200m then crashed and developed a limp. He realised the problem was that his glider lacked a tail but the abbot forbade any further experiments. Abbas Ibn Firnas, a Berber living in ninth century Spain, is said to have made a flight with similar results and conclusions.

Roger Bacon wrote on flight in about 1250ce.

Answer: Rockets

The accounts vary. He had a chair (or a throne in some accounts) with either rockets attached directly to it or attached to two kites. Most accounts say he used 47 fire-arrow rockets with 47 assistants to light the rockets but some say 42 which seems a more logical number (they could be in a six by seven arrangement or two three by sevens attached to the kites).

The experiment was a failure and he is said to have disappeared. However, he did get a crater on the moon named after him. The TV program MythBusters tried repeating the experiment and also got an explosion.

Two other people can be claimed as pioneers of rocket flight. They were the Turk Lagari Hasan Çelebi in 1633 and the English bishop and brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, John Wilkins, in 1638. Celebi reportedly descended by 'wing' and was richly rewarded by the sultan. His brother is supposed to have made a flight by glider a year earlier. Wilkins only wrote about a 'chariot' propelled by gunpowder, feathered wings and springs which was intended to travel to the moon.

Answer: An unknown Chinese pre 1000ce

Unmanned hot air balloons were used as lanterns for military signalling by Zhuge Liang in the Chinese Three Kingdoms period (220-280ce).

The first known balloon flight in Europe was a small paper balloon made by a Brazilian priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão. On August 8, 1709, in Lisbon he demonstrated it to the Portuguese court. He had ambitious plans for a dirigible but does not seem to have got beyond models.

Answer: They owned a paper factory

They unsuccessfully experimented with steam and hydrogen before they produced a successful hot air balloon. They initially believed it was smoke, not hot air, that provided the lift and burned various substances including damp wool and old shoes.

The first public demonstration was on 4 June 1783. A second test took place in the presence of King Louis XVI on 19 September 1783. A cock, a duck and a sheep were used to test the effect of altitude on live creatures (but it has not been explained why birds would be affected by altitude). The king did not like the smoke. Next was a tethered balloon flight took place on October 19, 1783 with Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and Giroud de Villette on board. Finally on 21 November 1783 an untethered balloon made Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, the first human fliers.

Answer: Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles

Charles was a French mathematician, physicist and inventor. His other major claim to fame was that he developed Charles's law concerning the thermal expansion of gases. With Nicolas Robert, he was the first to ascend in a hydrogen balloon in 1783.

Tao Wu Ti was an emperor in the Chinese Wei dynasty (386-409)with no known connection with flight.

Answer: About 400bce

The whirligig was an early child's toy in Europe (from the 14th century) and China. Cayley was inspired by a version of the whirligig developed in 1784 by the Frenchmen Launoy and Bienvenu.

Among many other theoretical developments he was the first to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight and their relationship (drag, lift, thrust and weight).

He realised a light powerful engine was needed for flight and experimented unsuccessfully with a gunpowder fuelled engine. He also developed many other inventions and he contributed in six fields including theatre architecture, prosthetics and land reclamation. The record-breaking arch supporting the roof of the new Wembley stadium in London uses the principles he developed - as do all wire spoked bicycle wheels.

In 1849 the ten-year-old son of one his servants flew when he made a short flight in a Cayley glider. In 1853 a triplane glider carried an employee (often said to be his coachman who then quit because he had not been employed to fly) 900 feet or 275 m.

Answer: Aerial Transit Company.

They planned a machine with an approximately 150 foot (45m) wingspan. They produced several models but only seem to have managed one short wire guided flight. They also produced several artists' impressions of their machine over various places such as the pyramids and India.

Answer: Chard, England (nearest large city Bristol).

He was a partner in the Aerial Transit Company. His great strength was in the design of lightweight steam engines. After the Aerial Transit Company finished he built his first plane in 1848. In 1868 he built a plane that is on display in the Early Flight Gallery of the National Air & Space Museum, Washington, DC. In the same year, his son Frederick produced a tandem winged monoplane.

The answer mentioned the nearest "large" city because Chard is quite near Wells, England's smallest city (population about 10,400).

Answer: New York and California.

He published 'Aerial Navigation: New York and California in Three Days' and proposed an 800 foot long dirigible capable of carrying 100 passengers. The 'Philadelphia Bulletin' said 'It would seem as if the gullibility of human nature kept even pace with the wit of knaves, and that nothing could be proposed for an exhibition too preposterous to find believers...Now, a flying machine... can never be steered. Yet, as in the analogous instance of perpetual motion, there will be found dolts to believe in it, we suppose, to the end of time.'

At this time he also built a small two engined clockwork airplane which circled a chandelier in New York City's Tabernacle Church.

Answer: Hiram Stevens Maxim

Hiram Stevens Maxim invented the Maxim machine gun.

Sir Hiram's plane flew on 31st July 1894. It was supposed to be controlled by a guide rail but broke free. It flew 1924 feet (nearly 590 metres) with three passengers so the Wrights were not the first people to fly a powered heavier than air machine just the first to successfully control it. It used a coiled pipe boiler heated by naphtha which weighed about 1000lbs (450kg).
Sir Hiram was originally an American.

I invented Rene Mitterrand but hoped you would think of the French mitrailleuse, a multi-barrelled weapon.

Answer: They used a ramp.

In 1857 they thought they would only need a six horsepower engine. He and his brother invented a light weight engine and in 1874 made a plane with a 40 foot (12m) wingspan weighing only 160lbs (72kg) unloaded which got off the ground.
One of his ideas was the retractable undercarriage.

Answer: An artificial hill.

The hill was conical and built in 1894 near Berlin, Germany. It was about 45 feet (15m) high and about 200 feet (65m) in diameter. There is a photograph of this hill with a building on top. There is a photograph of this hill with a building on top.

Lilienthal died of injuries obtained when his glider collapsed during a flight on August 9, 1896. He had made over 2,000 flights in 18 different hang gliders. His fundamental research on birds and airfoils founded the science of wing aerodynamics and is the basis for modern airplane design.

Answer: Alberto Santos-Dumont

The Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont had earlier developed dirigibles one of which won a prize when it flew from Saint-Cloud, round the Eiffel Tower and returned to its starting point. He was first to use ailerons.

At this time the claims of the Wright brothers were generally ignored or disbelieved even in the USA.

Samuel Franklin Cody is believed to be Franklin Cowdery of Davenport, Iowa. He was involved in Wild West shows before developing man carrying kites and doing pioneering work (world records and the first passengers) with powered aeroplanes in England.

Bleriot is, of course, famous for the first aeroplane flight across the English Channel.