The First Human Flight

The very rapid development of aviation in which man was the protagonist in the twentieth century changed the way of life, reducing the distances between continents, and thus revolutionizing the methods of transport and war.

From the Wright brothers, makers of the first motor-powered airplanes controllable in the early 1900s, to the nineteenth-century pioneers George Cayley and Francis Herbert Wenham; from the first airship built in 1852 to the first balloon of the Montgolfier brothers, that crossed the French skies in October 1783; the search for flight has an archaic history, has accompanied us since ancient times and, often, has merged with myths and religions.

Who was the first human being to fly?

2. Gullin, China.

According to some research as early as the 3rd century B.C. paper flying lanterns were known in eastern China. These devices, which work essentially with the same mechanism as hot-air balloons, spread quickly together with the first paper kites especially in the field of war, for the transport of military messages, and between the 6th and 10th century A.D. their use was also widely known in India and Tibet.

In two traditional Chinese historiographical works of 1100 A.D. it is told what could be the first human flight in history: the Eastern Cao Wei kingdom was one of the regimes that controlled China during the period of the three kingdoms; during the struggle for the succession of this dynasty, Prince Yuan Huangtou, son of the previous emperor Yuan Lang, was taken prisoner in 559 B.C. by the ruler of Northern Wei, Gao Yang, and forced to jump together with companions with whom he shared imprisonment from the highest tower of the city of Ye, tied to a large paper kite.

The only survivor of the tragic event, he was then brutally executed shortly after his landing, having managed to fly over the entire city at a considerable flight altitude. The chronicles of the incident are documented in the complete manual to help govern Bei Shi, and in a text belonging to the cycle of Twenty-four Stories.

Who instead was the author of the first attempts of human flight for scientific research is the North African astronomer and inventor Abbas Ibn Firnas who, in Islamic Spain of 800 AD, through a device similar to a modern glider managed to make a long glide, after jumping off a hill, causing only minor injuries.

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