History
Otto Lilienthal died while flying in 1896 as the result of a stall. Wilbur Wright encountered stalls for the first time in 1901, while flying his second glider. Awareness of Lilienthal's accident and Wilbur's experience, motivated the Wright Brothers to design their plane in "canard" configuration. This made recoveries from stalls easier and more gentle. The design saved the brothers' lives more than once.
The aircraft engineer Juan de la Cierva worked on his "Autogiro" project to develop a rotary wing aircraft which, he hoped, would be unable to stall and which therefore would be safer than aeroplanes. In developing the resulting "autogyro" aircraft, he solved many engineering problems which made the helicopter possible. Tragically, he was himself killed in the crash of an airliner, possibly due to a stall at take-off.
Read more about this topic: Stall (flight)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)