United States Government Role In Civil Aviation
Governments have played an important part in shaping air transportation. This role began as early as 1783, when the king of France summoned the Montgolfier brothers to demonstrate their balloon. In 1892, the French War Ministry backed an attempt to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. Six years later, a military board in the United States approved a grant to assist similar efforts by Samuel P. Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. These early military grants gave a hint of how important airplanes would become in warfare, but they properly belong to the history of air power. This essay deals with the official influence on civilian flying, and it focuses on the U.S. experience.
Langley's Smithsonian was a significant source of information for those interested in the possibility of heavier-than-air flight. The Institution distributed literature about aeronautical principals as part of its scientific mission, which was partly supported by federal taxes. Among those who studied this material were Wilbur and Orville Wright, whose own experiments led them to achieve controlled, powered flight in 1903.
Read more about United States Government Role In Civil Aviation: National Advisory Committee For Aeronautics, Airmail, Air Commerce Act, Bureau of Air Commerce, Civil Aeronautics Authority, Federal Aviation Agency and NASA, Department of Transportation and Airline Deregulation, Transportation Security Administration
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states, government, role and/or civil:
“... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The United States is a republic, and a republic is a state in which the people are the boss. That means us. And if the big shots in Washington don’t do like we vote, we don’t vote for them, by golly, no more.”
—Willis Goldbeck (1900–1979)
“I make this direct statement to the American people that there is far less chance of the United States getting into war, if we do all we can now to support the nations defending themselves against attack by the Axis than if we acquiesce in their defeat, submit tamely to an Axis victory, and wait our turn to be the object of attack in another war later on.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“I’ve never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen.”
—Victoria Gray, African American civil rights activist. As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 3, by Hay Mills (1993)