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The Firsts - Groundbreaking achievements, inventions and the pioneers. Pre 1900. Page 6



Paris, March 21, 1908. Henry Farman and Leon de la Grange went into the air, making a short but highly successful flight. This was the first time that an aeroplane carrying two persons has made a successful flight.

   
1) Henry Farman first cross-country flight 1908-11-21. 2) Henry Farman (Left) and Gabriel Voisin

March 16, 1911. The first aeroplane war message in the history of the world was delivered by Lieutenant Ben D. Foulois. Accompanied by Phil Parmalee, he flew his aeroplane across the country to Leon Springs and returned, delivering a message. The 26 miles was covered in 24 minutes on the trip going and in like time returning.

September 16, 1910. The first woman in America to be hurt in aeroplane. She was Mrs. Raische, wife of the head of an aeroplane company. Mrs. Raische went out on the field for the initial try, which, with beginners, consists of what is known as "grass cutting," or skimming the field. She had gone perhaps a mile when the nose of the machine was jammed into the ground, smashing the forward control. She was thrown out, but was not seriously injured.

July 16, 1909. The first Wright aeroplane was received in Germany.

May 2, 1909. First flight in England. At the British Aero Club grounds at Sheppey, Moore Brabazon, the aeroplanist, made what was virtually the first English flight. He covered a quarter of a mile at a height of thirty feet with a Voisin aeroplane.

John Moore-Brabazon, with his Voisin Bird of Passage in Leysdown, Kent, UK in 1909.

February 12, 1912. First movie pictures taken from an aircraft. Frank Coffyn, the aviator, made a flight over the New York harbour. He was accompanied by Adrian Duff, who carried a movie picture machine and obtained the first moving picture taken from an aeroplane in full flight.

Frank Trenholm Coffyn (1878 – 1960), a pioneer aviator

1953. Scott Crossfield, test pilot and aircraft designer, became the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. He piloted the Skyrocket (Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket) to a speed of 1,291 mph (2,078 km/h, Mach 2.005).

   
Albert Scott Crossfield and the D-558-II
First aerial photograph of the pyramids. It was taken by the British. March 1919.

Motor cars

March 13, 1908. Jerusalem. Charles J. Glidden and Mrs. Glidden arrived in a motor car. It was the first motor car ever seen in Jerusalem.

The first motor car. For many years it has been commonly accepted that the first motor car in the world was a three-wheeler which was built in 1884/5 by Karl Benz, the fact that it had an internal combustion engine giving it a greater claim to the ancestory of the motorcar as they know it in the early 1900's than one or two earlier road vehicles propelled by steam. The claim that Benz was the first internal combustion engined vehicle has been challenged, however, from France. Documentary evidence exists to show that the French Voiture (four-wheeled) was invented and built by Delamare-Deboutteville and Leon Malandin in 1884, the patent being dated February 12, 1884.

Patent 160, 267 automobile. First four wheels. Issued to MM. Edouard Delamare-Deboutteville
and Paul Léon Charles Malandin February 12, 1884

In June 1952 Moscow radio claimed that a Russian invented the first motor car 200years ago. The inventor appeared to be unknown even in Russia. The radio said that this Russian serf "built the first self moving carriage." How it moved itself was not explained. Credit for the first "road wagon" propelled by its own engine is generally given to a Frenchman named Nicholas Cugnot who put together a cumbersome steamdriven three-wheeler about 1770.