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Biography of Otto LilienthalName: Otto LilienthalBirth Date: May 23, 1848 Death Date: August 10, 1896 Place of Birth: Anklam, Prussia Nationality: Prussian Gender: Male Occupations: design engineer Otto Lilienthal With the design and construction of his first working glider, Otto Lilienthal (1848-1896) bestowed a sense of viability and respectability on the young science of aviation. Lilienthal flew thousands of flights on gliders he designed based on careful observations of birds. His work directly inspired Orville and Wilbur Wright.During the early days of the Industrial Revolution, notions of human flight were ridiculed. Yet Prussian design engineer Otto Lilienthal disregarded the social stigma associated with flying machine inventors and applied himself in earnest to the study of aerodynamic forces and design concepts. His hope was to further the quest to achieve manned flight. During his lifetime he accumulated 20 patents for his machine designs, including four for aviation devices.His first crude aviation design was a simple pair of wings with which he attempted to gain altitude by jumping from a board. Eventually, Lilienthal achieved flight distances as high as 1,150 feet (350.75 meters) …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…invention of one single machine. He fostered the notion that a long process of study, and a thorough examination of the axioms of aerodynamics, was imperative to the successful invention of a progressive series of viable flying machines, with each machine proving more capable than its predecessor.Two of Lilienthal's original flying machines survived into the twenty-first century. One of his "no. 11" gliders is on exhibit at the National Space and Air Museum at the Smithsonian Institute. Another of his planes, a "little biplane," also survived. Lilienthal's first flying apparatus, however, was lost; only replicas remain. In the 1980s, the Otto Lilienthal Museum in his hometown of Anklam opened in honor of the 100th anniversary of his first flights. Further Reading Lilienthal, Otto, Bird Flight as a Basis of Aviation, New York, 1911.Century, September 1908. "Otto Lilienthal's Aeronautical Bibliography," Archives Otto-Lilienthal-Museum Anklam, http://home.t-online.de/home/LilienthalMuseum/e4.htm (February 22, 2001). |