The United Kingdom’s contributions to the development of aeronautics. Part 1. From antiquity to the era of the Wrights

Abstract

The Millennium now being upon us, it is perhaps appropriate to pause a while and take stock before leaping into an ever more problematic future. But why pause? Indeed, why bother with the past? Surely our newest, ever more sophisticated computer packages provide all the necessary paths to that next commercial edge, that future, unassailable military superiority? To this the German polymath, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, provides an apt, timely and, indeed, timeless corrective:“It is an extremely useful thing to have knowledge of the true origins of memorable discoveries, especially those that have been found not by accident but by dint of meditation. It is not so much that thereby history may attribute to each man his own discoveries and others should be encouraged to earn like commendation, as that the art of making discoveries should be extended by considering noteworthy examples of it.”