Otto Lilienthal

Otto Lilienthal was a German engineer and aviation pioneer who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making the idea of "heavier than air" a reality. Newspapers and magazines published photographs of Lilienthal gliding, favourably influencing public and scientific opinion about the possibility of flying machines becoming practical. Lilienthal's work led to his developing the concept of the modern wing. His flight attempts in 1891 are seen as the beginning of human flight and the "Lilienthal Normalsegelapparat" is considered to be the first airplane in series production, making the Maschinenfabrik Otto Lilienthal in Berlin the first air plane production company in the world. Otto Lilienthal is often referred to as either the "father of aviation" or "father of flight". [2] Lilienthal began experiments on the force of air in the late 1870s. The results of that research appeared in 1889 in a book entitled Der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Fliegekunst (“Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation”) and in an important series of articles that provided a foundation for the final effort to achieve mechanical flight. As transmitted by Octave Chanute, Lilienthal’s friend and American correspondent, the tables of data served as the starting point for the earliest aircraft designs of the Wright brothers. Having explored the physical principles governing winged flight, Lilienthal began to design and build gliders on the basis of the information he had gathered. Between 1891 and 1896, he completed some 2,000 flights in at least 16 distinct glider types. His career as a builder and pilot of gliders coincided with the development of high-speed and stroboscopic photography. Images of Lilienthal flying through the air aboard his standard glider appeared around the globe in newspapers and the great illustrated magazines of the period. Those pictures convinced millions of readers in Europe and the United States that the age of flight was at hand. [3] Lilienthal broke his back in a glider crash on Aug. 9, 1896, and died in a Berlin hospital the next day. His last words were reported to be "Opfer müssen gebracht werden!" ("Sacrifices must be made!"). He was buried at Lankwitz Cemetery in Berlin. His grave stone bears a reproduction of one of his gliders. [2]