US History/Contents/Advancements
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[edit] Ezekiel Airship
Two years before the Wright Brothers made history at Kitty Hawk, Reverend Burrell Cannon convinced the townsfolk of Pittsburg, Texas, that man was meant to fly in powered machines. Cannon sold shares and formed the Ezekiel Airship Manufacturing Company. The design of his craft came from the Biblical book of Ezekiel. Fashioned in wood and fabric, the airship eventually took shape in the town's foundry over a two year period.
In 1902, inspired Baptist preacher-inventor Burrell Cannon built an airship based on a description in the Biblical Book of Ezekiel. The craft was said to have flown briefly here, beating the Wright Brothers by a year. It was destroyed in rail accident on its way to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. There's a historical marker at the original Pittsburg Foundry site, on Fulton St., and a full-sized replica displayed at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Depot & Museum.
[edit] Wright Borthers
The Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio made history when on December 17th, 1903 they were the first to fly in a man-made vehicle. The event took place in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, chosen for its steady winds. After many failed attempts, Orville finally flew the brothers' airplane 359 meters over a time period of 12 seconds. The airplane would revolutionize trade and travel in the United States and the world over the next few decades.
[edit] Goddard
"It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow"--Robert H. Goddard, Rocket Pioneer for whom the Goddard Space Flight Center is named courtesy of Mrs. Robert Goddard.
The father of modern rocket propulsion is the American, Dr. Robert Hutchings Goddard. Along with Konstantin Eduordovich Tsiolkovsky of Russia and Hermann Oberth of Germany, Goddard envisioned the exploration of space. A physicist of great insight, Goddard also had an unique genius for invention.
By 1926, Goddard had constructed and tested successfully the first rocket using liquid fuel. Indeed, the flight of Goddard's rocket on March 16,1926, at Auburn, Massachusetts, was a feat as epochal in history as that of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk. Yet, it was one of Goddard's "firsts" in the now booming significance of rocket propulsion in the fields of military missilery and the scientific exploration of space.
Primitive in their day as the achievement of the Wrights, Goddard's rockets made little impression upon government officials. Only through the modest subsidies of the Smithsonian Institution and the Daniel Guggenheim Foundation, as well as the leaves of absence granted him by Worcester Polytechnic Institute of Clark University, was Goddard able to sustain his lifetime of devoted research and testing. He worked for the U.S. Navy in both World Wars. Eighteen years after his successful demonstration at Auburn, Goddard's pioneering achievements came to life in the German V-2 ballistic missile.
Goddard first obtained public notice in 1907 in a cloud of smoke from a powder rocket fired in the basement of the physics building in Worcester Polytechnic Institute. School officials took an immediate interest in the work of student Goddard. They, to their credit, did not expel him. He thus began his lifetime of dedicated work.
In 1914, Goddard received two U.S. patents. One was for a rocket using liquid fuel. The other was for a two or three stage rocket using solid fuel.
[edit] Zeppelin
Ferdinand Adolf August Heinrich Graf von Zeppelin mostly called Count Zeppelin) (July 8, 1838 – March 8, 1917) was a German aircraft manufacturer, the founder of the Zeppelin Airship company. He was born in Konstanz, Grand Duchy of Baden (now part of Baden-Württemberg, Germany). He was the inventor of the Airship which was made in the 1900s.
[edit] Guidable Baloons
Ferdinand von Zeppelin visited the balloon camp of Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe during the Peninsular Campaign of the American Civil War. The balloons were placed off limits to civilian riders and Lowe was not to entertain the curious von Zeppelin. He sent him to another balloon camp where the German aeronaut John Steiner could be of more help to the young man. In 1839 von Zeppelin returned to America to meet and learn from the experienced Prof. Lowe to gain all the knowledge he could in ballooning.
From the 1880s onward, Zeppelin was preoccupied with the idea of guidable balloons. In 1899, he started constructing his first guidable rigid airship, following an overall system he had outlined in 1874, designs he had detailed in 1893, that were reviewed by committee in 1894, and that he patented in 1895.
Legends later arose that Zeppelin had used the patent and design of David Schwarz's airship of 1897, but these were rejected by Eckener in 1938 and by later reviewers. Zeppelin's design was "radically different" in both its scale and its framework from that of Schwarz.
Zeppelin made three flights with the LZ 1 over the Bodensee. The flights became more and more successful, igniting a public euphoria which allowed the Count to pursue the development of his vehicle. In fact, the second version of his airship was entirely financed through donations and a lottery. The final financial breakthrough only came, ironically, after the Zeppelin LZ4 crashed in 1908 at Echterdingen. The crash sparked public interest in the development of the airships. A subsequent collection campaign raised 6.5 million German marks and the money was used to create the 'Luftschiffbau-Zeppelin GmbH' and a Zeppelin foundation.
The same year the military administration bought the LZ3 and put it to use as the renamed Z1. Starting in 1909, Zeppelins also were used in civilian aviation. Up until 1914 the German Aviation Association (Deutsche Luftschiffahrtsgesellschaft or DELAG) transported 37,250 people on over 1600 flights without an incident.
Count Zeppelin died 1917, before the end of World War I. He therefore did not witness either the provisional shutdown of the Zeppelin project due to the Treaty of Versailles or the second resurgence of the zeppelins under his successor Hugo Eckener.
[edit] Titanic
RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard. On the night of 14 April 1912, during her maiden voyage, Titanic struck an iceberg, and sank two hours and forty minutes later in early 15 April 1912. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world.
The sinking resulted in the deaths of 1,517 people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and by far the most infamous. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be “unsinkable” - indeed, in a 1910 White Star Line brochure advertising the Titanic, it was claimed that she was "designed to be unsinkable". It was a great shock to many that despite the advanced technology and experienced crew, the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life. The media frenzy about Titanic's famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since.
