Page:This New Ocean, a history of Project Mercury, Swenson, Grimwood, Alexander (NASA SP-4201).djvu/22

 

Early Aviation Man's liberation from the surface of Earth began at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on December 17, 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright made the world’s first controlled, powered flights in a heavier-than-air machine (above). At last it was within man's grasp to use Earth’s atmosphere as a means of transportation. There was much to learn; in the United States the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics pioneered aeronautical research in the 1920s. Early wind tunnel research at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (right) culminated in the famous NACA cowling and the family of NACA wing shapes that would dominate several generations of aircraft from the 1920s into the 1940s. And aviation finally came of age in world opinion with the epochal solo flight from New York to Paris by Charles E. Lindbergh, May 20–21, 1927. Lindbergh and his plane, the "Spirit of St. Louis," arc shown (below, right) visiting the Washington Navy Yard on June 11, 1927.

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