How Daedalus Flew? The First Aviator. (14+)
What do you know about the ancient Greek inventor Daedalus?
Level One.
Daedalus and Icarus flew away, attempting to escape Crete, on self-made wings. Icarus, proud and wanting to feel equal to the gods, disobeyed his father and flew close to the Sun. The wax holding the feathers together melted, Icarus died, and Daedalus made it.
The standard school story teaches us not to be arrogant, but it's oversimplified.
Level Two.
Daedalus was the greatest scientist of his time, who elevated Crete to a level unattainable by other nations and invented a host of useful things we still use today—the chisel, the saw, hot water (from a volcano), etc. Crete also boasts the Palace of Knossos, which he built.
Level Three.
Daedalus invented an artificial cow, placing the king's wife inside it because the king's wife wanted to be "taken" by a bull.
Level four.
Greek historians believed that Daedalus invented the oblique sail, which operates on the principles of an airplane wing and allows for movement against the wind. Or, more historically, an airplane wing operates on the same physical principles as an oblique sail, generating lift.
Thousands of years later, people decided to emulate Daedalus's flight—a flying machine named after him was powered solely by human muscle power.
In 1988, Daedalus, created by a team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), flew from Crete to Santorini, covering 115 kilometers in almost four hours, setting still-standing records for distance and time in the air for human-powered aircraft.
The developers themselves later founded the company Aurora, which created a whole bunch of experimental electric aircraft, then became part of the Boeing corporation and is today involved in the development of the electric multicopter Wisk, which I talked about in the series about electric aircraft, but that, as you understand, is a completely different story.