Slovenia 2022 FDC The beginnings of unpowered flight - Franz Wels

The beginnings of unpowered

flight – Franz Wels

Flight is one of the most important phenomena of life

on our planet and is around 150 million years old (the

Archaeopteryx genus of bird-like dinosaurs). It has existed

throughout every period of history, with or without

human involvement. Since nature deprived man of wings,

he has had to rely on engineering. The flight of birds was

for a long time an inspiration for human endeavours in

this direction, until because of its impossibility it became

more of an obstacle than a model.

In around the year 1500, the great artist, scientist

and inventor Leonardo da Vinci sketched a series of

human-powered flying machines, although he came

to realise that this method would not be successful.

A new possibility appeared in the eighteenth century

with the principle of lighter-than-air flight – or balloons

(the Montgolfier brothers, 1783). The remainder of

the eighteenth century was characterised by aerostats

(lighter-than-air aircraft). At the same time, however,

advances were being made with heavier-than-air flying

machines, which resulted, in the late nineteenth century,

in the first successful flights with gliders (Otto Lilienthal,

1896) and eventually in powered flight (the Wright

brothers, 1903).

In the period that followed, innovative aviation became

one of the fastest developing spheres of transport and

engineering.

No account of early successful unpowered flights around

the world would be complete without a mention of the

achievements in this field of the engineer FRANZ WELS (b.

Maribor, 1873; d. Vienna, 1940). His designs for wings took

inspiration from nature and he built several large models

based on the wing-shaped seeds of a tropical creeper

known as Alsomitra macrocarpa , eventually building a

full-sized glider or flying wing which in 1906 successfully

flew a distance of 250 metres. After teaming up with

the Austria aviation pioneer Igo Etrich, Wels began

working on a motorised version of his flying wing. Etrich’s

workshop went on to manufacture its first powered

aircraft and, most notably, the Taube (Dove), a successful

design that would be used by the Austrian and German

air forces in the First World War.