Samuel Langley’s Aerodrome
On May 6, 1896, spectators lined the banks of Washington’s Potomac River to watch the grand experiment. Using a catapult on top of a houseboat, Samuel Langley launched his “aerodrome,” a 16-foot-long, 25-pound unmanned aircraft with two sets of silk-covered wings. Powered by a steam engine and two propellers, the craft rose 100 feet above the water and flew half a mile down the river before dropping gently to the water. This was the first sustained flight by a heavier-than-air, powered vehicle.
Langley’s efforts to launch an aircraft with a man aboard were not successful, probably because of structural weaknesses in his designs. But he lived to see his dream of manned, powered flight come true when the Wright brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903.