Lilienthal's Glider

Lilienthal's Glider Lilienthal's Glider is an aviation pioneer's masterpiece that embodies humanity's age-old dream of flying like a bird. From the myths of Icarus and the feathered wings, to Leonardo da Vinci's ingenious yet unrealized flying machines, soaring into the sky has always been a fleeting dream of mankind. Imagine a bright, cloudless morning where a small group of people stand at the foot of the Prussian artificial mountain. On its summit, 50 feet high, a man stands proudly with a strange wing-shaped contraption made of wood and canvas attached to his shoulders. He then accelerates into the wind and takes flight after a few feet of running! Although the English scientist Sir George Cayley conducted the first manned glider flight in 1853, Otto Lilienthal is the world's recognized first successful aviator, having completed over 2,000 safe flights before his death in a crash in 1896. In the years before these extraordinary flights, Lilienthal studied the flight of birds an