Over the 130 or so years of aviation, innovative engineering and design has brought the phenomenon from strength to strength. It’s sobering to think that there were times early on where a flight could only last a matter of seconds, and now one single flight can take us from Britain to Australia. There’s no doubting that we wouldn’t be where we are today in terms of aviation without the invention of innovative forms of technology to drive the sector forwards. Here are five of our favourites...
It would be a disservice to aviation history to discuss aircraft innovations without considering such a crucial transition as that from piston to jet engine power. Piston engines belong to some of the world’s most well-loved historic aircraft, but the invention of the jet engine allowed aviation to flourish, with engineers finding the ability to manipulate aspects of nature in order to travel at speeds faster than sound. By all accounts, Orville and Wilbur Wright would probably never have thought the jet engine possible. But it was more than just possible. The earliest jet engines displayed speeds up to 370mph, as was the case with the Heinkel He 178. That’s not quite as fast as the similarly German built piston-engined Dornier Do 335 (…
