Airplane Evolution Game
Chloe Sarnoff
The Museum's collection holds a variety of different airplanes which help tell the story of flight. Our collection of commercial aircraft, such as the well-known Boeing 747, help tell the history of America by air. Learn more about some of these aircraft below.
The story of commercial aviation starts with air mail. Commercial airlines initially struggled to get off the ground, but with help from the government, who awarded airlines contracts to deliver the mail, they soon began to flourish. As technology improved, aircraft evolved from World War I-style biplanes into sleek, high-performance modern airliners.
The DH-4 in the Museum's collection was the prototype American-built DH-4, manufactured by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company. This airplane was used in more than 2,600 experiments until its retirement in April 1919. On May 13, 1918, Orville Wright made his last flight as a pilot in a 1911 Wright Model B alongside this DH-4, flown by Howard Max Rinehart. He then made a flight as a passenger in the DH-4 with Rinehart.
Powered by the venerable Liberty engine, the Curtiss Carrier Pigeon was designed to carry mail along National Air Transport's lucrative New York-Chicago route. Both Curtiss and National were owned by pioneer aviation entrepreneur Clement Keys.
First flown in 1932, the Curtiss Condor could carry 14 passengers and had sleeping berths for night flight. Although comfortable and fast, it was expensive to operate. Eastern Air Transport and American Airways flew the Condor, but newer designs soon replaced it.
Powered by Pratt & Whitney's Wasp engine, the Boeing 40A could carry two passengers. Thanks to the biplane's large payload capacity and low operating costs, Boeing Air Transport won the coveted air mail route from Chicago to San Francisco in 1927 and operated the route at a profit.
Boeing developed a larger version of the aircraft, the Boeing 40B, which could carry 4,400 kilograms (2,000 pounds) of mail and four passengers. The pilot flew the airplane from an open cockpit behind the passenger compartment.
With help from the government via air mail contracts and other subsidies, commercial aviation in the United States began to take route. However, the mid-1930s were a difficult time for airlines. The federal government had broken up the large companies that had dominated the aviation industry and had cut its subsidies to airlines. Air transportation regulation was in a state of confusion. Improvements in aircraft and aviation technology played a key role in revitalizing the struggling airline industry.
To survive in these challenging times, airlines needed bigger, better, and faster airplanes that could profitably fly passengers as well as mail. New navigation and communications equipment was also required to enhance safety and efficiency. The aviation industry responded. By the late 1930s, the first modern, high-performance airliners were taking to the air.
The government provided bonuses to airlines if their aircraft could fly at night or had multiple engines, two-way radios, and other equipment that promoted safety and speed. The first aircraft produced under these terms was the Boeing 247 in 1933, the world's first modern airliner. It could carry 10 passengers, fly 50 percent faster than the Ford Tri-Motor, and cross the country in less than 20 hours. The Boeing 247 revolutionized air transportation, featuring a sleek, low-wing, all-metal construction; retractable landing gear; and supercharged, air-cooled engines. Its innovative design launched a new generation of commercial airliners, notably the Douglas DC-2. The Boeing 247-D, the version in the Museum's collection, pioneered the use of controllable-pitch propellers and wing de-icer boots.
Aircraft manufacturers introduced a new generation of large, four-engine airliners after World War II that soon dominated U.S. and international air travel and helped lower fares. These new airliners were built with profitable transcontinental air routes in mind. They enabled airlines to carry far more people at greater speeds, while providing unprecedented comfort for passengers and unprecedented profits for airlines. As a result, competition increased and fares fell, thus opening up air travel to even more people.
Sleek, powerful, and graceful, TWA's Lockheed Constellations introduced pressurized comfort and shortened transcontinental travel by an astounding five hours. Eastern began flying the "stretched" 71-seat Super Constellation in 1951. The L-1049C and strengthened L-1049G versions had greater range and capacity than the original "Connie." Northwest Orient and TWA also flew Super Constellations.
The jet engine revolutionized air travel. Powerful and durable, jets enabled aircraft manufacturers to build bigger, faster, and more productive airliners. Jet technology also enabled airlines to reduce their operating costs and their airfares. Jet passenger service began in the United States in the late 1950s with the introduction of Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 airliners.
Jet engines have far fewer moving parts than piston engines, so they are more reliable, safer, and less costly to operate. They burn kerosene, which is less expensive than gasoline, and produce tremendous thrust for their weight. As a result, jet aircraft can be made larger and can fly faster than piston-engine aircraft.
First introduced in 1948, the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop combined the power of jet propulsion with the efficiency of propellers. It was widely used in the first generation of turboprop-powered aircraft, including the British Vickers Viscount and the Dutch Fokker F-27.
Gift of Rolls-Royce Ltd
First introduced in 1948, the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop combined the power of jet propulsion with the efficiency of propellers. It was widely used in the first generation of turboprop-powered aircraft, including the British Vickers Viscount and the Dutch Fokker F-27. The Dart enabled these and other new airliners to lower airline operating costs and bring greater speed and comfort to passengers traveling on short-to-medium length routes.
On July 15, 1954, a graceful, swept-winged aircraft, bedecked in brown and yellow paint and powered by four revolutionary new engines first took to the sky above Seattle. Built by the Boeing Aircraft Company, the 367-80, better known as the Dash 80, would come to revolutionize commercial air transportation when its developed version entered service as the famous Boeing 707, America's first jet airliner.
Boeing's 707 was designed for transcontinental or one-stop transatlantic range. But modified with extra fuel tanks and more efficient turbofan engines, 707-300s could fly nonstop across the Atlantic. Boeing built 855 707s.
The Pratt & Whitney JT3 revolutionized air transportation when it entered service on the Boeing 707 in 1958. The new turbojet engine was a commercial version of the U.S. Air Force's J53, introduced in 1950. In the early 1960s, the JT3 was modified into a low-bypass turbofan-the JT3D. The first three compressor stages were replaced with two fan stages, which extended beyond the compressor casing to act like propellers. The resulting increase in airflow lowered fuel consumption, noise, and emissions. JT3Ds became widely used, especially on long-range Boeing 707-300s and Douglas DC-8s.
Next year in December it will be the 120-year anniversary of powered human flight. Needless to say, aviation has come a long way since then. It is difficult to say if, when the Wright brothers built and successfully flew the world's first motor-operated plane, they could imagine what kind of societal transformation they had set in motion. Did they envision aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound or carrying hundreds of people across oceans, complete with tax-free shopping and in-flight entertainment?
But just how did we get from Kitty Hawk to the Boeing 777X and beyond? Early changes to aircraft structure focused on the perfection of the techniques and methods of flight. Later, engineering moved on to being driven by trends in the market and airline capacity needs, looking to increase profitability and efficiency. As we move towards the middle of the century, these considerations continue to take center stage - but with the added complexity of decarbonizing the fuel source.
In this article, we will take a look at some of the key moments and events in the history of the evolution of the airplane. There are plenty of pivotal points to cover, and we will not be able to include everything, but we will try our best to share the most significant. Let's dive into the evolution of the aircraft thus far - and where it could potentially go from here.
We tend to think of the start of the airplane as the first "sustained and powered" flight, and the Wright brothers are regarded as the first to achieve this in 1903. But there had been interest and experimentation in flight long before this.
For possibly the earliest recorded pondering of flight, take a look at the Greek legend of Icarus from over 2,000 years ago. Icarus and his father, the master craftsman Daedalus, try to escape from Crete (and the Minotaur) using feather and wax wings (no spoilers, but many of you may be familiar with how that turned out). Around the same time, several Indian epics refer to flying palaces (known as Vimana).
The potentially earliest real experiments began in the 9th Century with the Andalusian inventor Abbas ibn Firnas designing a simple glider. Writings at the time refer to how he "flew faster than the phoenix in his flight when he dressed his body in the feathers of a vulture."
Some more in-depth experimentation took place in the 16th Century when Leonardo da Vinci researched the flight of birds and designed several flying machines based on the mechanisms he observed. His work survives in the "Codex on the Flight of Birds." As fascinating as these works may be, as far as we know, no successful flying machine was built from them.
The English engineer George Cayley is one of the most important figures in the early development of the airplane. He was the first to investigate and document the forces of flight (weight, lift, drag, and thrust) and develop the concept of the airplane as a fixed-wing machine with systems for lift, propulsion, and control.
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