Who was the first "flying man" in the world?

“The sky is high enough for birds to fly.” In ancient times, people did not understand the scientific mechanism of flight. They simply believed that as long as they had wings like birds, humans could fly freely. In Greek mythology, there is the story of Icarus, led by his father Daedalus, wearing large wings made of feathers and flying into the sky. The Chinese idiom "turn into an immortal from a feather" also connects feathers with ascension to heaven.

Legend has it that Lu Ban and Mo Zhai both made flying wooden birds. Later, records of "flying men" and "flying cars" were recorded in history books. The earliest records can be traced back to the late Western Han Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago. During Wang Mang's reign (AD 9-23), a skilled craftsman made a cloak made of giant bird wings and feathers and performed a flying show in public. He tied his cloak with a rope and put a lot of feathers on his head. Then he climbed up a high tower and put his arms into the brown rope loops on the top of his wings. Wang Mang gave an order and he jumped down. With the resistance of the cloak, he actually glide for tens of meters, but unfortunately he was seriously injured. This can be said to be the first recorded attempt by humans to fly.

About 1,000 years later, in 1010, someone in England also conducted a trapeze experiment. A believer named Aimo tied wings made of feathers to his limbs, flew down from the church tower, and glided about 200 meters in the air. But when he was about to land, there happened to be a strong wind. It blew and broke the wings on his feet, causing him to fall and break his legs. Later, an artist painted a "Flying Saint" sign for a hotel based on Elmo's feat, which actually attracted many customers, and the owner made a fortune.

There were many similar experiments in the future, but all ended in tragedy. It was not until the 1780s, when scientists pointed out the scientific reason why humans could not fly with wings, that this risky activity gradually disappeared. "Flying man" was not good, but human exploration did not stop. They began to create various machines to realize the ideal of taking off. This was the "flying car", or an attempt to human-powered aircraft.

The world’s earliest human-powered aircraft was also born in my country. According to "Suzhou Prefecture Chronicles", during the Qing Dynasty of our country, there was a poor carpenter Xu Zhengming in Suzhou City. Once he heard his neighbor talking about "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" about the flying chariots of Qigong (gǒng) country, which made him unable to sleep for a long time because he I have long wanted to create a "speeding car" that can "hit the world". He decided to try it out.

Xu Zhengming was fascinated by the experiment. After 10 years of exploration and hundreds of setbacks, he finally built a machine that could be more than a foot above the ground and cross the river "without any need for human intervention." Bridge" speed car. According to the official annals, as long as you press the pedal up and down hard, the "speeding car" will "whirl around and fly away, more than a foot above the ground." This is the world's first human-powered aircraft.

The test was successful; Xu Zhengming was so happy that he couldn't understand why, but he was very dissatisfied because it flew too low. He was determined to build a better "flying car" so that he could fly across Taihu Lake and fly up to the peaks in the lake! But Xu Zhengming is a poor carpenter. More than 10 years of experiments have left his originally wealthy family empty, and his wife has been quarreling with him about this. The impoverished Xu Zhengming finally failed to complete his plan and passed away with regret.

After Xu Zhengming died, his wife was in despair and blamed everything on this "speeding car". In a fit of rage, she picked up an ax and smashed Xu Zhengming's life's hard work into pieces and burned it. Therefore, people still don’t know the real secret of this “speeding car” to this day.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, due to the lack of correct theoretical guidance, apart from a series of heroic records of aircraft crashes and fatalities, the "flying car" - human-powered aircraft did not make much progress. It was only in the 1930s, after real airplanes were flying in the blue sky, people understood the mechanism of flight, and the emergence of light and strong materials, that they really took to the sky. In the 1940s, Germany and Italy successively achieved success. They each built two light human-powered aircraft. One flew at high altitude for 40 seconds, and the other took slightly longer.

About 60 seconds!

On June 12, 1979, American cyclist Brian Allen created a speed miracle. He used his legs as power to drive the "Cicada Winged Albatross" assembled from graphite fiber, foamed polystyrene and nylon rope (its flying power is only 0.22 horsepower, while the maximum power of a human can reach 1.5 horsepower, but Only about 0.3 horsepower in continuous motion), flying across the rough English Channel. The original plan was to fly for 2 hours, but due to a sudden change in wind direction midway, we encountered another turbulence. Therefore, the 35-kilometer journey actually took 2 hours and 50 minutes, with an average speed of 12.7 kilometers per hour. This flight was very dangerous and tiring. Allen pedaled an average of 70 times per minute. At the worst point, the plane was only 15 centimeters above the sea, and his feet almost touched the waves. But in the end he overcame all difficulties and finally won a bonus of 100,000 pounds.