... in 1919 raymond orteig offered a prize of $25,000 (approximately $400,000 today) as a "stimulus to courageous aviators" to the first flyer to cross the atlantic non-stop from paris to new york or from new york to paris ... by 1927 the prize had still not been claimed, although several had died or disappeared trying ... passenger carrying aviation was at a standstill, and many claimed that flying would never be safe enough for purely commercial use ... in february of 1927 a relatively unknown young aviator, charles lindbergh, arrived at the ryan factory in san diego and asked, "can you design and build me a very unusual single engine plane that will fly me 3,000 miles without landing ... and, by the way, it must be ready to take-off in sixty days" ...
... the plane was built ...
... on may 20th, 1927, charles lindbergh took off from roosevelt field on long island and, after a courageous feat of navigation and human endurance, 33 hours later landed at le bourget field outside of paris ...
... the entire world cheered ... due to the advent of radio communications, it was perhaps the first truly global event ...
... charles lindbergh's achievement inspired the public, the aviation industry responded ... yet his aircraft, "the spirit of st. louis," would remain a technological oddity ... it's focused design, being basically an airborne gas tank (fuel and pilot weighed more than the plane itself), served primarily as a stimulus to designers to try new things ...
... 1927 to 2015 ...
... a child, born in the year lindbergh flew to paris, now walks onto a giant multi-engine jet aircraft in new york, never actually seeing the outside of the plane, and seven hours later, having had two meals and watched a movie while airborne, deplanes in paris ...
... just a short time ago a very, very weird airplane landed in abu dhabi, having flown from switzerland without using a single drop of fossil fuel ... it is powered solely by solar panels ...
... after an overnight rest, the "solar impulse" will continue on in its attempt to be the first aircraft to circumnavigate the earth powered only the solar energy ... after landing its designer said, "what we have managed to do in the air all of us can do on the ground, we can have a world without fossil fuels" ...
... it might complete the journey, i so hope this happens ... or, like those who preceded charles lindberg, it might not ...
... either way, history is being made ...
... a child, born in the year the solar impulse flew to abu dhabi ___________ ...
... can we even imagine how that sentence will be completed ...
"I realized that the future of aviation,
to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life,
and that this was true of all technological progress."
CHARLES LINDBERGH