• Submitted by: manso
• international
• 10 / 24 / 2010

---

10/23/2010. By Marcelino Ortiz C. An aircraft with movable wings (to flap), powered by a person, has made history in aviation by becoming the first of its type to fly in a sustained and continuous way, according to the University of Toronto, Canada.

The 'Snowbird' performed its record-breaking flight at the Great Lakes Gliding Club in Ontario in Canada in August 2nd. The feat was witnessed by the vice-president of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world-governing body for air sports and aeronautical world records.

The official record claim was filed this month, and the FAI is expected to confirm the ornithopter's world record at its meeting in October.

It has been the dream of engineers for centuries since Leonardo da Vinci sketched the first human-powered ornithopter in 1485.

Todd Reichert, an Engineering PhD candidate at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), flew the wing-flapping device and sustained both altitude and airspeed for 19.3 seconds, covering a distance of 145 metres at an average speed of 25.6 kilometres per hour.

Throughout history, countless men and women have dreamt of flying like a bird under their own power, and hundreds, if not thousands have attempted to achieve it.

The Snowbird weighs just 94 lbs and has a wing span of 105 feet. Although its wingspan is comparable to that of a Boeing 737, the Snowbird weighs less than all of the pillows on board.

The team that developed the Snowbird is composed of experts from the University of Toronto, that of Poitiers in France and the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands.

REALITY PREVAILS

In 1895, William Thompson, first Baron of Kelvin and president of the Royal Society of Sciences categorically stated: "It is impossible that machines heavier than air can fly."

Just 8 years later, in December 17, 1903, the American brothers Wilburn and Orville Wright, bicycle manufacturers, threw on the ground that prediction and became the pioneers of aviation.

Well, we are witnessing today another flying chimera of the story: The ornithopter.

Obviously, the first air reference with which humans based to achieve the eternal dream of flying were birds and many studied birds’ flying way and the first attempts of flying devices were based on imitating the birds’ flight.

Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci were the first who tried to fly flapping the wings, a goal that never came to get.

It had been always believed that the ornithopter, flapping flying machine with wings, was impossible due to the laws of physics as well as the previous disastrous results.

The experts said that gadgets using as energy source the strength of a human crew are irrelevant, since the relationship between the birds’ weight and the power their muscles can develop is much more favorably than men’s.

Now the student of the Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Canada, Todd Reichert just go down in history with his "Snowbird", a device that weighs just 43 kg but features a wingspan similar to a Boeing 737.

Cubasí Translation Staff