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Flight, Patrick Luiz Sullivan De Oliveira

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The history of flight presents a seemingly straightforward linear narrative. Before the eighteenth century, humans could only aspire to fly—an unfulfillment that promoted a rich mythology in antiquity that includes, most famously, the Hellenic warning against Icarian hubris. What followed were centuries of tinkering by eccentric geniuses such as Leonardo da Vinci—experiments that proved practically unfeasible but nevertheless indicated a rationalization of the aerial milieu. Then, in 1783, the invention of the hot-air balloon by the Montgolfier brothers in France allowed humans to ascend into the sky for the first time. However, this form of flight proved to be a …