A Brief History of Human Powered Transportation

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Aircraft
Flight has been the dream of humans from the start of recorded history. The woodcut depicts the escape attempt of Daedalus and his son Icarus from the island of Crete where they had been imprisoned in the great labyrinth of King Minos. Daedalus crafted wings of feathers held together by wax and the they flew from Crete towards the Greek mainland. Icarus failed to head the warning not to fly close to the sun, the wax melted and this aerial escape ended in disaster. The wing design was good, the material selection a poor match to the temperament of one of the pilots, and the event even less probable due to the low power output of the human arm and chest muscles.

From: Wegener, "What Makes Airplanes Fly?"
Springer-Verlag (1991)