May 25, 2001 is the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy's speech, calling on America to land a man on the moon. To commemorate this historic event, WAMU, in conjunction with the documentary series SOUNDPRINT, produced a two-hour program titled Washington Goes To the Moon.
Although fixed-wing aircraft receive all the attention by most historians, helicopter flight was the first flight envisioned by man. In fact, the ancient Chinese were playing with a hand-spun toy that rose upward when revolved rapidly and as early as the mid 1500's, the great Italian inventor Leonardo Da Vinci had used his fertile mind to make drawings of a machine that we now know as the helicopter.
This remarkably deep site describes the history of helicopters from Leonardo Da Vinci to the present. A drop down menu at the top of the screen provides menus of links to essays describing helicopter companies, chronologies of six periods in the history of helicopters, essays on the mechanics of helicopter flight and the military uses of helicopters. Images accompany the essays throughout and the site also includes a section devoted to sound, video and 3D clips. This site also creates a virtual community with chat rooms and a listserve, and provides a search engine for quick access to the large amount of information in this site. It is an Argentinian site, however, thus English grammar is not always perfect here.
Explore large structures and what it takes to build them with BUILDING BIG™, a five-part PBS television series and Web site from WGBH Boston. Here are the main features of the site:
Bridges, Domes, Skyscrapers, Dams, and Tunnels.
This web site accompanied the five part PBS series "Building Big" and features articles about and images of Bridges, Domes, Skyscrapers, Dams, and Tunnels. Interactive "labs" help to illustrate engineering improvements that have made these structures less vulnerable to forces of every kind. Notable engineering feats and failures including the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Hagia Sophia, the Petronis Towers and the Chunnel. Though the site is primarily aimed at a non-academic audience, researchers will find useful information here. It is also accompanied by an educators guide though it does not have a search engine which would be a useful tool for a site of this size.
One of the threads of common heritage that ties together the people of Boeing is also one of the watershed events of the 20th century: landing a human on the moon. More than 30 years before the people of Boeing, Boeing North American (the former Rockwell aerospace units) and McDonnell Douglas came together as The Boeing Company, they worked together to make possible Neil Armstrong's first step on the moon on July 20, 1969.
ZEPPELIN is a name that has passed on into cultural legend. Many have forgotten Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin after whom these ships are named, but very name evokes visions of giant passenger ships voyaging across land and sea.
Welcome to the Wright Brothers Aeroplane Company, a virtual museum of pioneer aviation. If this is your first visit, read About the Museum to get your bearings and consult our Museum Guide for help in navigating this web site. If you'd like to know more about our organization, read About Us. Our online exhibits are organized into several sections:
This virtual museum is dedicated to the Wright Brothers and their aeroplane company. Exhibits include a detailed history of the lives of the Wright brothers, a history of manned flight, other early aviators including Charlie Furnas and Gustave Whitehead, early airplanes, aircraft engineering and general information about the virtual museum. Essays, photographs, sketches and other materials accompany the exhibits though no audio or visual clips are featured here yet (the museum is under construction). There are, however, audio clips of period music such as Maple Leaf Rag. The site has a search engine, however, the engine often returns 404 errors and so is not particularly useful. Overall this is a useful site for beginning research into the Wright brothers and early aircraft.
