It was as early as 19. September 1783, in the presence of the King, when the Montgolfier brothers released their hot air balloon carrying three animals - a sheep, a duck and a rooster.
All three animals survived the experiment and the king gave his permission for an ascent with passengers.

So it was that on 21. November 1783 the physicist Pilatre de Rozier and the commissioned officer Marquis d´Arlandes were the first people to take off from the earth.
They landed safely after a 25 minute flight.

Our poster starts with a picture of a hot-air balloon.
From there we go to British Triplanes from 1848, and from the first ever Airship from 1852 we come to Lilienthal´s hang-glider which was built in Germany.
His was the first glider to carry passengers on board.
Tragically – Otto Lilienthal didn´t survive his own trials.
His preliminary experiments on the physical depictions of the wings are still valid today.
The hang-glider as we know it today comes from Lilienthal´s idea and this was further developed to an aeroplane by the Wright brothers.

Four years later – we come to the first Airship: the Zeppelin LZ1.
The first plane to fly faster than 200 km/h was built 12 years later – it was a French-built Deperdussin-Corsa with a wing-span of 6,60 m and a height of 6,10 m.
It reached a speed of 209 km/h with wooden propellers and sides.
Unfortunately military interest in aviation speeded up developments and now we can see some planes which were used in the following two wars.

On some of the planes you can clearly see the 4 valves of the engine.
Also the eyelets for the wing-covering of Lilienthal´s glider, even the wheel spokes from Clement Adler´s EOLE from 1890.

The captions are in English.

Size: 68 x 98 cm
Art repro on 200g paper, varnished, matt