Otto Lilienthal

Otto Lilienthal (1848 to 1896) was a German pioneer of aviation, known as the flying man, who was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders. Born in Anklam in Prussian Pomerania, he trained as an engineer, founded a firm making boilers and steam engines, and with his brother Gustav studied the flight of birds, publishing Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation in 1889. From 1891 he made more than two thousand glider flights from an artificial hill near Berlin and from the Rhinow Hills, reaching distances of about 250 metres in 1893, and used polar diagrams to describe the aerodynamics of wings. His Normalsegelapparat is considered the first aeroplane in series production, which made his Berlin workshop the first aeroplane production company. Photographs of his flights convinced the public that heavier-than-air flight was practical. He died in August 1896 after a stalled glider fell about fifteen metres.