The History of Airplanes

In 1903, the Wright brothers invented the first airplane. It could fly higher and travel longer than all previous attempts at flying machines and was fully controllable by the person flying it. However, airplanes didn’t really gain traction until WWI, when governments across the world began to invest heavily in the technology as part of the war effort. Airplanes began to gain popularity for non-military applications as well, and the first commercial flight took place between the United States and Canada in 1919. Then in 1939, Germany produced the first jet airplane. While today we associate jet airplanes with cargo flights and travel, it took until the 1950s for airplanes to become popular for these applications.