12 Greatest Innovations in Aviation

[1279shp]

:hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm::hmm:

Hundred years since the Wright Brothers took wing many inventions have taken place in the field of aviation. Now, a website has compiled a list of the greatest innovations that have taken the world by storm.
The list of top 12 inventions has been amassed by aviation.com, reports Wired News.

1. Cabin pressurization: The average passenger doesn”t think about cabin pressurization until their yellow safety masks fall from the ceiling, but the reality is that if the technology hadn”t been developed during WWII, people wouldn”t be able to fly much above 10,000 feet.
2. Black Box: Morbid but essential, the black box was invented in the mid-1950s, and not only helps investigators learn why a plane crashed, but how that information can be applied to other aircraft to prevent a repeat.
3. The Concorde: It never delivered on its commercial promise, and it was an environmental bad boy, but who can deny that breaking the sound barrier aboard a commercial aircraft is cool.
4. Radar: Sure, the airlines are dying to replace it with GPS technology, but for decades it’’s been radar that helps air traffic controllers locate and track planes up to 200 miles away.
5. The jumbo jet
6. The hub and spoke system
7.The Very Light Jet (VLJ)
8. Winglets
9. The flying wing
10. Stealth aircraft
11. Jetways
12. Deicing (ANI)

[henry crun]

I guess the people who compiled that list think the jet engine comes below number 12 !

[denis555]

I'm surprised they didn't mention individual butter pats that they serve you with in flight meals.

( Sir Frank Whittle ? Who's he?)

[PPRuNe Pop]

Would 3,5,7,9 and 10 have ever been possible without the jet engine?

It would appear that not a great deal of thinking, lateral or otherwise, went into that little list.

[dakkg651]

Is the Hub and Spoke system something to do with undercarriages (landing gear to you American chaps)?

Is a Very Light Jet some sort of UAV launched from a flare pistol?

Whatever Deicing(ANI) is, it didn't take me by storm!

[Krakatoa]

The gin and tonic after take off

[merlinxx]

High speed hostees:ok::E

[jokova]

After lift and propulsion and radio/radar there's little point to this exercise.

When Peter Cook was looking morose one day a friend asked him why.

"Will I ever be remembered for anything significant? If I'd invented something indispensible I would go to my grave a happy man."

"Like what Pete?"

"Oh I don't know. Something like fire."

(And that is the title of a book full of brilliance and humour, written after his death as a tribute from some of his friends.)

[nacluv]

Words fail me - nearly - what a crap list. Presumably someone's son/daughters 11+ technology topic.

I guess the aerofoil isn't too important then... :hmm:

And neither obviously are the bang seat and parachute.

Winglets! Love it... It was a great innovation in the sanitary towel industry, so aeroplanes were bound to follow. :rolleyes:

[diginagain]

For those long flights where you self-cater - the Thermos flask.

Keeps hot stuff hot, and cold stuff cold.







But how does it know?

[Glory]

Missed helicopters :sad:

[chiglet]

Light weight Infernal Combusible Engine.......without it. aviation would not have "taken off"...:ok:
watp,iktch

[con-pilot]

Shoot, you missed the most important innovation in aviation.

The auto-pilot.


Without an auto-pilot I could not take naps, read books, or go back and use the toilet.

Oh, that and aircraft weather radar. Keeps me from having to look outside.

[barit1]

Without an auto-pilot I could not take naps, read books, or go back and use the toilet.

You ninny! Didn't you ever learn to use a FO? :ugh:

[Rigga]

But would an autopilot work without Powered Flying Controls?

Surely the use of high-pressure hydraulics has to go somewhere on a list like this? Without Hyd services aircraft sizes would still be relatively small - possibly pre-1930's sizes.

[con-pilot]

You ninny! Didn't you ever learn to use a FO?

F.O., what's that? :p

[wz662]

Of course without aviation we wouldn't have had the bicycle and the Wright brothers would have had to make a living doing somehing else.

To keep the weight down on his flying machines Sir George Cayley invented the tensioned wire spoked wheel. Add Mr Dunlop's pneumatic tyre to George's wheel and the cartwheeled boneshaker became the bike.

[GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU]

I would have thought such basic things like light alloy stressed skin structures, retractable undercarriages and enclosed cockpits might have featured rather further up the list.

[Saab Dastard]

Without the all-moving tailplane we would never have gone transsonic...

What about radio navaids, particularly VORs and the ILS - without which there'd be precious little all-weather autolanding?

And then Inertial Nav systems... no transpolar flights without that!

Why don't we make the PPRuNe Greatest Innovations in Aviation list? I'm sure that we would do a better job! Top 100? :D

SD

[henry crun]

Good idea SD, let us start from the bottom and work up.

100: The Helicopter. :)

[barit1]

GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU raises a valid point. Stressed-skin (monocoque) structures have excellent strength-to-weight and stiffness-to-weight ratios.
And Lockheed developed these in wood very early.

My grandfather worked in a cabinet factory in the 20s that made travel trunks of molded plywood. They got an Army contract to make an experimental molded plywood fuselage. It never flew, but my father scrounged it from the scrap heap and made an iceboat from it, using a small auto engine and a hand-carved propeller. :ok:

[V2-OMG!]

What about military aircraft?

Interrupter gear, the ejection seat, the sling-shot and hook take-off/landing systems on a/c carriers, to name a few.

[Phileas Fogg]

I guess hard surface runways don't count as an innovation, where would the 747 & Concorde have operated from without them?

[barit1]

Two important advances that were not obvious to the world-at-large before their development:

1) Three-axis control; as the Wrights test-flew their pre-1903 gliders, they became aware that all three axes were required.

2) Gyro instruments, permitting safe flight without reference to a natural horizon.

[ANW]

It would appear that not a great deal of thinking, lateral or otherwise, went into that little list.


Reminds me of a recent English radio news item which quoted statements made by university students, the one which sticks in my mind noted :-

"The railway system in Great Britain was invented to relieve the overcrowding on the Nation's motorway network".

That's education for you! :(

[barit1]

Not to mention overcrowded airfields... :ok:

[mr fish]

er, how about guns, missiles and REALLY big bombs:ok:

[Mike Whiskey Romeo]

well if we consider innovations that have saved the most lives I would like to add GPWS and to a lesser extent GPS systems. I recently had the priviledge of meeting Don Bateman, the guy who basically invented these systems. Such an amazing, down to earth character, a lot of people are still alive today because of him.

[andi0277]

In my list PTV-In-Flight-Entertainment is placed far ahead of VLJ, Flying Wing or Stealth Aircraft :)

Who needs a Stealth Aircraft, if the only In-Flight-Entertainment there consist in following the way of a bomb on a screen.

Anyways......Lowco Airlines should be somewhere on the list, but not their
extra baggage fees :)

Cheers,

and keep smiling :E

[dubh12000]

Superalloys made jet engines a reality.

And now, Single Crystal blades and vanes, EBPVD ceramic coatings etc.

[larssnowpharter]

Handley Page slats!

Okay. Just a development but more important than some of the stuff on that list.

Cheers

Lars

[wz662]

Newspaper prizes and air race competitions, but especiallyl Warfare have led to most of the inovations in aviation.

[barit1]

Good point, but it was a NY hotel owner, Raymond Orteig (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orteig_Prize), who put up the prize money that Charles Lindbergh won.

[Guest 112233]

Don't forget Gravity - Without it there would not be any list in the first place.

CAT III

[Beires]

The individual stowing table for each pilot in most of the airbuses.

[738FO]

How about Jet Engines , Glass Cockpit , Fly by wire controls eh??

[SNS3Guppy]

undercarriages (landing gear to you American chaps)


Undercarriage is what happens when you fall off the horse.

Landing gear or main-mount, depending on the school from whence on hails.

As for the single most significant development in aviation, the list would certainly need to include the inflight toilet, and of course, the microwave oven.

Another significant development would have to be the ground, because clearly it gets more and more significant, the closer and closer one gets.

Wheels in place of skids were a biggie, though floats do alleviate some of that concern...or skis the case of those suffering from diminished temperature.

Oxygen was a big one, but let's face it...that's not really a development. the oxygen was always there (so was the ground). Then again, so was the air, so moving through it isn't such a great development at all. Just moving through it with the ground moving away, or holding it's distance respectfully, in which case oxygen comes back to being a great development. Oxygen...can live with it, can't live without it.

Sunglasses would have to be right up there, albeit admittedly not an aviation development. With the demise of the silk scarf it's one of the few vestages of false image left with which one can identify as a pilot, to say nothing of the splitting headache that flight into bright light causes without them.

The single greatest development in aviation?

The parachute.

[Roy Bouchier]

George Lowdell, the old Vickers test pilot, always reckoned that the biggest fool in aviation was the man who invented the artificial horizon. Until then, he would say, if you couldn't see you didn't go and could retire to the bar for a Gin and French (his personal favourite).

[Just a spotter]

The development of a flyable heavier than air machine might have been worth a listing in the top 10.

:suspect:

And giving that neither of the Generation 1 SST's were genuinely successful aircraft in any meaningful commercial way, why list Concorde rather than the Tu-144?

:suspect::suspect:

JAS

[Gargleblaster]

You're all way off. The most important aviation-related invention is the wrist watch !

I'm not joking, this is true. Without aviation we'd all wear these silly old pocket watches.

"The man's wristwatch was invented by Louis Cartier in the early 1900s for Mr. Alberto Santos-Dumont. Dumont was working on the development of aircraft and found a pocket watch inconvenient to look at while in the aircraft. He asked his friend Cartier to design a watch for him."

[dubh12000]

.....ah but the wristwatch was popularised by the British in the trenches of WWI.

[Tmbstory]

I started my flying career in 1957 and in my opinion two of the greatest advances in aviation were VLF Navigation and Australian and International Distance Measuring Equipment.

Much has being improved since then but at the time they were great inventions.


Tmb

[777fly]

Lets not forget a trio of innovations which have made a huge contribution to air safety:

1. Weather radar

2. TCAS

3. EGPWS