The first person to try to fly was not Leonardo da Vinci.

If you ask us what superpower we would most like to have, ability to fly will be one of the most mentioned. Yes, time travel and mind reading too. But the possibility of flying through the air like birds or bats this is what has haunted people for hundreds, even thousands of years. So much so that we don’t stop trying until we have gadgets and machines like parachute, balloon, helicopter and, of course, an airplane. The first attempts were based on the most accurate imitation of birds, and one of the great pioneers in this was an Andalusian scientist. Abbas ibn Firnas.

In fact, although he excelled as an inventor in a wide variety of fields, he is particularly famous for creating first relatively successful glider. So much so that many consider him one of the great forerunners of aeronautics.

Of course, it is important to emphasize that the flights of this Córdovan scientist were not particularly elegant and that, although they did not end with his death, they were not without damage either. That is, that he planned something, but he still had a long way to go before he got it. fly away

Obsession with flying: from Icarus to Ibn Firnas

The human obsession with flying is so old that it is even depicted in Greek legend of Icarus, more than 3000 years old. According to him, the architect labyrinthfather of Icarus, built several feather and wax wings so that his son can fly. The invention was a success, as the young man managed to take off like birds, but he got so close to the Sun that wax meltedcausing him to fall and die.

Like other Greek legends, it has its own moral, but that is not what we are interested in here. Many years later, in Andalusian Córdoba, Ibn Firnas wanted to imitate Daedalo, albeit with more care. After many days of watching birds fly, he built wooden wings that he covered with feathers to further mimic the way birds fly. ruled 875 and we can already find in the descriptions a certain resemblance to the devices he would develop Leonardo da Vinci many centuries later.

To prove his effectiveness, Firnas climbed to a considerable height and invited any Cordovan who wished to become a witness to his feat. Many people watched from the side of the mountain as he fell from his wood and feather glidermaking a small flight, about which there are two versions.

One version is better than the other

Some viewers claimed that the scientist managed to slide a certain distance, but then fell sharplysuffering injury to his back. Instead, others reported that he managed to gain even more altitude and then landed. abruptly and vice versa. At that moment, he realized how the birds use him line and decided to add one to his next invention.

But the truth is that there were few inventions. He died thirteen years later, constantly dealing with severe back pain. It is for this reason that the first version is most likely the most accurate. Of course, in his writings, he rightly insists that it was a mistake not to add a tail to the glider.

But be that as it may, it is indisputable that Ibn Firnas was one of the first people who approached the superpowers of flight. It was 1000 years before Wright brothers He made his first successful flight in an airplane. But they needed a car, alien to his body. Much earlier, this Andalusian inventor had demonstrated what was also needed. what people we can’t fly no matter how hard we try. You can also learn from mistakes, and those failed attempts have no doubt been very helpful to the successes that have come so many years later.