Welcome to On Verticality. This blog explores the innate human need to escape the surface of the earth, and our struggles to do so throughout history. If you’re new here, a good place to start is the Theory of Verticality section or the Introduction to Verticality. If you want to receive updates on what’s new with the blog, you can use the Subscribe page to sign up. Thanks for visiting!
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Hiram Maxim’s Flying Machines
Hiram Maxim was a prolific inventor who is best known as the inventor of the first automatic machine gun, as well as a series of flying machines he built and tested between 1889 and 1894. Pictured above is one of his later designs. It consisted of a series of wings tied together with a web of struts and cables, powered by a pair of massive wooden propellers.
Early Aeronautics
Pictured above is a collage of early flying machines, originally published in the German encyclopedia Meyers Konversations Lexikon. I love collages like this because the illustrator inevitably must pick and choose which examples to show. This is most likely done for a combination of reasons, including available illustrations, the most famous examples, and page layout.