For Leonardo da Vinci, flying was for man a possible dream… but still a distant one. Indeed, from Da Vinci drawings of 1488 showing a device with flapping wings working with the muscular force, to the “first ornithopter” designed by students of the University of Toronto in 2010 … the human powered aircraft has evolved a lot.
It was first motivated by the industrialist Henry Kremer who, by organizing the Kremer Prize in 1959, stimulated the research in the field of human-powered aviation. The Gossamer Condor pedal-powered airplane invented by Paul McCready was the first to fly in the air for a few minutes. But this prototype was not very resistant to wind fluctuations and required a considerable power to the aviator-cyclist. Finally in 1988, the Daedelus, designed by scientists specialized in aeronautics at MIT (Massachussets Institute of Technology), traveled a distance of 119 km between the Crest and the island of Santorini… before crashing a few meters from the beach, letting the pilot swim back to the shore. The Daedelus still hold the record of the longest human powered flight.
