ABSTRACT
Since earliest times, men have sought the gift of flight. As creatures grounded by nature, man’s imagination took the form of gods drawn across the sky by chariots of fire or heroes borne to battle or their Valhalla on winged stallions. Mortals seldom experienced the power of flight. The Chinese Emperor Shun was said to have escaped his captors by ‘donning the work clothes of a bird’. The Greek architect Daedalus (designer of the Maze of the Minotaur) and his son Icarus fled the isle of Crete by soaring to freedom on wings made of feathers and wax. Icarus was also the first aviation fatality. Enraptured by the joys of flight, he neglected the warnings of his father and flew too close to the sun, melting the fabric of his wings and plummeting down into the sea.
