Aviation

Aviation is the design, development, production, operation, and use of aircraft, especially heavier-than-air aircraft. Aviation is derived from avis, the Latin word for bird. Many cultures have built devices that travel through the air, from the earliest projectiles such as stones and spears, the boomerang in Australia, the hot air Kongming lantern, and kites. There are early legends of human flight such as the story of Icarus, and Jamshid in Persian myth, and later, somewhat more credible claims of short-distance human flights appear, such as the flying automaton of Archytas of Tarentum (428–347 BC), the winged flights of Abbas Ibn Firnas (810–887), Eilmer of Malmesbury (11th century), and the hot-air Passarola of Bartolomeu Lourenço...