1700s Joseph & Etienne Montgolfier;

1783 35-foot diameter fabric/paper hot-air balloon,

demonstration Paris Academy of Science.

1870s German glider pilot Otto Lilienthal

- killed 1896 in crash;

1880s British Hiram Maxim - "Leviathan" steam-powered aircraft.

- Octave Chanute;

- U.S. astronomer Samuel Pierpont Langley, sec'y Smithsonian;

1898 US Army & Navy $60,000 for experiments.

Potomac crash Dec 8, 1903.

- Dec, 17, 1903 Wright Bros - Kitty Hawk NC.

- 1908 demonstrate plane for military

- Glenn Curtiss - 1907 Aerial Experiment Association;

- France competition - 1909 Louis Bleriot across English Channel.

- 1909 great air meet at Reims;

1911, race France to London

Start WWI: Germans 450 planes, French 600, British 160

Turn of century European arms build-up,

Maxim, "Hang your chemistry & electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater ease."

Dreadnought - steam turbine power, firing range 8 miles.

US Teddy Roosevelt, Alfred Thayer Mahan - naval power key to nat'l strength.

1914 conflict of Serbia & Austria-Hungary;

US Naval Consulting Board, Thomas Edison.

National Research Council - physicists.

- April 2, 1917 Wilson accuses Germany of mounting 'a challenge to all mankind" - call "to make the world safe for democracy" - "The war to end all wars."

- Railroad Administration. Shipping Board. Food Administration - Herbert Hoover

submarine detection, hydrophones, depth charges.

aviation RH – German Anthony Fokker, British Sopwith Camel, Manfred von Richthofen "Red Baron", American Eddie Rickenbacker.

- Congress $640 million building planes, largest single appropriation for specific purpose to date – made 12,000 planes per year by 1918.

1914, aircraft IY worth less than a million dollars; 1919 31 companies making planes & parts $14 million.

- chemical warfare - mustard gas, chlorine, phosgene;

Popular science gadgets - "electro-gyro-cruisers", "trench destroyers," robot soldiers, acid guns, death ray.