Lilienthal’s craft were typically crude monoplanes that resembled hang gliders, but he was also a tireless experimenter who compiled reams of data on bird flight, aerodynamics and airfoil design.
“To invent an airplane is nothing,” Otto Lilienthal once said. “To build one is something. But to fly is everything.” It was a motto the German aviator lived by. Between 1891 and 1896, he constructed 16 different glider designs and made some 2,000 successful flights, most of them from an artificial hill outside Berlin. Lilienthal’s craft were typically crude monoplanes that resembled hang gliders, but he was also a tireless experimenter who compiled reams of data on bird flight, aerodynamics and airfoil design.