For many years now, our magazine has been publishing materials on the history of technology, illustrated with precise colorful images of combat vehicles and small arms of the Great Patriotic War, sailing ships and modern vessels, cars and steam locomotives.
By numerous requests from readers-collectors interested in aviation, "TM" is opening a new historical section of the magazine "Our Aviation Museum", each publication of which will be devoted to flying machines of a certain class, period, the most significant events in the history of aviation. Readers will get acquainted with airplanes, helicopters, autogyros and other devices representing more than 70 years of history of dynamic flight. The "exhibits" of our museum will be only built, tested and flown models, a series of which opens with the first airplane in history, built in full size by our outstanding compatriot Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaisky.
Although the laurels of the designers and testers of the world's first airplane went to the Wright brothers, their "co-authors" can be considered many famous and unknown scientists and inventors of the New and Old Worlds. The Englishman Cayley gave the fundamental justification for a heavier-than-air flying machine, his compatriots Henson and Stringfellow developed the first airplane project, Mozhaisky and then the French engineer Ader built airplanes in full size, the German Lilienthal was the first to master the technique of piloting a motorless vehicle. The theoretical works of the outstanding Russian scientist N. Zhukovsky and the aeronautical ideas of K. Tsiolkovsky played a huge role in the progress of the "newborn" aviation.
Paying tribute to the pioneers of aviation in "Our Aviation Museum", we also remember those whose successes and mistakes brought the first starts closer.