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History The idea of using the reaction thrust principle for propulsion is not new. Hero of Alexandria designed a type of steam turbine called an aeolipile about 2000 years ago. The Chinese have used black-powder (gunpowder) rockets since the twelfth century (starting at about 1150 AD). Sir Isaac Newton formulated his laws of dynamics in 1687, and these were used to explain the way the reaction thrust principle actually worked. In 1791, John Barber of England was granted the first patent for a gas turbine, but it was almost 100 years before the necessary materials, designs, and manufacturing techniques made its application feasible. Early air-breathing engines used a small gas engine to power a large propeller to help speed up the air to generate thrust. The Wright flyer used a propeller engine. Unfortunately, a propeller driven engine is limited to only slower speeds. In order to fly faster, to approach the speed of sound and go beyond it, another design of air-breathing engine was needed. Two separate efforts to design a new type of engine were pursued by English and German engineers in the 1930's. In England, Frank Whittle was working on the development of a jet engine using the concept of an internal propeller or fan run by a turbine with a combustor in between the two components (see next section for definitions). He successfully demonstrated his design in 1939, and in 1941 the first British jet aircraft, the Gloster Meteor, made its maiden flight using the Whittle jet engine. Meanwhile, completely separately in Germany, Hans von Ohain was seeking to obtain the same design goal to reduce the noise and vibration of the current airplanes caused by very large, heavy engines. He thought he could decrease the weight and size of an engine and increase the speed by using a compressor (a type of fan) and a turbine on the same shaft. He and Max Hahn, the mechanic who worked on his car, worked for airplane builder Ernst Heinkel. They demonstrated their first successful jet engine test in 1937, and they had their first successful flight test in a Heinkel He 178 test aircraft in 1938. Thus, both England and Germany entered the jet aircraft age! Since then, many improvements and variations of jet engine designs have been developed. In addition, the lighter, more efficient jet engines impacted the design of faster, larger airplanes. In under 100 years, airplanes have gone from the Wright flyer and its first flight of 12 seconds and 120 feet to supersonic aircraft that fly all over the globe in 3 hours. A major contribution to this progress is the development of better air-breathing engines!
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