Naval aviation 100 years from kitty hawk.

The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a flurry of inventors striving to find a way to enable man to take to the skies. While some successfully flew gliders both in the U.S. and abroad, the inexorable draw was toward powered flight. The Wright Flyer built by Orville and Wilbur Wright was the first to achieve what had previously been only dreamed about or sketched on paper: a successful flight of a heavier-than-air craft powered by an internal combustion engine. The milestone flight on 17 December 1903 marked the inception of the modern aviation age and began a revolution in civilian and military transportation.

The Navy's interest in flight had already been piqued prior to the Wright brothers' historic achievement, in 1898, Navy officers were assigned to sit on an interservice board to investigate the military possibilities of Professor Samuel P. Langley's flying machine. Almost immediately after the 1903 flight, civilian inventors began to apply the lessons learned by the Wright brothers to their own designs, and in 1908 naval observers began attending flight demonstrations to observe the progress of the new technology. In late 1910 the first naval officer was ordered to flight training, and the Navy purchased its first aircraft in 1911. Soon. Naval Aviation had developed into a formidable fighting force utilizing the technology that had been so new just a few short years before.

From its earliest days. Naval Aviation has played a role in countless technological innovations. While many of these focused solely on improving aviation's warfighting capability, others had broader applications outside the military arena. The following photo essay highlights a few of Naval Aviation's advancements in science and exploration; radar, navigation and communications; aviation technology; and lifesaving techniques and equipment that have benefited the civilian world during the first 100 years of modern flight.