A hundred years after the Wright brothers' flight
Gaetano Di Modica.
On 17th December 1903, over a hundred years ago, in North Carolina, USA, two exceptional and visionary brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright, were able to take off and fly for a few seconds, covering less than 100 yards with their rudimentary propeller-driven aircraft powered by an equally rudimentary engine. It is a date that stands as a milestone in the history of aviation, and even in the history of man.
Man has always had the idea of being able to fly: a comparison with birds, small or large as they might be, was there at his fingertips. Otzi, that poor man of Similaun, shortly before being encased in his coffin of ice which has protected him up until now, may possibly have thought that if he had had wings instead of legs, he could have made it home.
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Read more: A hundred years after the Wright brothers' flight
Thoughts about flight in Turin
Gaetano Di Modica.
It was in the 1930s. I was going to Rivoli, and took the small train that started from Piazza Statuto, at the beginning of Corso Francia, which would take me right into Rivoli.
It was familiarly called the "chicken run" because every now and again it would run over someone trying to cross the tracks that ran alongside the road.
I was struck by the name of a small intermediate station: it was called "Italian Aeronautics." Why not - it was home to the "Fiat Aviation" factory which tested its aircraft on the airfield built in 1916 by the "Pomilio Aircraft Construction Company" and which had been bought by FIAT in 1927 and then renamed as "Italian Aeronautics", later abbreviated to "Aeritalia".
The Academy of Sciences of Turin and Aeronautics
Gaetano Di Modica.
An enlightened ruler, Victor Amadeus III of Savoy, decided to endow his little kingdom with a cultural institution on a par with similar European initiatives, the Academies in fact, which began to appear in the 1600's onwards, driven by scientific revolution.
In July 1783, more than 220 years ago, Victor Amadeus granted Royal Patents to the "Taurinense Private Company", founded in 1757, which was already at work in the field of culture of the time. Its motto "Veritas et Utilitas" sums up the operative scope of the Academy aimed at research but also to works intended to provide "... various advantages to the common society."
Carlo Mollino the pilot
Angelo Moriondo.
The architect Carlo Mollino (1905 - 1973) was one of the most discussed and controversial personages of the cultural world in Turin at the time of the Second World War.
A world-renowned architect (his final work was the Teatro Regio in Turin) and Professor of Architectural Composition at the Turin Polytechnic, his multiform genius led him also into involvement with sporting interests.
Along with motor racing and downhill skiing, aviation was one of the sporting interests from which Mollino drew most inspiration for his architecture.
Documented by an incredible amount of drawings, catalogs, magazines and books, correspondence and photographs, this line of interest can be traced back to the 1920's, when his father, the managing director of SPA (an Ansaldo company) one of the promoters of VUM, Muscular Human Flight, took him to the Turin Mirafiori aerodrome to see aerobatics competitions, visit the buildings and hangars on the outskirts of the city, which in those days was in the forefront of aviation in Italy.
My flying is a never ending story
Don Paolo Gariglio.
My flying is a never ending story. It could also be an uplifting story to the priest's nothing that flies.
But maybe not. I was born sixty-five years ago in an airport.
The glider in 1933
Piero Casana.
In 1933 the Aero Club of Italy invited Dr. Robert Kronfeld for the nascent "gliding" in Italy. Robert Kronfeld, Austrian Jew, was champion of aerobatics, a scholar of the technique of "gliding", writer of technical books on the glider and the forcast as a function of flight without an engine. Kronfeld for racial reasons he moved to England where he died during the war. In Turin in 1933 Kronfeld was asked by our Aero Club, chaired by the then mayor of Turin Thaon Count Revel, while he was Secretary Eng. Antonio Farini. Kronfeld un'applaudita presented the glider air show on the air field at Mirafiori "Gino Lisa". In those days I, a pilot for a little over a year and already militant nell'Aero Club of Turin, became a friend of Kronfeld and programs is a meeting that took place in Vienna in October of that year.
When the hat has Superga
Gaetano Di Modica.
An old adage Piedmont, translated into everyday language, says: "When Superga has the hat, or is it ugly or beautiful."
The hard and unappreciated job of the Tow pilot
Mario Bernardi.
Among the tasks of supporting the activities of the pilot volovelistiche the tug is one of the toughest and most underrated.
Gliding: discipline and romance
Gaetano Di Modica.
An austere English baronet of the eighteenth century, a moustachioed German end 800, the aspiration of all time to break free from gravity and move freely in the air like birds. Put everything in a computer and surprisingly the solution of the equation is a flying machine, without a motor, able to move using the updrafts with respectable performance.
The outside field. Considerations seeds and nostalgic series of an old glider pilot.
di Gaetano Di Modica.
"Did you run out of air?". We've heard the phrase many times, it is. You've just landed, you're raising the parachute and you're shooting touch with reality terraiola flat and here are the diligent helpers with the fateful question.
You will want to begin to talk about heat and stuff: for them, you "no air".
Read more: The outside field. Considerations seeds and nostalgic series of an old glider pilot.
