Leonardo da Vinci, who was so variously ambitious that he wanted to master birds' accomplishments as well as man's, declared in 1505 that no man would ever get his feet far off the ground until he had thorough knowledge of air and its currents. The invention of engines provided aviation with a shortcut, proved Leonardo partly wrong. But at the same time man did study the air, developed four types of motorless flying: gliding (coasting downward on still air); slope soaring (on rising air currents along the shoulder of a hill); cold front soaring...
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