evening ring:
take off from the past day.
On November 15, 1881, Rear Admiral Alexander Mozhaisky received the privilege of creating an "aircraft missile" - the first aircraft patent in Russia. For many years before and after this day, recalls the historical magazine Rodina, the sailor fought for his difficult initiative.
The forehead is against the wall.
"I left my office and refused another one that was also profitable in terms of content and career. At first I lived and spent the little cash I had, then I got into debt, I sold and mortgaged everything of value, even watches and wedding rings, I suffered poverty and hardship and did not receive what the government gives to every worker... ".
In the fall of 1884, at Krasnoy Slo, "his apparatus separated from the ground, but being unstable, tilted to one side and broke the wing. There were no further experiments due to lack of funds... ".
And it will never happen again.
Once, in the rank of captain-lieutenant, Mozhaisky commanded the screw cutter "Vasednik" - the first steamship in Russia. The young trope was recklessly in love with cumbersome mechanisms, not realizing that the steam engine would put an end to his dream.
Using his money he travels to America, then to Europe, to order an engine of his own design. Naturally, steam, but enhanced to the extreme. He must be free from the main drawback - excess weight.
Mozhaisky comes up with an unprecedented idea: to make all the parts according to the principle of bird bones - hollow from the inside.
The sailor made a mistake in his calculations. But that's not the point. He did not suspect that the steam engine was leading his idea to a dead end. The era of internal combustion engines has arrived.
Mozhaisky waited another six years for new engines, sending desperate reports to the military department. He was known as a trouble maker. He died at the age of sixty-five in poverty and total oblivion. For a long time it was not even known where the admiral was buried Gasoline engines broke into aviation after his death. The admiral lost the technological race.