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Do you know that one of the first designed or at least imagined flying machines was the ornithopter. In essence, when mankind gazed at the skies, he saw that the birds were flying and thus mankind realized if he wanted to have the domain of the skies, he would have to fly like a bird. Thus since the dawn of the civilization, mankind with, its quest for dominion over nature, has tried to repeat the design and the behavior of the natural flying species. Besides the mankind’s formal history, the legends go back far describing the mankind’s quest for flying.

The first reference to an ornithopter and a real reference to flying is in the legend of Daedalus and Icarus. When Icarus was held captive by the Gods on top of a mountain fortress, he used big wings tethered to his body by wax. However because he flew too close to the sun, according to the legend his wings melted away from his body and he plunged into the deep abyss of death. Although it is a tragic myth, it symbolizes the quest for the man’s attempt to fly and thus control the forces of nature.

As mankind advanced further and further, throughout history there were lots of trials and designs for flying machines. In order to establish flying, mankind looked at the only available example of flying: namely the birds. Thus, everyone was trying to copy the designs of the birds to design a flying machine that paralleled their development: The Ornithopter. In essence, an ornithopter was a machine that had birdlike wings and a place for the operator to be attached. The operator would flap his arms and the wings of the ornithopter would be flapped also. In essence, mankind would fly by simulating the flapping of the bird’s wings. However, since the principles of aerodynamics was not discovered, no one was aware of the ratio of the wing to muscle power and thus all of these projects and attempts were doomed to fail.

Perhaps the most serious thoughts came from the famous thinker and designer Leonardo Da Vinci. He drew many representations of the birds to correctly understand the principle. Thus, as a result he designed may ornithopters design and a helicopter design which was a vehicle that can take off vertically from a ground y the use of blades that are horizontal to the ground. In fact, it can be said that an ornithopter is the father of helicopters.

During the history of mankind there were hundreds of ornithopter and even helicopter designs which never had a chance of flying off the ground. Especially the 19th century was filled with many inventors competing for the design of the successful ornithopter. In fact even the great inventor Thomas Edison tinkered with an ornithopter ad even received a patent (although the design was not feasible and thus it never got off the ground). When it was realized that the power to flap the wings was just not enough in humans, new designs were introduced that utilized mechanical energy for flying. In 1870, the French inventor Gustave Trouve designed an ornithopter that received its power to flap wings from an internal combustion engine. The flight was a partial success as the ornithopter that he designed flew 70 meters off the ground.

The final result was that although people tried to fly ornithopters, it just wasn’t a viable aerodynamic design. Although in the 20th century some successful ornithopters were built, it was discontinued as an idea. Then the power to flight was concentrated on glided flight (not flapped wings flight) and thus the Wright Brothers were able to fly creating a huge industry in the 20th century. However, the efforts for the Ornithopter were not in vain, as it was in principle the founding stone of the helicopter.

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www.ebay.com

See also: 

Bird Watching Activities     Helicopters For Sale     Parachuting     Sports Planes For Sale

Yes, you read that correctly: twelve years. eBay was created in September 1995, by a man called Pierre Omidyar, who was living in San Jose. He wanted his site - then called ‘AuctionWeb’ - to be an online marketplace, and wrote the first code for it in one weekend. It was one of the first websites of its kind in the world. The name ‘eBay’ comes from the domain Omidyar used for his site. His company’s name was Echo Bay, and the ‘eBay AuctionWeb’ was originally just one part of Echo Bay’s website at ebay.com. The first thing ever sold on the site was Omidyar’s broken laser pointer, which he got $14 for.

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The site quickly became massively popular, as sellers came to list all sorts of odd things and buyers actually bought them. Relying on trust seemed to work remarkably well, and meant that the site could almost be left alone to run itself. The site had been designed from the start to collect a small fee on each sale, and it was this money that Omidyar used to pay for AuctionWeb’s expansion. The fees quickly added up to more than his current salary, and so he decided to quit his job and work on the site full-time. It was at this point, in 1996, that he added the feedback facilities, to let buyers and sellers rate each other and make buying and selling safer.

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In 1997, Omidyar changed AuctionWeb’s - and his company’s - name to ‘eBay’, which is what people had been calling the site for a long time. He began to spend a lot of money on advertising, and had the eBay logo designed. It was in this year that the one-millionth item was sold (it was a toy version of Big Bird from Sesame Street).

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Then, in 1998 - the peak of the dotcom boom - eBay became big business, and the investment in Internet businesses at the time allowed it to bring in senior managers and business strategists, who took in public on the stock market. It started to encourage people to sell more than just collectibles, and quickly became a massive site where you could sell anything, large or small. Unlike other sites, though, eBay survived the end of the boom, and is still going strong today.

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1999 saw eBay go worldwide, launching sites in the UK, Australia and Germany. eBay bought half.com, an Amazon-like online retailer, in the year 2000 - the same year it introduced Buy it Now - and bought PayPal, an online payment service, in 2002.

Pierre Omidyar has now earned an estimated $3 billion from eBay, and still serves as Chairman of the Board. Oddly enough, he keeps a personal weblog at http://pierre.typepad.com. There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay - that’s a lot of laser pointers.

Now that you know the history of eBay, perhaps you’d like to know how it could work for you? Our next post will give you an idea of the possibilities.

Related Sources:   eBay.com     Half.com

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