1800

1871 Frank H. Wenham - Credited with building the First Wind Tunnel; Wenham had tried a whirling arm, but his unhappy experiences impelled him to urge the Council to raise funds to build a wind tunnel. In Wenham's words, it "had a trunk 12 feet long and 18 inches square, to direct the current horizontally, and in parallel course.''

1886 Samuel P. Langley - Langley turned to aeronautics in 1886. Like his contemporaries, he began by assessing the performance of various airfoils. Langley built a whirling arm 60 feet in diameter that was spun by a 10-horsepower engine and was capable of attaining speeds of 100-mph.

1895 Otto Lilienthal Glider  - "Normalsegelapparat"  First Glider... he made more than 2000 glides from an artificial slope he built in Berlin

1900

1901 Albert Zahm - Wind Tunnel Built for Catholic University 6X6 ft
1902 Leila Marie Cody -  First woman to fly using the British Army Balloon Factory's "Man Lifting War Kite"
1902 Edwards Purkins Frost - Inventor of the "Ornithopter" flapping winged machines constructed of willow, silk and feathers
1903 Wilbur and Orville Wright - First sustained and controlled powered flight
1903 Thomas Stanton -  Wind Tunnel National Physical Laboratory,England 2 ft diameter
1903 Crocco  - Wind Tunnel built in Rome, Italy 1 x 1 m
1904 The Wright Brothers - Circling Huffman Prairie four times, they remained aloft five minutes and four seconds
1904 D. Riabouchinsky  - Wind Tunnel built in Koutchino, Moscow, Russia 1.2 m diameter
1908 Samuel Franklin Cody - First powered flight in England
1908 Prandtl - Wind Tunnel built in Gottingen, Germany 2 x 2 m
1909 J.D. McCurdy -  First powered flight in Canada
1909 Louis Bleriot - First to cross the English Channel
1909 Gustave Eiffel  - Wind Tunnel built in Champ de Mars, France 1.5 m diameter
1910 Wind Tunnel -  National Physical Laboratory,England 4 x 4 ft
1912 Wind Tunnel - National Physical Laboratory,England 7 x 7 ft
1912 Gustave Eiffel -  Wind Tunnel built in Auteuil, France 2 m diameter
1912 Junkers -  Wind Tunnel built in Aachen, Germany
1913 Albert Zahm - Wind Tunnel built at the Washington Navy Yard, USA 8 x 8 ft
1914 Jerome Hunsaker - Wind Tunnel built at MIT, USA 4 x 4 ft
1916 Ludwig Prandtl -  Wind Tunnel built in Gottingen, Germany 2.2 x 2.2m

Prandtl's second generation wind tunnel was built at Gottingen in 1916. It is a model for modern wind tunnels. Starting from the test section, the tunnel expands slowly in cross section as the air moves clockwise around the circuit, through the fan, and around the corners. Just before the test section containing the model, the air enters a stilling chamber where tunnel-generated turbulence is allowed to die out. Finally, the low-speed air is accelerated to a contraction cone or nozzle-a unique feature of this tunnel. The nozzle was a major advance in making the air velocity at the entrance of the test section uniform

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