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Travel by airplane is by far the fastest, but not the most comfortable way to go.
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It wasn’t always like this, though.
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Getting to lie down in a spacious bed-seat?
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Check.
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Full hot meals, bars, and even pianos on board?
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Also check.
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So what else has changed in the past 100 years of human flight?
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The first airplane ever was the Wright Flyer made by the Wright brothers in 1903.
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It made just a few short flights, but those changed history forever.
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Years passed, and more diverse airplanes appeared.
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But the first commercial airplane in history was the Model 14 Benoist airboat: it took
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passengers from St. Petersburg to Tampa in Florida, making the journey a dozen times
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shorter than by train or steamboat.
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It was a rather small biplane, and no more than a toy compared to today’s huge airliners,
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but back in 1914, it was a great commercial success.
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But the true golden era of commercial flights began in the 1950s.
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Let’s first take a look at one of the most typical airliners of the time: Douglas DC
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6.
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It was a piston-powered aircraft with four propellers that allowed the cruising speed
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of about 300 mph.
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With the size of it — 100 ft long and almost 10 ft wide — it’s a bit surprising that
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it only accommodated 48 passengers.
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For comparison, modern Airbus A320 is just 20 ft longer and 2 ft wider, but easily fits
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150 passengers on board.
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Like sardines.
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Hey, the difference is all inside.
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Like all of its contemporaries, Douglas DC-6 was pretty much luxurious.
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The seats were big and comfortable, with plenty of leg room.
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They also had seat backs that could go all the way down, so you could take a hearty nap
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if you wanted to.
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Economy class didn’t emerge until mid-1950s, but even then the meals on board would beat
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today’s “chicken-or-fish” a hundred times over.
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There was a real menu and you could order whatever you wanted, be it a rib-eye steak
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or smoked salmon.
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Served on real plates!
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Speaking of which, flight attendants were more of serving staff than anything else.
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Similar to modern personnel, but called stewardesses back then, they had a strict dress code, but
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their main task was not to ensure safety but to entertain and serve the passengers.
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No wonder — flying was still relatively new back then, and it wasn’t cheap: the
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average price of a domestic ticket would cost you a month’s wages, and a Trans-Atlantic
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flight was a luxury for the richest.
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Passengers would dress up for the flight as if they were attending a social event — and
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in a sense, they were.
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Socializing was, in fact, the only entertainment on board apart from reading books or newspapers,
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and unlimited food and drinks were included in the price.
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There was no restraint of movement either; even little kids could run and play all over
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the cabin.
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Sounds much better than sitting in a cramped space and not having enough room to stretch
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your legs.
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But today’s airplanes have much more to offer in terms of entertainment: personal
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screens with lots of movies, TV shows, and even games, magazines to read, and of course,
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on-board shopping.
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Some airlines have special entertainment apps you can download on your phone or tablet and
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connect to using inflight Wi-Fi.
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Flying itself in the 1950s was not the most pleasant of things, either.
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Like I mentioned earlier, airplanes had piston-powered engines, just like cars, so their speed and
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altitude were limited.
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The same Douglas DC-6 could only reach the maximum speed of 360 mph and its ceiling was
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20,000 ft. Modern jet airplanes usually fly at about 480 mph, climbing as high as 39,000
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ft above ground.
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Low altitudes of the old airplanes meant stronger and more frequent turbulence.
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If it were today, you’d probably get scared, especially if the airplane dropped a few hundred
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feet, but you’d come to no harm at all with your seatbelt on.
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Back in the day, though, fastening your seatbelt wasn’t mandatory even at takeoff, not to
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mention during the flight.
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So when an airplane hit a patch of turbulence, its passengers would more often than not be
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caught off guard.
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The shaking was so powerful at times that people would be thrown around the cabin like
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ragdolls, which lead to injuries.
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The engines were also awfully loud: the propellers and engines roared together to create enough
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lift and push the aircraft forward.
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Ever ridden in a car at its top speed with an open window?
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The sound its engine makes can be ear-splitting, and that’s exactly what happened with aircraft
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piston engines: the noise was as loud as a car’s and then some.
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Another distinctive feature of the old airplanes were square windows.
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We’re all used to them being rounded at the corners, but earlier piston-powered planes
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didn’t need those smooth lines.
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They flew lower and slower than jets, and that made all the difference.
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When the first jet-powered airliners appeared, though, this caused a lot of accidents.
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Square windows are okay at relatively slow speed and low altitude, but when both these
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values grow significantly, they simply break.
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The difference in pressures inside the cabin and outside was high, and it hit the windows,
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the least protected part of the plane, hard.
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They were, of course, properly reinforced, but the engineers missed one crucial detail:
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the corners turned out to be the weakest parts of the windows.
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The pressure built upon them, and the fuselage around cracked, sometimes breaking the window
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and depressurizing the whole plane as a result.
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So the problem was eventually solved by making the windows rounded.
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Even seat design has changed a lot towards safety.
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Although today’s seats are so close together that you have to keep your elbows to your
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sides most of the time, loads of space you’d get in the 1950s airplanes wouldn’t have
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saved your life in an emergency.
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In modern aircraft, seat backs are made so that you don’t injure your head if a particularly
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strong shake rumbles through the plane.
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Seats themselves now absorb more energy and remain firmly in place during an impact.
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In the past, an accident could’ve torn the seats from the floor, so you basically traded
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safety for comfort.
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I’d stick to safety, thank you very much.
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Speaking of that, you know takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of the flight,
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right?
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Modern jetliners can tackle almost any distance in one go, so if there’s a direct flight
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to your destination, you’ll only have one takeoff and one landing.
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In older planes, long-haul flights often required them to make stops on the way for refueling
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and maintenance.
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Take Qantas, for instance: in 1947, the Australian airline introduced a route from Sydney to
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London.
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Today, it takes about 22 hours and one refueling stop, or there’s even a non-stop 17-hour
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flight from Perth.
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Back then, the flight was much more leisurely: four days with six stops, two of them overnight.
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Would you rather fly in comfort for several days or get wherever you’re going faster
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with fewer amenities?
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Let me know down in the comments!
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Airplanes weren’t the only means of air travel, though.
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Don’t forget about airships!
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Those were slow, huge, and often dangerous.
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The first airship appeared as early as 1852, was propelled by a steam engine, and traveled
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at a speed of 5 mph.
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And the real age of airships came in the early 20th century, when the German Zeppelin Company
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made their rigid passenger-carrying dirigibles.
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Compared to the most prominent airship of the time, even Airbus A380, the superjumbo
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jet that dwarfs other airplanes in size, is like a fly to an elephant.
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It’s 240 ft long and 24 ft wide, with two decks that take 79 ft in height.
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Seems big, but the Hindenburg, the 1936 airship of the Zeppelin Company, is absolutely enormous
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next to it.
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Its length was 804 ft, with the width of 135 ft. Hindenburg could take as many as 72 passengers
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and 50 crew members across the skies at a relaxing speed of 76 mph.
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Airships couldn’t rival airplanes in speed or passenger capacity, but they were comfortable
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and luxurious.
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They could’ve become a tourist thing kinda like cruise ships, if not for the 1937 disaster
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of that same Hindenburg over New Jersey.
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Filled with hydrogen.
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Combustible.
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Went boom.
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Bad news.
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The terrible accident was the alarm that halted production of passenger airships for many
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decades.
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Today, though, there’s plenty of talk about the return of the giant dirigibles.
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In about 5 years, for example, the first airship will take a hundred passengers on a North
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Pole expedition.
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It uses helium.
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Not combustible.
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No boom.
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Good news.
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And although it won’t be so much an expedition, but rather a luxury cruise for the wealthy
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(the tickets cost $80,000), the new airship still marks the rebirth of the great flying
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palaces.
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