Gossamer Condor: The First Human-Powered Flight

At Shafter Airport on August twenty-third, nineteen seventy-seven, a bicycle-powered aircraft called the Gossamer Condor completed the first fully human-powered flight to meet a rigorous competition standard. The plane was designed by aeronautical engineer Paul MacCready, and pedaled into the air by cyclist Bryan Allen.

To win the Kremer Prize, the aircraft had to complete a figure-eight course around two pylons a half mile apart without any engine or stored energy. The Gossamer Condor did it in about seven minutes, covering the circuit under leg power alone. The prize was fifty thousand British pounds.

MacCready built the plane largely from Mylar film, plastic foam, piano wire, and aluminum tubing, keeping its total weight to about seventy pounds. The achievement cracked open the field of human-powered aviation. His follow-up aircraft, the Gossamer Albatross, crossed the English Channel two years later. The original Condor now hangs in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.