Name: 現代飛機與老式飛機的比較 (Modern Planes Vs. Old Planes)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:51:39.000Z
Duration: 10 min 2 s
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Travel by airplane is by far the fastest, but not the most comfortable way to go.

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Getting to lie down in a spacious bed-seat?

Full hot meals, bars, and even pianos on board?

So what else has changed in the past 100 years of human flight?

The first airplane ever was the Wright Flyer made by the Wright brothers in 1903.

It made just a few short flights, but those changed history forever.

Years passed, and more diverse airplanes appeared.

But the first commercial airplane in history was the Model 14 Benoist airboat: it took

passengers from St. Petersburg to Tampa in Florida, making the journey a dozen times

It was a rather small biplane, and no more than a toy compared to today’s huge airliners,

but back in 1914, it was a great commercial success.

But the true golden era of commercial flights began in the 1950s.

Let’s first take a look at one of the most typical airliners of the time: Douglas DC

It was a piston-powered aircraft with four propellers that allowed the cruising speed

With the size of it — 100 ft long and almost 10 ft wide — it’s a bit surprising that

For comparison, modern Airbus A320 is just 20 ft longer and 2 ft wider, but easily fits

Like all of its contemporaries, Douglas DC-6 was pretty much luxurious.

The seats were big and comfortable, with plenty of leg room.

They also had seat backs that could go all the way down, so you could take a hearty nap

Economy class didn’t emerge until mid-1950s, but even then the meals on board would beat

today’s “chicken-or-fish” a hundred times over.

There was a real menu and you could order whatever you wanted, be it a rib-eye steak

Speaking of which, flight attendants were more of serving staff than anything else.

Similar to modern personnel, but called stewardesses back then, they had a strict dress code, but

their main task was not to ensure safety but to entertain and serve the passengers.

No wonder — flying was still relatively new back then, and it wasn’t cheap: the

average price of a domestic ticket would cost you a month’s wages, and a Trans-Atlantic

Passengers would dress up for the flight as if they were attending a social event — and

Socializing was, in fact, the only entertainment on board apart from reading books or newspapers,

and unlimited food and drinks were included in the price.

There was no restraint of movement either; even little kids could run and play all over

Sounds much better than sitting in a cramped space and not having enough room to stretch

But today’s airplanes have much more to offer in terms of entertainment: personal

screens with lots of movies, TV shows, and even games, magazines to read, and of course,

Some airlines have special entertainment apps you can download on your phone or tablet and

Flying itself in the 1950s was not the most pleasant of things, either.

Like I mentioned earlier, airplanes had piston-powered engines, just like cars, so their speed and

The same Douglas DC-6 could only reach the maximum speed of 360 mph and its ceiling was

20,000 ft. Modern jet airplanes usually fly at about 480 mph, climbing as high as 39,000

Low altitudes of the old airplanes meant stronger and more frequent turbulence.

If it were today, you’d probably get scared, especially if the airplane dropped a few hundred

feet, but you’d come to no harm at all with your seatbelt on.

Back in the day, though, fastening your seatbelt wasn’t mandatory even at takeoff, not to

So when an airplane hit a patch of turbulence, its passengers would more often than not be

The shaking was so powerful at times that people would be thrown around the cabin like

The engines were also awfully loud: the propellers and engines roared together to create enough

Ever ridden in a car at its top speed with an open window?

The sound its engine makes can be ear-splitting, and that’s exactly what happened with aircraft

piston engines: the noise was as loud as a car’s and then some.

Another distinctive feature of the old airplanes were square windows.

We’re all used to them being rounded at the corners, but earlier piston-powered planes

They flew lower and slower than jets, and that made all the difference.

When the first jet-powered airliners appeared, though, this caused a lot of accidents.

Square windows are okay at relatively slow speed and low altitude, but when both these

values grow significantly, they simply break.

The difference in pressures inside the cabin and outside was high, and it hit the windows,

the least protected part of the plane, hard.

They were, of course, properly reinforced, but the engineers missed one crucial detail:

the corners turned out to be the weakest parts of the windows.

The pressure built upon them, and the fuselage around cracked, sometimes breaking the window

and depressurizing the whole plane as a result.

So the problem was eventually solved by making the windows rounded.

Even seat design has changed a lot towards safety.

Although today’s seats are so close together that you have to keep your elbows to your

sides most of the time, loads of space you’d get in the 1950s airplanes wouldn’t have

In modern aircraft, seat backs are made so that you don’t injure your head if a particularly

Seats themselves now absorb more energy and remain firmly in place during an impact.

In the past, an accident could’ve torn the seats from the floor, so you basically traded

I’d stick to safety, thank you very much.

Speaking of that, you know takeoff and landing are the most dangerous parts of the flight,