The ancient bird models in
the Cairo Museum were all pretty similar. Only one
in the set was wrong.
In 1969
Khalil Messiha, an Egyptian doctor and amateur
student of bird models, noticed it.
This
wasn't a bird at all. It was a model airplane, and
that wasn't possible.
The other birds had legs. This had none. The other
birds had painted feathers. This had none. The
other birds had horizontal tail feathers like a
real bird.
This strange wooden model tapered
into a vertical rudder.
It was all
aerodynamically correct. Too much about the model
was beyond coincidence.
The model was dug up in Sakkara a hundred years
ago. Sakkara is a site of ancient ruins, but this
model is more recent. It's from the 3rd century BC,
from an age of invention that followed the death of
Alexander the Great. That so-called Hellenistic
period gave us gears, screws, plumbing, control
valves, Euclidian geometry, Archimedes, and
Ptolemy's astronomy.
And so, it seems, it also produced a modern concept
of flight.
clipped from: www.uh.edu 
