When airplanes were developed in the early 20th century, the technology developed rapidly.

Within a matter of a couple decades, aviation had become a norm for transporting people and delivering mail.

As flight technology kept improving, people assumed that it would keep improving to the point

where everybody would own their own personal airplanes.

Except that never happened.

Learn more about why we don't have flying cars and how all the predictions were wrong

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. When there's a new revolutionary technology, it's natural for people to extrapolate where

they think the technology will go.

This was certainly the case with airplanes in aviation.

The motorized heavier than air aircraft was developed in

1903 by the Wright brothers. People had been working on the problem for years but it was

Orville and Wilbur Wright who finally proved the concept over the dunes of

Kitty Hawk North Carolina.

Once the dam was broken and people realized that heavier than air flight was possible,

it unleashed a torrent of innovation.

Within a decade, airplanes had become safer, larger, and could fly further.

Most of the advances were incremental.

Improvements and new designs to engines, propellers, and body design,

as well as metallurgy improvements kept making planes better and better.

Furthermore, the rise of the airplane roughly coincided with the rise of the automobile.

So it wasn't a stretch to assume that one day cars and airplanes would merge such that everybody would have their own flying car.

The first attempt at creating a flying car was in 1917.

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