Progress is Real: Seeing is believing.

Progress is all around us. For better or worse, we experience it in our everyday lives. Year by year, products like telephones, televisions, laptops, and tablets offer the next must-have features.

If you walk around the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, USA, you can see progress laid out before you. Wilbur and Orville Wright’s plane, the Wright Flyer, started the era of powered flight. You can see the actual aircraft the brothers used to make the first successful powered flight on December 17, 1903. It looks more like a kite than a plane. The flight lasted less than one minute and only covered about 852 feet. However, it pointed the way forward. Walk a little further, and you see a 1918 Spad XVI. In just 15 years, airplanes had changed from looking like prototypes to finished machines. The French designers gave the Spad a fuselage. They replaced the Wright Flyer's two wing-mounted propellers with one located at the front of the plane's body. The designers also put a more powerful engine immediately behind the propeller. It delivered 240-horsepower compared to the Wright Flyer's 12. Next in the fuselage came the pilot's cockpit. The pilot no longer had to lie on the wing. Instead, he sat in the cockpit surrounded by the plane's controls. The fuselage continued beyond the cockpit and provided support for the plane's tail fins. Military commanders tried using biplanes in different roles. However, they were not strong enough yet to be effective bombers or to attack ground forces. What they could do was fly over the battlefield and report back on how the enemy was deploying its forces.

At the end of the first world war, plane development continued. Better materials and higher speeds favored monoplane designs and it became possible to build larger planes. Entrepreneurs and designers saw an opportunity to create passenger planes. One of the most successful of this first generation of commercial planes was the Douglas DC-3. The fuselage was 19.7 m long and large enough to seat 21 to 28 people comfortably. The wingspan was 29 m, and on the wings were two 1,200 horsepower Wright Cyclone engines. The engines gave the plane a top speed of 370 km/h (230 mph). Standing in front of the museum's DC-3, you can appreciate how much bigger it is than the Flyer and the First World War biplanes. The plane proved popular with pilots because of its excellent flying characteristics. It was equally popular with passengers and airlines because of the comfort and value it provided. By the time Douglas ended production in 1945, they had made more than 13,000 DC-3s.

From the Wright brothers until the second world war, all airplanes used propellers. However, this was about to change. In 1932 Sir Frank Whittle was granted a patent for the design of a new type of engine; a jet engine. Five years later, he built the first jet engine and showed that his design could produce radically more forward thrust than propeller engines. Whittle's prototype was years ahead of the competition. However, he worked for the British Air Ministry, and the Ministry was slow to realize the significance of his invention. They refused Whittle the additional resources he needed and, in doing so, the Ministry squandered the lead he had given them.

In contrast, the German companies, Heinkel and Messerschmitt, saw an opportunity. In 1941 Heinkel demonstrated their prototype, the He 178. It was the world's first jet aircraft. However, Messerschmitt's prototype, the Me 262, had greater endurance, and the German Air Ministry decided it was the better design.  Despite the Me 262's performance, it took a long time to convince the German Air Ministry's senior managers to start mass production.  In the end, the new fighter did not start rolling off the production line until late 1944.

The Messerschmitt Me 262 in the museum looks relatively modest compared to its rivals. The first thing you notice is that it does not have a large propeller and engine mounted in its nose section. Instead, there are what look like two large tubes attached to the wings. Inside these housings are the jet engines that gave the Me 262 by far the best performance of any other World War II fighter. The North American P-51 Mustang had a top speed of 390 miles per hour (630 km/h). The Me 262 was 120 miles per hour faster (190 km/h). This speed advantage was so enormous it created a problem for the pilots. They could not reduce their speed and often did not have enough time to align their guns on the target before they had flown past. Thus, despite the Me 262 being in a class of its own, it did not make a difference in the war. They were just too late and too few.

The jet engine might not have changed the war's outcome, but it did radically change aviation afterward. As you walk around the museum's Udvar-Hazy Center in VA, you can see that change. The biggest complete aircraft on display in the museum is the Boeing 707 jet airliner. This plane came to symbolize the shift from propeller to jet engines.  Pan American introduced the first 707 into regular service in October 1958. Passengers immediately loved it. The jet cut the time it took to fly from New York to San Francisco by 3 hours, down from 8 hours to 5 hours. The 707 was also popular with the airlines because it reduced costs. The initial 707 was 145-foot-long and could carry up to 181 passengers, many more than the pre-war DC-3’s 28 passengers. The new jet airliners increased the passenger to crew ratio and thereby decreased the airline's per-passenger costs.

The first generation of passenger jets made the airlines a lot of money. However, Pan American soon wanted a plane that was even larger and could fly further. Boeing responded by designing and building the giant Boeing 747-the Jumbo Jet. The 747 they created was so large that the Smithsonian only has the nose section on display. A complete aircraft would measure 70.5 m (231 ft) in length. With a 59.6 m (195 ft) wingspan and stand 19.3 m (63 ft) high.

After walking from the pre-war propeller planes like the DC-3 to the hall with the post-war jet aircraft, you are struck by how different the jets are. While still being airplanes, they are significantly different. Something more than incremental change and growth has occurred. It is easy to imagine the Wright brothers' Flyer growing into the inter-war DC-3 passenger plane. The Flyer's two wings became one. A fuselage develops to enclose the plane nose and tail. The single-engine driving the two wing-mounted propellers is replaced by two more powerful engines, and the whole aircraft grows larger. You can see the DC-3 as a grown-up version of the Flyer. In 1903, if someone had asked the Wright brothers to speculate about what aircraft would look like in the future. They might have imagined something like the DC-3. However, it is hard to believe they would ever dream of an aircraft like the 747. The jet engine was a game-changer. The Wright brothers could not have predicted its invention or the impact it would have on aircraft design. For them, it was unimaginable that something as large and heavy as a 747 could fly.

Even today, if you see a 747 up close, it hard to believe that they can take off. However, the Boeing 747 team got their sums and design right, and the first entered service in 1970. The new plane had 400 seats and could fly its passengers 9,800 kilometers (6,100 miles). It proved a winning combination, and by 2014 Boeing had made 1,500 747s. The 747 and other jet planes drove down flying costs and made foreign holidays a part of everyday life.

The invention of the jet engine was only one of two radical innovations that changed aviation. On June 20, 1931, Erich Warsitz flew the first liquid-fuelled rocket-powered aircraft, the Heinkel He 176. The Germans also developed missiles, the most significant being the V-1 and V-2. The V-1 was called the flying bomb, and you can see why. It looks like an artillery shell with a plane's wing and tail. Sitting on top of the V-1 is a petrol pulse-jet engine. Fortunately for Londoners, the missile's relatively low speed of 200 mph meant that it could be tracked and intercepted. Out of all the V-1s fired at Britain during the war, only about 20% reached their target.

When you look at the V-2, you can see it was a much more formidable weapon. The one on display is in the launch position, standing on its tail fins pointing upwards. It stands 14 m (46 ft) high and would have carried one ton (900 kg) of explosives. The rocket's motor burned ethanol and liquid oxygen to produce 60,000 pounds of thrust. Overall it had about 200 miles range, usually flew to an altitude of 50 miles, although it could reach 60 miles (outer space starts at 62 miles), and had a top speed of 3,300 mph. It was a terrifying weapon. More than 500 hit London. The missile traveled several times faster than sound. The first thing Londoners knew about a V-2 raid was the jolt of the impact and explosion. Immediately after, there was a sound that witnesses described as being like a "train passing overhead." This rumbling was the sound of the missile in flight catching up with the impact.

At the end of the war, the allied powers scrambled to capture German rocket know-how. They all wanted rocket documentation, missile parts, and to recruit the German scientists. In 1946, the Soviets forcibly deported thousands of German engineers, scientists, technicians, and their families to the USSR. However, they did not capture the senior engineers. America was more fortunate. The secret program, Operation Paperclip, successfully brought more than 1,600 critical German missile program personnel to the United States. Among this group were the leading figures in German rocket development; Wernher von Braun, and his V-2 team. This scramble marked the start of a major new arms race between the USSR and the USA to build ever better and more deadly missiles.

By 1955, the cold war competition between the Soviet Union and the US reached outer space. Both wanted to show the world their technological prowess by being the first to launch an artificial satellite. The Soviets won the race's first leg when they successfully launched the Sputnik 1 satellite on October 4, 1957. They followed this success by sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into space in 1961. America responded by being much more ambitious. President Kennedy set the goal "of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Kennedy's goal was achieved on July 20, 1969, when Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon. Taking pride of place among all of the museum's objects is the Apollo 11 command module, "Columbia." It was the living quarters for the three-person crew and the only part of the vehicle to return from the moon. Standing in front of it, you are struck by how small it is. The rocket that left earth was 111 meters high (363 feet), and the command module that returned was 3.23 meters (10 foot 7 inches). Its small size and primitive technology only go to emphasize the scale of the achievement.

In the development of powered flight, the rate of progress has been unprecedented.  In just one lifetime, you could have witnessed the Wright brothers' flight and, 66 years later, watched Armstrong walk on the moon. Seeing the story of flight captured in the museum's exhibits shows how the objects relate to each other through time. More appears to be happening than just change or growth. In 1903 nobody could go to the moon and back. But, by 1969, it was possible. The Wright brothers could not have predicted the jet engine's development and how it would change aviation. The story of aviation is the story of unexpected innovations and how they changed the future.

What do you think? Is progress more than change and growth? If so, what do you think makes progress different from change and growth?