A year before Frank Whittle was born, the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, patented their “flying machine.” Around the time of his first birthday, they made the famous flight at Kitty Hawk. Human flight fascinated the world, and it fascinated Frank especially. He showed an early aptitude for engineering and, wrong body build notwithstanding, joined the Royal Air Force, from where he would revolutionize air propulsion.

On this day, April 12, in 1937, on the grounds of the British Thompson Houston works in Rugby, England, Sir Frank Whittle successfully tested in a ground run a prototype he had been working on — a liquid-fueled turbo-jet engine. It was the first time in the world such an engine was built or operated.

Whittle had to overcome no small amount of adversity on his path to developing the jet engine. The problem he was trying to solve — creating a chamber strong enough to withstand the heat and thrust of a jet engine — brought down many bright men before him. He actually created a workable design as early as the 1920s, but the Air Ministry did not deem it practical and turned down his idea. Whittle just patented it and continued working on his own.