After World War II, the United States was the only one of the Allies who remained immune to the general devastation of the conflict. On the contrary, the war brought the country's power to an unprecedented level. Nowhere was this more evident than in the aircraft industry. Military and industrial planners and politicians realized the necessity to develop the next generation aircraft. The expertise gained in the war years by manufacturers, along with the unprecedented flying experience of Air Force pilots and the civilian and military demand for better and faster planes, contributed to the explosive growth of the industry and the development of sophisticated jet engines.
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The first "jet powered" device, an aeolipile, was developed about the 3rd century BC by a Greek mathematician and scientist, Hero of Alexandria. The aeolipile demonstrated that a jet of steam escaping to the rear drives its generator forward. The device had a spherical chamber into which steam was fed. The steam escaped through tubes on opposite sides of the sphere, and the reaction to the force of the escaping steam caused the sphere to rotate. |
| A jet propelled wagon utilizing the aeolipile appeared in many early textbooks on the evolution of the horseless carriage. |  |
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