It seems strange to imagine an era in which pilots kept track of each other’s positions by looking out the window (for planes that even had windows) and in which there were no control towers to guide pilots to their destinations.
But it took nearly two decades after the Wright Brothers for the first airport control tower to appear at Britain’s Croydon Airport on February 25, 1920. The tower, or more properly a windowed shed on 15-foot stilts, was staffed by military veterans inventing a whole new field.
What made it possible was development not of aircraft technology but of radio technology; once aircraft began using radios, a series of ground stations could triangulate to locate the plane and the observer/controllers could then tell the pilot what to do for a safe landing.
A longer story with rich detail can be found at The Telegraph (UK). And here’s a link to historic footage.
