Historic Records
| Inventor | Accomplishment | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Zhuge Liang | Kongming lantern, first hot air balloon | 2nd or 3rd century |
| 'Abbas Ibn Firnas | Single flight of manned ornithopter; ended in crash and injury. | 875 |
| Eilmer of Malmesbury | Single flight of manned glider. | 1010 |
| Unknown Chinese | Manned kites are common. Reported by Marco Polo | 1290 |
| Lagari Hasan Çelebi | First manned rocket flight | 1633 |
| Bartolomeu de Gusmão | First lighter-than-air airship flight | 1709 |
| John Childs | Unnamed flying device, flew 700m three times over two days. Documentation suggests that he glided down along a 700m rope and landed where the rope was fixed to the ground. | 1757 |
| Montgolfier brothers | Modern hot air balloon | 1783 |
| Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers | First manned and unmanned flights of a hydrogen balloon | 1893 |
| Diego Marín Aguilera | Single flight of manned-glider-wings | 1793 |
| William Samuel Henson | Aerial Steam Carriage, flight of model | 1842 |
| John Stringfellow | Stringfellow Machines | 1848, 1868 |
| Henri Giffard | Non-rigid airship, hydrogen filled envelope for lift, powered by steam engine | 1852 |
| Sir George Cayley | Cayley Glider, flight of manned glider. Investigating many theoretical aspects of flight. Many now acknowledge him as the first aeronautical engineer. | 1853 |
| Rufus Porter | New York to California Aerial Transport, an early attempt at an airline | 1849 |
| Jean Marie Le Bris | Artificial Albatross | 1857, 1867 |
| Félix du Temple de la Croix | Monoplane (1874) Maybe first powered manned fixed-wing flight, a short hop, from a downward ramp. | 1857–1877 |
| Francis Herbert Wenham | Wenham's Aerial Locomotion | 1866 |
| Jan Wnęk | Loty glider, many flights | 1866 |
| James William Butler and Edmund Edwards | Steam-Jet Dart Patented a prophetic design, that of a delta-winged jet-propelled aircraft, derived from a folded paper plane. | 1867 |
| Frederick Marriott | Marriott flying machines, as well as an attempt at an early airline | 1869 |
| Alphonse Pénaud | Planophore, Pénaud Toy Helicopter | 1871 |
| Thomas Moy | Moy Aerial Steamer, | 1875 |
| Thomas Moy | The Military Kite | 1879 |
| Charles F. Ritchel | Ritchel Hand-powered Airship | 1878 |
| Victor Tatin | Tatin flying machines | 1879 |
| Biot and Massia | Biot-Massia Glider | 1887 |
| Alexandre Goupil | Goupi Monoplane, La Locomotion Aerienne | 1883 |
| John J. Montgomery | Montgomery Monoplane and Tandem-Wing Gliders | 1883–1911 |
| Aleksandr Fyodorovich Mozhaiski | Mozhaiski Monoplane | 1884 |
| Charles Renard, Arthur Constantin Krebs | The first fully controllable free-flight was made with the La France airship | 1884 |
| Pichancourt | Mechanical Birds | 1889 |
| Lawrence Hargrave | Hargrave flying machines and Box kites | 1889–1893 |
| Clément Ader | Éole, Avion, short, manned and powered, flights | 1890–1897 |
| Chuhachi Ninomiya | Karasu model, Tamamushi model | 1891, 1895 |
| Otto Lilienthal | Derwitzer Glider, Normal soaring apparatus and others, many flights | 1891–1896 |
| Horatio Phillips | Phillips 1893 Flying Machine, Phillips 1907 Multiplane | 1893, 1906 |
| Hiram Stevens Maxim | Maxim Biplane | 1894 |
| Pablo Suarez | Suarez Glider | 1895 |
| Octave Chanute and Augustus Herring | Chanute and Herring Gliding Machines | 1896 |
| William Paul Butusov | Albatross Soaring Machine | 1896 |
| William Frost | Frost Airship Glider | 1896 |
| Percy Sinclair Pilcher | Pilcher Hawk Based on the work of his mentor Otto Lilienthal, in 1897 Pilcher built a glider called The Hawk with which he broke the world distance record when he flew 250 m (820 ft) | 1897 |
| Samuel Pierpont Langley | Langley Aerodromes | 1896–1903 |
| Carl Rickard Nyberg | Flugan, very short manned flight | 1897 |
| Edson Fessenden Gallaudet | Gallaudet Wing Warping Kite | 1898 |
| Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin | Zeppelin airship LZ 1. The first Zeppelin flight occurred on July 2, 1900 over the Bodensee, lasted 18 minutes. The second and third flights were in October 1900 and October 24, 1900 respectively, beating the 6 m/s velocity record of the French airship La France by 3 m/s. | 1900 |
| Wilhelm Kress | Kress Waterborne Aeroplane hops | 1901 |
| Alberto Santos-Dumont | Santos-Dumont gained fame by designing, building, and flying dirigibles. On 19 October 1901, he won the Deutsch de la Meurthe prize of 100,000 francs by taking off from Saint-Cloud, flying his steerable balloon around the Eiffel Tower, and returning. | 1901 |
| Wright brothers | Completed development of the three-axis control system with the incorporation of a movable rudder connected to the wing warping control on their 1902 Glider. They subsequently made several fully controlled heavier than air gliding flights, including one of 622.5 ft (189.7 m) in 26 seconds. | 1902 |
| Karl Jatho | Jatho Biplane 10 hp 70m hops | 1903 |
| Wright brothers | Wright Flyer I, Successful, manned, powered, controlled and sustained flight, 259m, in 59 seconds, according to the Federation Aeronautique International and Smithsonian Institution. Preceded by three other flights, each less than 200 feet. | 1903 |
| Wright Brothers | Wright Flyer III Wilbur Wright pilots a flight of 24 miles (39 km) in nearly 39 minutes on Oct. 5, a world record that stood until Orville Wright surpassed it in 1908. | 1905 |
| Traian Vuia | Vuia I, Vuia II, Several short powered flights. August 1906, 24m flight. July 5, 1907, Flew 20m. and crashed. | 1906–1907 |
| Alberto Santos-Dumont | First officially observed European flights in the 14-bis or Oiseau de proie ("bird of prey"). On 23 October 1906 he won the prize given by Ernest Archdeacon for the first aviator to demonstrate a flight of more than 25 m. On 12 November 1906, he flew the 14-bis 220 metres in 21.5 seconds, winning the Aero Club de France's prize for the first flight of over 100 m (330 ft) | 1906 |
| Gabriel Voisin | On 13 January 1908 Henri Farman wins the Aero Club de France's Grand Prix d'aviation by making a closed-circuit flight of over a kilometre, flying a Voisin biplane | 1908 |
| Glenn H. Curtiss | AEA June Bug First official U.S. flight exceeding 1 kilometer (5,360 ft (1,630 m). | 1908 |
| Louis Blériot | Crossed the English Channel, France to Britain, 23 miles (37 km) in Blériot XI monoplane | 1909 |
| Henri Fabre | First seaplane. | 1910 |
| John William Dunne | With the Dunne D.5 tailless Biplane, the fifth in a series of tailless swept-wing designs, Dunne was among the first to achieved natural stability in flight in the same year. | 1910. |
Read more about this topic: Early Flying Machines
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