THE HISTORY OF AEROPLANE

The dream of flight goes back to the days of pre-history.  Many stories from antiquity involve flight, such as the Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and the Vimana in ancient Indian epics. Around 400 BC, Archytas, the Ancient Greek philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, statesman, and strategist, was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200 m..This machine, which its inventor called The Pigeon (Greek: η Περιστέρα "hè Peristera"), may have been suspended on a wire or pivot for its flight. One of the first recorded – still dilettante – attempts with gliders were those by the 11th century monk Eilmer of Malmesbury (recorded in the 12th century) and the 9th century poet Abbas Ibn Firnas (recorded in the 17th century); both experiments ended with lasting injuries to their pilots. Leonardo da Vinci researched the wing design of birds and designed a man-powered aircraft in his Codex on the Flight of Birds (1502). In the 18th century, Francois Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent d'Arlandes flew in an aircraft lighter than air, a balloon. The biggest challenge became to create other craft, capable of controlled flight.

Le Bris and his glider, Albatros II, photographed by Nadar, 1868

Sir George Cayley, the founder of the science of aerodynamics  credited as the first person to separate the forces of lift and drag which are in effect on any flight vehicle, in 1799 he set forth the concept of the modern aeroplane as a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift, propulsion, and control. Cayley was building and flying models of fixed-wing aircraft as early as 1803, and he built a successful passenger-carrying glider in 1853.  In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first powered flight, by having his glider "L'Albatros artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. On 28 August 1883, the American John J. Montgomery made a controlled flight in a glider. Other aviators who made similar flights at that time were Otto Lilienthal, Percy Pilcher and Octave Chanute.
Sir Hiram Maxim first sketched out plans for a helicopter in 1872, but when he built his first "flying machine" he chose to use wings. Commencing work in 1889, he built a 145 feet (44 m) long craft that weighed 3.5 tons, with a 110 feet (34 m) wingspan that was powered by two compound 360 horsepower (270 kW) steam engines driving two propellers. In trials at Bexley in 1894 his machine rode on 1,800 feet (550 m) of rails and was prevented from rising by outriggers underneath and wooden safety rails overhead, somewhat in the manner of a roller coaster. His apparent goal in building this machine was not to soar freely, but to test if it would lift off the ground. During its test run all of the outriggers were engaged, showing that it had developed enough lift to take off, but in so doing it damaged the track; the "flight" was aborted in time to prevent disaster. The craft was almost certainly aerodynamically unstable and uncontrollable, which Maxim probably realized, because he subsequently abandoned work on it.
In the 1890s, Australian inventor and aviator Lawrence Hargrave conducted research on wing structures and developed a box kite that lifted the weight of a man. His box kite designs were widely adopted and became the prevalent type of aircraft until 1909.  Although he also developed a type of rotary aircraft engine, he did not create and fly a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
An article in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald claimed that on 14 August 1901, in Fairfield, Connecticut, Gustave Whitehead reportedly flew his engine-powered Number 21 aeroplane for half a mile at 15 m height. No photographs were taken, but a sketch of the plane in the air was published with the article.
The Wright brothers made their first successful test flights on 17 December 1903. Their flights are recognised by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for aeronautics and astronautics, as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight".By 1905, the Wright Flyer III was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.
On 12 November 1906, Alberto Santos Dumont made made what has been claimed as the first airplane flight unassisted by catapult  and set the first world record recognised by the Aéro-Club de France by flying 220 metres (720 ft) in less than 22 seconds. This flight was also certified by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI).
An early aircraft design that brought together the modern monoplane tractor configuration was Frenchman Louis Bleriot's Bleriot VIII design of 1908. It had movable tail surfaces controlling both yaw and pitch; a form of roll control supplied either by wing warping or ailerons and controlled by its pilot with a joystick for roll and pitch control; and rudder bar for yaw control. It was an important predecessor of his later Bleriot XI Channel-crossing aircraft of the summer of 1909.