Flying through the sky with a special device was already conceived by Leonardo da Vinci in the 16th century, but the first flight was officially registered at the beginning of the last century. There is still fierce debate about to whom we owe the possibility of air travel, but the fact remains that the first flight was officially registered in 1903. The Wright Brothers invented the very first airplane in the world.

The first attempts to build an aircraft capable of lifting a man into the air began in the late 18th century. The history of the invention of the flying machine dates back to England, when Sergeant George Cayley seriously engaged in this issue and published several scientific works, in which he described in detail the principle of construction and operation of the prototype of the modern aircraft.

The inventor began his work by observing birds. The scientist devoted a long time to measuring the flight speed of birds and the wingspan. These data later became the basis for several publications, which laid the foundation for the development of aviation.

In his first sketches, Cayley envisioned an airplane as a boat with a tail fin at one end and a pair of oars at the bow. The design was to be propelled by oars that would transfer rotation to a cross-shaped shank at the end of the craft. In this way, Cayley unmistakably depicted the basic elements of an airplane. It was the work of this scientist that initiated the development of aviation and spurred the concept of the airplane.

The pioneer of aviation in its modern sense was another English inventor, William Henson. It was he who received an order to develop a project of an airplane in 1842.

Henson’s proposed design of a “steam aircrew” described all the basic elements of a propeller-driven airplane. The inventor proposed the use of a propeller to propel the whole structure. Many of the ideas suggested by Henson were later developed and applied in early aircraft models.

Although aircraft design was developed by many scientists in the mid-19th century, the invention of the airplane is attributed to the Wright Brothers, whose airplane made a brief flight in 1903. Not everyone agrees that the Wright brothers were the first. Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont designed, built and tested the world’s first airship prototype himself in 1901. It was then that it was proven that controlled flights are really possible.