Several men must share the credit for this development. In 1889 a German engineer named Otto Lilienthal, inspired by the flight habits of storks, published “Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation.” Two years later he built his first simple glider. In 1896, after about 2,000 glider flights, Lilienthal was killed while practicing with a monoplane. Octave Chanute, a French-born American engineer, elaborated on Lilienthal’s design and developed a double-winged glider that again represented a significant advance in the design of a heavier-than-air flying machine. The Wright brothers.( Orville and Wilbur Wright ) proprietors of a bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, began their first gliding experiments in 1900, building on the accomplishments of Lilienthal and Chanute. The Wrights worked slowly and methodically over the next three years, making repeated experimental flights at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They developed new designs with the aid of wind tunnels, the first of which they made for themselves from a laundry starch box. For their first powered flight, they built their own four-cylinder, 12-horsepower engine and mounted it on the lower wing of a new plane. The engine powered two wooden propellers, one on each side of the plane’s rear rudder. On December 14, 1903, the Wrights’ new invention rose off its wooden launching track for the first time—and stayed aloft for three and a half seconds! Three days later the brothers flew the machine again. Eventually it remained airborne for nearly a full minute and covered a distance of 853 feet. The airplane was a success. Historically The Wright brothers get credit for inventing the airplane.

The first successful powered airplane was built by Orville and Wilbur Wright. However, there were a number of people before who had the right basic idea; the Wrights were the first who were good enough engineers to put all the pieces together in a way that made a working machine.

There has always been controversy about who invented the first airplane.My research comes up with a British person named Percy Pilcher.He designed and built the first plane,and it was designed as a tri-plane.It was invented 4 years before the Wright brothers invented theirs.

Orville and Wilbur right were the first to make a succesfull flight in 1903.

It depends on whether you mean who made it work physically, or who came up with the idea. There were people as far back as B.C. who had experimental ideas on how an aircraft could work, but never had the technology to actually build one. Leonardo da Vinci was one of those people, I believe.

Richard Pearse, a New Zealand inventor, flew his home-built aircraft some time before the Wrights. The difference between them was that the Wright brother's flight was a controlled flight whereas Pearse's was not.

not sure but it wasnt me

The first heavier than air, powered, controllable aircraft was built and flown by Jacob Broadbeck shortly after the Civil War around 1866, near San Antonio, Texas. There is some belief he helped the Write Brothers in their flight as well. There is also a story around Elm Mont, TX a couple of farmers in the area built and flew an airplane for several months. They saw no use for it and lost interest in their airplane and destroyed it. This was also in the 1800s. The Write Brothers had the press there and got the publicity for their flights.