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Roger Bacon thought a person could go in an engine for flying which has artificial wings.
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Leonardo da Vinci sketched a simple helicopter and invented the parachute.
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Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier sent their hot air balloon through Paris. They found out that hot air balloons could carry two people.
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Sir George Cayley studied animal flight and was able to build several small gliders as a boy and was eventually able to build one for a small boy to fly a few metres off the ground. Then, in 1853 he was able to make one to carry an adult.
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Otto Lilienthal made a glider that, when he launched it off a hill, could be controlled by shifting his weight.
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The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, made the first actual plane, the Flyer 1. It had two 12-m wings and a gas engine. Their first flight was at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and it lasted 12 seconds and traveled 36.5 m.
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Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier— He flew faster than the speed of sound with the X-1 plane. Then in 1952 he flew twice the speed of sound.
