History is littered with legends and stories about Man's dream of flying, the most famous of these being the Greek Mythological tale of Icarus and Daedalus.  They were supposed to have made themselves wings from feathers and wax, however Icarus flew too near the sun, his wings melted, and he fell into the sea and died.

Man's first successful attempt at any form of controlled flight was the kite, although he didn't actually get himself airborne, he at least managed to get an object flying with a limited amount of control.  Eventually giant kites were built that could lift people into the air, these were used very successfully in the late 19th and early 20th century to lift military observers aloft where they could view the enemy positions.

Original theories on a human being able to fly through the air revolved around the idea that the individual would have to have some form of flapping wing arrangement, similar to that of a bird.  These theories never came to any fruition and any designs based on these ideas predictably failed, but such was the desire to fly that people kept on trying.  Sometimes people even lost their lives attempting to prove their ideas, they would strap themselves into their winged device and jump off a high ledge flapping wildly, only to crash to the ground usually with dire consequences.

Another theory was based around the idea of somehow developing a craft that was lighter than air or worked on a similar principle to the way that a craft floats on water.  Although for thousands of years people were aware that heat had the ability to make things rise, it wasn't until 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers invented their hot air balloon that this was demonstrated.  In the same year another Frenchman (Jacques Alexandre César Charles) released a balloon filled with hydrogen that covered a distance of 27 miles in two hours.  Later the same year, yet another Frenchman (Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier) was to be the first man to make a balloon accent.  Now at last Man had the ability to move freely in the skies, albeit at the mercy of the winds.

In the 1800's an English nobleman, Sir George Cayley, dispensed with the traditional ideas and designs regarding flying and set about designing aircraft that would be the forerunners to today's machines.  His ideas included such things as streamlining, rigid inclined wings to provide lift, a single rudder and a separate propelling device.  Although he never succeeded in building and flying a powered aircraft, he was responsible for sending the first person up in an aeroplane.  In 1853 Sir George Cayley built the first glider that would carry a person, that person was his coachman who was none too impressed at the prospect, however he did go down in history as being the first person to travel on an aeroplane.

As the end of the 19th century approached, the scene was set, the technologies were now available, and the first powered flight was just around the corner.  However, the first powered flight just missed the 19th century, and so the story continues in the 20th century.