Editing Fixed-wing aircraft (section)

===Powered flight===
{{See also|Aviation in the pioneer era}}
[[Sir Hiram Maxim]] built a craft that weighed 3.5 tons, with a 110-foot (34-meter) wingspan powered by two 360-horsepower (270-kW) steam engines driving two propellers. In 1894, his machine was tested with overhead rails to prevent it from rising. The test showed that it had enough lift to take off. The craft was uncontrollable, and Maxim abandoned work on it.<ref>Beril, Becker (1967). ''Dreams and Realities of the Conquest of the Skies''. New York: Atheneum. pp. 124–125</ref>
[[Image:Wright Flyer III above.jpg|thumb|[[Wright Flyer III]] piloted by Orville Wright over Huffman Prairie, 4 October 1905]]
The [[Wright brothers]]' flights in 1903 with their [[Wright Flyer|''Flyer I'']] are recognized by the ''[[Fédération Aéronautique Internationale]]'' (FAI), the standard setting and record-keeping body for [[aeronautics]], as "the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight".<ref>[http://www.fai.org/news_archives/fai/000295.asp FAI News: 100 Years Ago, the Dream of Icarus Became Reality] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110113080326/http://www.fai.org/news_archives/fai/000295.asp |date=13 January 2011 }} posted 17 December 2003. (The 1903 flights are not listed in the official FAI flight records, however, because the organization and its predecessors did not yet exist.) Retrieved 5 January 2007.</ref> By 1905, the [[Wright Flyer III]] was capable of fully controllable, stable flight for substantial periods.
[[Image:Wk000002.jpg|thumb|[[Alberto Santos-Dumont|Santos-Dumont]]'s self-propelled {{nowrap|[[Santos-Dumont 14-bis|14-bis]]}} on an old postcard]]
In 1906, Brazilian inventor [[Alberto Santos Dumont]] designed, [[Santos-Dumont 14-bis|built and piloted an aircraft]] that set the first world record recognized by the [[Aéro-Club de France]] by flying the [[14 bis]] {{convert|220|m|ft}} in less than 22 seconds.<ref>Jones, Ernest. [http://earlyaviators.com/edumonb.htm "Santos Dumont in France 1906–1916: The Very Earliest Early Birds."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160316120252/http://earlyaviators.com/edumonb.htm |date=16 March 2016 }} ''earlyaviators.com'', 25 December 2006. Retrieved 17 August 2009.</ref> The flight was certified by the FAI.<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20070324025948/http://www.aeroclub.com/santos_dumont_14bis_14bis.htm Les vols du 14bis relatés au fil des éditions du journal l'illustration de 1906.] The wording is: "cette prouesse est le premier vol au monde homologué par l'Aéro-Club de France et la toute jeune Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI)." (This achievement is the first flight in the world to be recognized by the France Air Club and by the new International Aeronautical Federation (FAI).)</ref>

The [[Bleriot VIII]] design of 1908 was an early aircraft design that had the modern [[monoplane]] [[tractor configuration]]. It had movable tail surfaces controlling both yaw and pitch, a form of roll control supplied either by wing warping or by ailerons and controlled by its pilot with a [[joystick]] and rudder bar. It was an important predecessor of his later [[Bleriot XI]] [[English Channel|Channel]]-crossing aircraft of the summer of 1909.<ref>{{cite book|title=Bleriot XI, The Story of a Classic Aircraft|last=Crouch|first=Tom|publisher=[[Smithsonian Institution Press]]|year=1982|isbn=0-87474-345-1|pages=21 and 22}}<!--|access-date=13 April 2011--></ref>
[[File:Aircraft with people and buildings.jpg|thumb|[[Curtiss NC-4]] flying boat after it completed the first crossing of the Atlantic in 1919, standing next to a fixed-wing heavier-than-air aircraft]]