This photo shows Leonardo da Vinci’s lifting wing mechanism and the aerial screw; two machines of flight. Da Vinci had developed over 500 sketches attributed to flight during his lifetime. The Ornithopter was a device that would fly through a wing mechanism, inspired by the design of winged animals. Additionally, the aerial screw is argued as the original inspiration for helicopters today. Unfortunately, modern science proves that a human could never have exerted enough strength to make either of these machines fly. Regardless, both are viewed as machines of inspiration that paved the way for gliders, helicopters, and aircrafts in the modern era.   

This photo displays Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5, a steam-powered aircraft which, on May 6th, 1896, was successfully launched in a half-mile flight. It was the first “heavier-than-air" craft propelled by its own engine to hold a sustained flight. The wingspan stretched roughly 13 feet, and the combined weight of the frame, engine, and fuel was only 30 pounds. It launched and flew with the assistance of aerial screw propellors and sustained itself only with its internal energy. While Langley was the first to create a "heavier-than-air" craft which would fly, he failed to create a machine that would carry a man in its flight.

This series of articles, written by Samuel P. Langley himself in 1908, offers a first-hand compilation of his methodologies, trials, and innovations in creating the aerodrome. Langley discusses the many models he made, the months he spent developing his glider, and his difficulties in creating an aircraft and an engine light but powerful enough to fly. While the novel recounts the military's interest in the glider, making the aerodrome a financially plausible, reliable, machine of war ultimately failed. The account ends with Langley determining that his machine was not a failure itself, but rather that the current technology was incapable of suiting its demands.  

This photo displays one of the Wright Brothers’ early flight tests, with Wilbur Wright inside the glider and Orville Wright and Dan Tate guiding it. Glider tests were an important part of the Wright Brothers’ path to fame in achieving true flight. In May 1901, the brothers invented a glider with a wingspan of 22 feet, the biggest that had ever been built. Such successes still came with dangers, as the Wright Brothers' third glider introduced them to a new threat in flight: the tailspin. Yet even such dangers failed to stop their path to fame. On December 17th, 1903, the Wright Brothers were the first men in history to fly a self-powered aircraft entirely under the pilot’s control, a feat that would change the future of flight globally.