Flying into history

Sir

The caption of your Commentary picture (Nature 421, 15; 2003) suggests that Orville Wright made the first powered flight in 1903. This is not true, although Heilbron's and Bynum's text, on the previous page, was correct. The Wright brothers — influenced by the non-powered gliders of Otto Lilienthal, who flew more than 300 m in 1894 — were the first to achieve the important conjunction of four criteria with their 260-m flight: it was manned, powered, heavier-than-air and (to some degree) controlled.

Earlier pioneers set records by meeting some of these criteria. In 1890 Clément Ader made the first manned, powered, heavier-than-air flight, of 50 m, in his bat-winged monoplane. Henri Giffard's steam-powered airship covered 27 km on the first manned and powered flight, in 1852. Balloonists Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François d'Arlandes were, in 1783, the first men to fly. And if they were as fashionably bewigged as the occasion demanded, their 9-km ride must also have been the first manned, powdered flight.