Just one example of many: Otto Lilienthal - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal Under "Legacy": [q

Just one example of many: Otto Lilienthal - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal Under "Legacy": [quote] Of all the men who attacked the flying problem in the 19th century, Otto Lilienthal was easily the most important. ... It is true that attempts at gliding had been made hundreds of years before him, and that in the nineteenth century, Cayley, Spencer, Wenham, Mouillard, and many others were reported to have made feeble attempts to glide, but their failures were so complete that nothing of value resulted. — Wilbur Wright [21] In September 1909, Orville Wright was in Germany making demonstration flights at Tempelhof aerodrome. He paid a call to Lilienthal's widow and, on behalf of himself and Wilbur, paid tribute to Lilienthal for his influence on aviation and on their own initial experiments in 1899. [/quote] You should also read about airfoil history: http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/airfoils/airfoilhistory.html http://adg.stanford.edu/aa241/airfoils/airfoilhistory.html Incidentally - I was not really intending on pointing to Lilienthal again, there are too many others, and the design later changed because it wasn't actually the best: > Airfoils used by the Wright Brothers closely resembled Lilienthal's > sections: thin and highly cambered.