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Unpowered gliders tend to need aerofoils which is a pretty advanced concept that took us a while to get right

• GuB-42 4y ago
  And took quite a few lives in the process. Early hanggliders were particularly deadly before we understood how to make and pilot them safely.
• jccooper 4y ago
  One of the Wrights' enabling technologies was the powered fan that allowed them to make a wind tunnel to refine the airfoil from barely-functional to fairly-useful. They used a small gasoline engine, which enabled them to construct their wind tunnel on a small independent budget. I suppose you could have done that on an institutional level as early as 1750 with steam engines (or perhaps earlier with water power) but mines and mills and factories weren't particularly interested in the problem.