Nicolas-Jacques Conté was a French painter, balloonist, army officer, and inventor of the modern pencil. He distinguished himself for his mechanical genius which was of great avail to the French army in Egypt. Napoleon called him “a univ...

Sir George Cayley, 6th Baronet was a prolific English engineer and one of the most important people in the history of aeronautics. Many consider him the first true scientific aerial investigator and the first person to understand the underl...

Graf Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German army officer and airship inventor and builder. He entered the Prussian army in 1858 and served in the Seven Weeks War and in the Franco-Prussian War. He was an observer with the Union army during the Amer...

Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of human aviation who became known as the Glider King. He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful gliding flights. He followed an experimental approach established earlier by S...

Salomon August Andrée, during his lifetime most often known as S. A. Andrée, was a Swedish engineer, physicist, aeronaut and polar explorer who died while leading an attempt to reach the Geographic North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The balloo...

The Wright brothers, Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled...

The Wright brothers, Orville (1871–1948) and Wilbur (1867–1912), were two American brothers, inventors, and aviation pioneers who are credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled...

Louis Blériot was a French aviator, inventor and engineer. In 1909 he completed the first flight across a large body of water in a heavier-than-air craft when he crossed the English Channel, receiving a prize of 1000 British pounds for doin...

Alberto Santos-Dumont was an early pioneer of aviation. He was born and died in Brazil. Heir of a prosperous coffee producer family, Santos-Dumont dedicated himself to science studies in Paris. Santos-Dumont designed, built, and flew the...

The Honourable Charles Stewart Rolls was, together with Frederick Henry Royce, a co-founder of the Rolls-Royce car manufacturing firm. Rolls started one of Britain's first car dealerships when he started importing and selling French made ve...

Anton Herman Gerard 'Anthony' Fokker was born in Kediri (Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia) and became a Dutch aircraft manufacturer. At age 20 Fokker created his first plane — the Spin (Spider) — in 1910. In his own country he became a cele...

Bessie Coleman was an American civil aviator. She was the first woman of African American descent, and the first of Native American descent, to hold a pilot license. She achieved her international pilot license in 1921. Born to a family of...

Reginald Joseph Mitchell CBE, FRAeS, was a British aeronautical engineer, best known for his design of the Supermarine Spitfire. Between 1920 and 1936, Mitchell designed 24 aircraft including light aircraft, fighters and bombers. As Superma...

Grace Marguerite, Lady Hay Drummond-Hay was a British journalist who was the first woman to travel around the world by air, in a Zeppelin. Although she was not an aviator herself at first, she certainly contributed to its glamour and the ge...

Sir Charles Edward Kingsford Smith, often called by his nickname Smithy, was an early Australian aviator. In 1928, he earned global fame when he made the first trans-Pacific flight from the United States to Australia. He also made the first...