When was the airplane invented?

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, are credited with making the first powered, controlled flight in an airplane on Dec. 17, 1903. After developing a working glider, they added a 12-horsepower engine to the design to drive a pair of rear-mounted propellers.

Many other inventors were working on powered flight at the dawn of the 20th century, and some claim that the Wright brothers were not the first to achieve it. Clement Ader, Gustave Whitehead, Richard Pearse and Karl Jatho all claimed to have beaten the Wright brothers into the sky, but none could produce evidence of sustained, controlled powered flight.