Airplane - Wikipedia se aircraft. History Main articles: Aviation history and First flying machine Le Bris and his glider, Albatros II, photographed by Nadar, 1868 Otto Lilienthal in mid-flight, c. 1895 Antecedents <span>Many stories from antiquity involve flight, such as the Greek legend of Icarus and Daedalus, and the Vimana in ancient Indian epics. Around 400 BC in Greece, Archytas was reputed to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying device, a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of what was probably