The man who learned to fly It is publicly accepted that it was the Wright brothers that invented the plane, but actually George Cayley knew how to make a plane a century before the Wright brothers took off. If only he'd got the internal combustion  engine to work. During the 18thand 19thcenturies, scientists and the public all believed that it was only impossible to fly using an artificial wing, but an act of silly deed to suggest that you could. This did not discourage the English gentleman scientist George Cayley, even though his contemporaries --- including his own son--- were embarrassed by his efforts. In 1799, Cayley carved a silver disc with one side bearing a design for the world's first aeroplane and the other illustrating the earliest published description of the aerodynamic forces on the wing that enable a plane to fly. His three--part essay Aerial Navigation, published in 1809 and 1810, was greeted with skepticism  by his contemporaries. But Cayley "didn't give a rat's ass" about what they all thought, according to Richard Dyde of York University in Ontario, Canada, author of The Man Who Discovered Flight--- and with good reason. He had completed a series of experiments to back up his theories and "was convinced that everyone else was wrong". Cayley constructed increasingly excellent model flying machines, and finally invented a full-scale glider, which was flown in 1853 by his grandson, George. This pioneering work would prove inspirational to Orville and Wilbur Wright, who made the first controlled and sustained  heavier-than-air human flight 50 years later. Their success was dependent on the recent invention of the internal combustion engine--- a device which Cayley, having realized its great importance, had spent many fruitless years trying to develop. How many years later was George Cayley's glider flown after he first designed a plane?
A century. Fifty-four years. Ten years. More than a hundred years.