The word aeroplane first meant only the wing, and predates powered flight
English speakers were saying airplane in the late 19th century, before anyone had managed sustained powered flight. The word came from French aéroplane, built from Greek for air plus a term meaning level or wandering, and at first it named only the wing, a flat plane moving through the air. Later the part came to stand for the whole machine.
Americans switched from aeroplane to airplane after the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics adopted the shorter form in 1916, while Britain, Ireland and most of the Commonwealth kept the older spelling. The dream itself is ancient. Around 400 BC the Greek thinker Archytas reportedly built a bird-shaped model driven by a jet of what was probably steam that travelled about 200 metres, though it may have hung from a support. Abbas ibn Firnas in 9th-century Andalusia and the English monk Eilmer of Malmesbury in the 11th century both tried gliding and both got hurt.
The 19th century produced near misses. In 1856 Jean-Marie Le Bris had a horse tow his glider along a beach. Clément Ader's bat-winged Éole, driven by his own 20 horsepower steam engine, managed an uncontrolled hop of roughly 50 metres at about 20 centimetres off the ground on 9 October 1890. Hiram Maxim's 3.5 tonne machine, with a 34 metre wingspan and two 360 horsepower steam engines, was tested in 1894 on rails that held it down; it produced enough lift to rise, but was so unstable that he gave up.
Otto Lilienthal made the first well-documented, repeated glides, and his standard glider became the first aircraft built in series. The Wright brothers named him a key inspiration for their 1903 flights, and by 1905 their Flyer III could stay under full control for long stretches. In 1906 Alberto Santos-Dumont flew 220 metres in under 22 seconds without a catapult launch.
Progress then came fast. Germany tested the first practical jet, the Heinkel He 178, in 1939, and the de Havilland Comet opened the jet airliner age in 1952. Propeller aircraft top out around Mach 0.6, because blade tips passing the speed of sound create shock waves. Airliners now carry more than four billion passengers a year, yet air freight is under 1 percent of global cargo movement.
Source: Airplane
