Man's attempts at flight date back to around 1020 when Oliver of Malmesbury, an English Benedictine monk, strapped a huge pair of wings to his body and try to soar into the air from Malmesbury Abbey. He broke both legs.

In 1783, Jacques Charles released a large unmanned balloon from Paris. It landed in Gonesse where it was attacked and destroyed by villagers who thought it was a monster.

In the early years of this century the Parisian Count de Guiseux created an Aeroplane Bicycle. The device featured large wings fixed to a bicycle with a propeller linked to the drive chain of the back wheel. To have any hope of elevation, the Count had to pedal furiously, making any form of flight an exhausting prospect.

The aerial velocipede was the brainchild of Monsieur A. Goupil in the 1870s. Resembling a unicycle beneath a Zeppelin, it proved spectacularly unsuccessful despite an optimistic write-up in the French trade press.

In 1742, French nobleman the Marquis de Bacqueville launched an ambitious attempt to fly across the River Seine in Paris with paddles strapped to his arms and legs. With a huge crowd gathered below, he leaped from a window ledge on the top floor of his house and began flapping vigorously. He fell like a rock but was lucky enough to land on a pile of old clothes in a washerwoman's boat. He sustained nothing worse than a broken leg.