sacrilege.......how un American......or wait your from Norway
taken from
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%e9ment_AderAviation historians now discredit any claims of priority, since the flights all ended in crashes
On October 14, 1897, at Satory, the Avion rolled, took off towards the sky and, before the offical commission, flew a distance of more than 300 yards, the first verified mechanical flight, and made its inventor "the father of aviation", but the meteorological conditions were bad, and Ader evidently did not have much notion of piloting; the Avion could not completely travel the circular course which the commission required, the flying machine left the runway and was damaged. At this point the French government withdrew its funding, but kept the results secret, only reporting them as successful flights after the Wright brothers made their flight.