Ornithopter

An ornithopter is an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings, its name drawn from the Ancient Greek words for bird and wing, built by designers seeking to imitate the flapping flight of birds, bats and insects across a wide range of designs; most are built at the scale of the animals they imitate, though larger crewed versions, powered either by an engine or by the pilot's own effort, have also achieved experimental success. Leonardo da Vinci began studying bird flight in 1485 and sketched a device in which an aviator lying on a plank worked two large membranous wings using hand levers, foot pedals and a system of pulleys, and the first successful ornithopter was built in 1648 by the Polish-Italian nobleman Tytus Liwiusz Boratyni, a spring-powered prototype that lifted a cat during a test flight.