Claims to the first airplane flight

Claims to the first airplane flight is the long-running historical dispute over who first achieved powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine. The Wright brothers are generally accepted as the first to make sustained, controlled, powered flights, in 1903, and their longest flight that day covered 852 feet. Several other aviators or their supporters have claimed priority, among them Clement Ader with his Avion III, Gustave Whitehead with his numbered aircraft, Samuel Pierpont Langley with the Aerodrome, and Alberto Santos-Dumont with the 14-bis, who is taught in Brazil as the inventor of the airplane. The argument turns on what counts as flight, including whether takeoff must be unaided and how far an aircraft must travel, and on the quality of witness evidence for each claim.