ZolotoyRetriever — 12 years ago(September 14, 2013 06:36 PM)

sounded a bit far-fetched, but it was actually not too far from the truth. I believe the date was a little earlier than 1851, but there was in fact a British aircraft design team (Henson, Stringfellow et al) who envisioned a steam-powered aeroplane and actually built some models, one of which apparently flew well enough for them to pursue their dream even further. But nothing came of the project when bigger models failed to perform, so the whole venture was canned. Here's a Wiki article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Samuel_Henson#Aeronautical_invent ions