Aviation history refers to the history of development of mechanical flight —from the earliest attempts in kites and gliders to powered heavier-than air, supersonic and spaceflights.

The first form of man-made flying objects were kites. The earliest known record of kite flying is from around 200 B.C. in China, when a general flew a kite over enemy territory to calculate the length of tunnel required to enter the region.

The Wright Brothers following a step by step method, discovering aerodynamic forces then controlling the flight, the brothers built and tested a series of kite and glider designs from 1900 to 1902 before attempting to build a powered design. The gliders worked, but not as well as the Wrights had expected based on the experiments and writings of their 19th century predecessors. Their first glider, launched in 1900, had only about half the lift they anticipated. Their second glider, built the following year, performed even more poorly. Rather than giving up, the Wrights constructed their own wind tunnel and created a number of sophisticated devices to measure lift and drag on the 200 wing designs they tested.