Balloon

It was not wings like a bird's but a bubble of air that carried man to the sky for the first time. People had long believed that a balloon filled with a gas that was lighter than air would float in the air like a ship on water. The problem was to find this gas. In Fact, the first answer was simply hot air- because hot air is less dense than cool air. In 1783, the French Montgolfier brothers made a huge of astonished Parisians; it rose majestically into the air, carrying the two men.

Airships
The problem with balloons was that they simply floated where the wind took them. So in 1852, Henri Giffard made a cigar-shaped balloon and powered it with a steam engine to make it "Dirigible" or steerable. Later, with petrol engines and rigid-framed envelopes, such "airships" were the first large aircraft. By the 1920s, vast airships were carrying people across Atlantic in ocean-liner-style. But a series of disasters caused by flammable hydrogen gas spelled the end for airships.