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 Clément Ader and Sir Hiram Maxim achieved two of the first "flights," according to a 1918 article in the Journal of the Society of Automotive Engineers : " The first power[ed] flight of an Airplane was not, as many suppose, that made by Ader in France in 1897. [It was made in] the large steam-powered machine designed and built by Sir Hiram Maxim."
Both airplanes got off the ground. The French builder, Clément Ader, made two wild bat-winged machines, powered by steam engines. In 1890, the first one got a few inches into the air and skimmed the ground for fifty yards. But it had a design flaw that didn't show up: Ader hadn't provided adequate control. Still, he thought he had succeeded and immediately began a larger version. When he flew it in 1897, it barely got off the ground and then crashed.
Maxim built a huge, hundred-foot-wingspan, multi-winged machine in England. It was powered by two lightweight 180-horsepower steam engines that he had designed for it. Maxim began flight tests in 1894. On the third try the plane was powered up to forty miles per hour, left its track, flew two hundred feet and crashed.
From http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1738.htm
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