Santos-Dumont 14-bis

The 14-bis is an early pusher biplane built by the Brazilian aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont, flown in Paris in 1906 in a series of publicly witnessed flights that, in France and much of Europe, were credited at the time as the first sustained, powered, heavier-than-air flights, in contrast to the privately conducted 1903 flights of the Wright brothers in the United States. Built with a distinctive box-kite tail mounted forward of the main wings and an open framework construction, the 14-bis was flown by Santos-Dumont himself, already a celebrated balloonist and airship builder in Paris, and its flights were witnessed and documented by the Aero Club de France, giving them an official credibility that the Wrights' earlier, less publicized flights initially lacked. The aircraft's brief but historically significant flying career ended after a crash later in 1906.