What came first, the airplane or the paper airplane?

Question

What came first, the airplane or the paper airplane?

Answer 1

The above is dead on.  However there's evidence that the ancient Egyptians had toys made of papyrus that were essentially "paper airplanes".  So, based on that, the paper airplane preceded the powered aircraft by about 2500 years...

Answer 2

The Wright brothers and others who came before them first experimented with models of their designs to assess the functionality and handling characteristics before committing the pilot to what could often be a dangerous and potentially fatal test flight. The models (like the real thing) were made from the most common materials of the day such as wood and paper. I'm talking here about powered flight because a "paper aeroplane", having no on-board power is, strictly speaking, a glider and also has no means of controlling stability or direction of flight.

Answer 3

Scotty,

Leonardo da Vinci messed with paper airplanes long before the Wright brothers flew.

Regards,

Dan