Since Icarus, people have kept trying to experiment with attaching wings to themselves like birds, but unlike Icarus, this does not work in real life. Humans do not have the muscle strength that birds have to make wings successful.
Around 400 BC in China, kites were being made as humans continued to experiment with flying. Kites are the predecessors of gliders and balloons made for flight.
Then came Leonardo da Vinci with inventions totally ahead of his time, one of which was the Ornithopter. This was one of the first actual flying machines for humans, with two wings and a tail, in the center of which lies the person holding onto handles and stirrups for their feet, with a ring around the torso:
In 1783, Jacques and Joseph Mongolfier filled a silk bag with hot air so that it floated. Eventually, they attached a basket and the first flight in a hot air balloon was taken by a sheep, a rooster and a duck, at an altitude of 6000 feet for a distance of nearly a mile. :) After that was the first manned flight in a hot air balloon.
George Cayley, in the late 1700s to mid 1800s, began a detailed study of gliders that allowed the person flying it to control its movements. He modified the wings so that air flowed over them more effectively, and added a tail for stability. He also realized that for longer flights, a power source would be needed. Cayley concluded that the best type of flying machine for a human would be a "fixed-wing aircraft with a power system for propulsion and a tail to assist in the control of the plane".
By the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, more and more scientists were experimenting with flight. The German engineer Otto Lilienthal was fascinated by and studied birds and flight. The Wright brothers based some of their work on Lilienthal's studies. Unfortunately, after more than 2500 flights, Lilienthal was killed when he lost control due to a sudden gust of wind and crashed to his death.
Flight among humans further progressed with Samuel Langley and his aerodrome, which included a steam powered engine which he realized was needed if humans wanted to fly for longer distances.
And finally, here are the Wright brothers. Through a lot of research and background knowledge, Orville and Wilbur Wright first experimented with balloons and kites, then gliders, and then the shapes of wings and such in wind tunnels. Then they began to create an engine that would propel the plane. From all this, they made the Flyer, which on December 17 1903, piloted by Orville Wright, became the first controlled, powered flight that was heavier than air.
And from the Wright brothers, humans really went...upward!
Sources: http://www.ueet.nasa.gov/StudentSite/historyofflight.html , http://cache2.artprintimages.com/p/LRG/15/1501/U2BBD00Z/art-print/bernard-picart-the-fall-of-icarus-1731.jpg , http://images.elfwood.com/art/l/e/lexilane21/icarus_72.jpg , http://seerpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/ornithopter.jpg , http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200611/images/balloon.jpg , http://www.century-of-flight.net/Aviation%20history/aviation%20timeline/images2/10.jpg , http://www.ueet.nasa.gov/StudentSite/images/flight/glider-2.jpg , http://www.flyingmachines.org/aerd4a.jpg ,
http://www.aviation-central.com/famous/images/ab1a0-ol.gif , http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/206308main_image_976_946-710.jpg
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