1-150-161 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

'First carriage, Ariel', 1843, showing a fictitious flight of William Henson's Aerial Steam Carriage over a city. Henson patented his Aerial Steam Carriage in 1842, and although the machine would never have been able to fly (the wings would not have been strong enough to take the weight of the steam engine needed to power it), his pioneering design laid the foundations for the modern monoplane.