Inventor William Lafayette Quick began construction of his plane a full three years before the Wright Brothers flew their plane in 1903. However, Quick could not do a flight test of his plane until he found an engine that could spin the propeller fast enough. One test flight was conducted in 1908 by his son, William Massey Quick, which achieved roughly 10 feet in altitude and between 60 to 75 feet in distance. 

While he was not the first person to fly an airplane, his design was unique for the time—being a monoplane and having the propeller at the front pulling rather than pushing the plane through the air was not common in the early days of flight. Quick would go on to improve and patent his design by adding retractable landing gears, foldable wings, and a steering wheel.