Félix du Temple de la Croix (18 July 1823 – 3 November 1890) (usually simply called Félix du Temple) was a French naval officer and an inventor, born into an ancient Norman family. He developed some of the first flying machines and is credited with the first successful flight of a powered aircraft of any sort, a powered model plane, in 1857. and is sometimes credited with the first manned powered flight in history aboard his Monoplane in 1874. He was a contemporary of Jean-Marie Le Bris. Military life Félix du Temple entered the French Navy Academy (École Navale) in 1838. He participated in most of the conflicts during the Second French Empire, especially the Crimean War, the French intervention in Italy against Austria, and the French intervention in Mexico. At the age of 41, he returned to France, became a captain (Capitaine de Frégate), and joined the Loire Army (Armée de la Loire). A partisan of the Comte de Chambord and a legitimist (an "Ultra-Royalist"), he was forced to quit the Navy in 1876. Flying machine patent Félix du Temple accomplished the first successful flight of a powered aircraft of any sort, a model plane that was able to take-off under its own power, in 1857. There are however competing claims for the first "assisted" powered flight, with John Stringfellow's experiments in 1848. Félix du Temple patented the designs for his aerial machine in 1857, which incorporated a retractable wheel landing gear, a propeller, a 6 hp engine and a dihedral wing design, under the title "Locomotion aérienne par imitation du vol des oiseaux" ("Aerial locomotion by imitation of the flight of birds"). He built several large models together with his brother Luis. One of them, weighing 700 grams, was able to fly, first using a clockwork mechanism as an engine, and then using a miniature steam engine. The two brothers managed to make the models take off under their own power, fly a short distance and land safely. As they tried to build a machine capable of carrying a man, they realized that steam engines lacked power and were too heavy. In 1867 they designed an original "hot air" engine, which did not prove satisfactory. They also experimented with the new internal combustion gas engine design developed by Lenoir, but this also lacked the necessary power. Du Temple continued his research and finally succeeded in creating a very