View source for Aileron

===Ongoing controversy===
There are still conflicting claims today over who first invented the aileron. Other 19th century engineers and scientists, including [[Charles Renard]], [[Alphonse Pénaud]], and [[Louis Pierre Mouillard|Louis Mouillard]], had described similar flight control surfaces. Another technique for lateral flight control, [[wing warping]], was also described or experimented with by several people including [[Jean-Marie Le Bris]], [[John Joseph Montgomery|John Montgomery]], [[Clement Ader]], [[Edson Fessenden Gallaudet|Edson Gallaudet]], D.D. Wells, and Hugo Mattullath.<ref name="Air & Space Mag-2009.09-Crouch" /><ref name="Harwood" /> Aviation historian [[Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith|C.H. Gibbs-Smith]] wrote that the aileron was "....one of the most remarkable inventions... of aeronautical history, which was immediately lost sight of".<ref name="Air & Space Mag-2009.09-Crouch" />

In 1906, the [[Wright brothers]] obtained a patent not for the invention of an airplane (which had existed for a number of decades in the form of gliders) but for the invention of a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces, including lateral flight control,<ref name="Flying Machine patent" /> although [[Rudder#Aircraft rudders|rudders]], [[Elevator (aircraft)|elevators]] and ailerons had previously been invented.