A closer look
If two wings are good, surely two hundred wings are a masterpiece of aviation logic. Horatio Frederick Phillips was obsessed with airfoil shapes in the early 1900s, leading him to construct a multiplane that looked less like an aircraft and more like a massive, airborne Venetian blind. His 1904 contraption featured rows upon rows of thin, fragile wings stacked inside a wooden frame. It actually managed to hop off the ground for about 50 feet, proving that with enough aerodynamic sheer willpower, you can briefly make a bookshelf fly.
