Who was the first person to invent an airaplane?

The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur, of Dayton Ohio built and flew the first successful controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air machine to carry humans aloft on December 17, 1903. The machine became known as an airplane.

It should be noted that a number of inventors around the world were working on similar inventions at the same time. The Wright brothers had the first successfully sustained and documented flight.