Farnborough Airshow 1958, the Fairey Rotodyne was the star attraction, with its “tip-jet” powered rotors, transitioning from an helicopter vertical takeoff and hover to autogiro flight, exceeding helicopter speeds. In 1962, the last time it was held annually, the Hawker P.1127, the VTOL precursor to the Harrier jump jet, made its debut, like the corporate de Havilland DH.125 Jet Dragon, the de Havilland Trident and Vickers VC10 airliners. From 1966, foreign aircraft were allowed if that they had British major components, like the Rolls-Royce-powered Aermacchi MB-326 trainer and Fokker F27 turboprop airliner, as the Red Arrows, the RAF aerobatic display team, debuted
Claims to the first powered flight Clément Ader's Éole of 1890 was a bat-winged tractor monoplane which achieved a brief, uncontrolled hop, becoming the first heavier-than-air machine in history to take off from level ground under its own power. However his hop is not regarded as true flight because it was neither sustained nor controlled. Ader would later make a false claim of a more extended flight. In 1896, Samuel Pierpont Langley, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, had successful flights with several unpiloted models, and his "Number 6" model flew more than . From these successes, in 1898 Langley received grants from the War Department