Félix du Temple built a steam-powered monoplane and achieved a short downhill take-off with a young sailor aboard in 1874. The craft did not sustain powered flight, but it was one of the earliest manned fixed-wing aircraft to leave the ground. It showed both the ambition and the limitations of steam-era aviation.

Du Temple's experiment belongs to the age of Verne, industrial spectacle, and imperial adventure. It helped create the cultural atmosphere in which flight could be imagined as a coming reality in fiction, illustration, and verse.