Abbas Ibn Firnas or 'Qasim Abbas Ibn Firnas (810-887), the precursor of aeronautics, was a scientist and a chemist. He was born into a family of origin arabo-berbère whose ancestors had probably participated in the conquest of Spain.

Biographers the show as a brilliant philosopher, he had to get a solid education, which means he has done scientific studies. In particular, he studied chemistry, physics and astronomy.

In his youth, he studied a little all the sciences including astronomy, chemistry and physics. We know that he worked to organize a glass manufacture obtained from the sand and rock, and he designed a system of measuring time (Al-Maqata).

He was one of the first to visit Cordoba (Muslim Spain) under the reign of Ibn Abdur Rahman Muhannad al-Amir. In this city famous, he taught music, which at that time was a branch of mathematics.

Pythagoras had laid the foundation of this scientific discipline, and people do not see why it would have been necessary to modify the approach.

But he continued to attend the court during the reign of Muhammad successor I (852-886), for his many inventions, some of which are referred to by historians. Ibn Firnas has designed a water clock, Clepsydre called Al-Maqata-Maqata. It was also the first to develop the technique of size rock crystal; He designed a armillary sphere to visualize the movement of stars and a planetarium he built his home.

But it is not for this reason qu'Ibn Firnas became famous. His celebrity, he had a dream he had the courage to try to achieve: to fly like a bird!

That dream haunted men the highest since antiquity, but apart from Daedalus and Icarus, whose only achievement is the myth, nobody had yet dared to try to "next step".

In 875, at the age of 70 years, Ibn Firnas is making wings of wood covered with a silk dress that he had topped with feathers raptors. It starts with a tower overlooking a valley, and although the landing is bad (he broke both legs), the volest globally successful: he stayed in the air for about ten minutes. He was widely observed by a huge crowd he had asked in advance. He understood thereafter his mistake: he should have added a tail at the device. He died twelve years later, in 887. His attempted robbery under its own power marked the minds of his time and even a few centuries later.