 Gibbs-Smith wrote that the aileron was "...one of the most remarkable inventions... of aeronautical history, which was immediately lost sight of".In 1906 the Wright brothers obtained a patent not for the invention of an airplane (which had existed for a number of decades in the form of gliders) but for the invention of a system of aerodynamic control that manipulated a flying machine's surfaces, including lateral flight control, although rudders, elevators and ailerons had previously been invented.Pairs of ailerons are typically interconnected so that when one is moved downward, the other is moved upward