I am guessing the since I see old tapes of people attempting to fly off the side of mountains with some crude form of glider that they based the design off a smaller hand held glider. So why don’t the “old time footage” of these attempts show a plain/glider in more of a shape like a hand held one would be? I’m sure available materials had something to do with it.
The earliest reference I can find for paper airplnes dates them to 1908-09. So it looks like the airplane came first.
Paper airplanes date back well over 1000 years in China.
My dope search did not find that one for some reason.
Thanks, Earthling
nanew nanew:D