Few would disagree that the airplane is one of the great marvels of modern engineering – and we could confidently call that a consensus. But consult Wikipedia about who invented it and the answer depends on the language you read. On the English-language Wikipedia, the Wright brothers reign supreme in the article titled ‘Airplane’. On Wikipedia in French, the article ‘Avion’ celebrates Clément Ader as the pioneer responsible for inventing the airplane and coining the term ‘aviation’. In Portuguese, the ‘Avião’ page cites the Wright brothers but gives prominence to Alberto Santos Dumont, who made the first self-propelled flight without the assistance of a catapult.
According to Wikipedia, it seems, the airplane has multiple inventors, each neatly aligned with linguistic boundaries. What began to me – a digital anthropologist interested in sociolinguistics – as a search for information quickly became a journey around one invention loaded with many origin stories. So, who is right? The short answer: it depends on the language you speak – and the Wikipedia you are reading.