  aircraft flight control surfaces allow a pilot to adjust and control the aircraft's flight attitude. development of an effective set of flight controls was a critical advance in the development of aircraft. early efforts at fixed-wing aircraft design succeeded in generating sufficient lift to get the aircraft off the ground, but once aloft, the aircraft proved uncontrollable, often with disastrous results. the development of effective flight controls is what allowed stable flight. this article describes the control surfaces used on a fixed-wing aircraft of conventional design. other fixed-wing aircraft configurations may use different control surfaces but the basic principles remain. the controls (stick and rudder) for rotary wing aircraft (helicopter or autogyro) accomplish the same motions about the three axes of rotation, but manipulate the rotating flight controls (main rotor disk and tail rotor disk) in a completely different manner. ==development == the wright brothers are credited with developing the first practical control surfaces. it is a main part of their patent on flying.patents *  â flying machine â o. & w. wright * u.s. patent 821,393âfor those who do not have uspto graphics plugin unlike modern control surfaces, they used wing warping.*centennial of flight - illustration of wilbur wright invention of wing warping using a cardboard box in an attempt to circumvent the wright patent, glenn curtiss made hinged control surfaces. hinged control surfaces have the advantage of not causing stresses that are a problem of wing warping and are easier to build into structures. ===axes of motion===  thumb|right||rotation around the three axes|alt="pitch" is a nose-up/nose-down rotation, "roll" is a rotation lifting one wing and lowering the other, "yaw" rotation moves the nose in a left/right direction an aircraft is free to rotate around three axes that are perpendicular to each other and intersect at its center of gravity (cg). to control position and direction a pilot must be able to control rotation about each of them. 
Aircraft_controls