Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal was a German pioneer of aviation who became known as the "flying man". He was the first person to make well-documented, repeated, successful flights with gliders, therefore making the idea of "heavier than air" a reality. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal
Russell Hawkes, in a hugely influential article on the then-nascent sport of hang gliding, "Happy Birthday, Otto Lilienthal!," National Geographic magazine, February 1972.

California hang gliders were made then of bamboo and cloth, but the essence was already there. “I began to understand what this sport is all about: To fly without awareness of the means of flight … Is this one more rash of the endemic madness that periodically breaks out in California? Or the birth of a genuine national leisure-time mania, like drag racing and surfing?”

 A lot of pilots were inspired by this article, and the first step line is still repeated by pilots who fly with wings, but no wheels.

Apollo 15 explores the mountains of the Moon page 233