Paper plane
toy aircraft made of folded paper
A paper plane (also known as a paper airplane or paper dart in American English, or paper aeroplane in British English) is a toy aircraft, usually a glider, made from a folded sheet of paper or paperboard. A common design is a nose-heavy triangular form thrown like a dart.
History
Paper darts resembling modern paper planes were documented by the mid-19th century. Every Little Boy's Book, published in 1864, included instructions for folding a "paper dart" that curved through the air when thrown.
Theodore von Kármán later recalled an occasion at a conference dinner in Delft when aerodynamicist Ludwig Prandtl, while explaining the mechanics of flight, folded a paper menu into a model aircraft; it landed on the shirtfront of the French Minister of Education.
Design and construction
Paper aircraft range from simple folded darts to models assembled from cut and laminated paper components.
White Wings
Japanese engineer Yasuaki Ninomiya became prominent in paper-aircraft design after his models won the Pacific-region distance and duration categories of the First International Paper Airplane Contest in 1967. He later became the exclusive designer of AG Industries' Whitewings kits. Unlike simple folded planes, his designs used laminated paper components, and some kits were supplied with precut parts.
World records
Paper-plane competitions include events for distance and time aloft.
“Paper plane” enters the record as toy aircraft made of folded paper. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Paper, plane and aircraft can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Paper plane” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Paper, plane and aircraft provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q73767. The Library of Congress control number is sh85097594. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1864 and 1967.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Paper plane”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Paper plane primary sources, Paper plane archive and Paper research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Paper plane”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Paper plane” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.