[daviddisco]

I was surprised to see such accurate depictions of airplanes. This was four years before the Wright brothers made their first flight.

[kristopolous]

That's because those are from 1910: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:France_in_XXI_Century...

while ones from 1899, not so accurate: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:France_in_XXI_Century...

The 1899 depictions are due to earlier models from people like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_P%C3%A9naud and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Ader