Biplane

A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first aircraft to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane design, as did most aircraft in the early years of aviation. While a biplane wing structure has a structural advantage over a monoplane, it produces more drag than a similar unbraced or cantilever monoplane wing. Improved structural techniques and materials and the quest for greater speed made the biplane configuration obsolete for most purposes by the late 1930s. The tandem wing design differs in that one of the two wings is placed forward and the other aft, such that no horizontal stabilizer is necessary. The term is also occasionally used in biology, to describe the wings of some flying animals. [Biplane. Wikipedia]