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Just over a century ago, on 08/08/08, at 18:25 hours, Wilbur Wright made the first public flight anywhere in the world. It was not in the USA, but in France, at the Hippodrome des Hunaudi�res at Le Mans, within easy reach of Paris. Over the next five months Wright made another nine exhibition flights at the same location, in a Flyer III bi-plane with a Barriquand-Marse motor.          I imagine newspapers at the time published cartoon sketches of these exciting displays (though I haven�t seen any). But who was the first fine artist to record this extraordinary breakthrough for mankind? My guess is the Czech painter and printmaker Tavik Franti�ek �imon (1877-1942).          �imon was born at �eleznice in Bohemia. He studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, where he was in 1928 appointed as Professor of Graphic Arts, a position he took over from his friend Max �vabinsk�.          Franti�ek �imon lived and worked in Paris from 1904 to 1914, when the outbreak of WWII caused him to retu