In the Beginning
The basic design that is now coming to the fore was first called the "lifting fuselage." It was also called the "all-wing" airplane and, at its inception, was seen as the feasible version of the flying wing for its time. Its time was the early 1920s.

While the German Hugo Junkers designed a biplane in 1912 with its lower wing thickened into a cabin, the entire fuselage was not itself a lifting body. He never built that version, but later built a plane that had a very large conventional fuselage with a lower wing widened on each side of the fuselage to provide additional cabin space. This was not a lifting body either, and although two prototypes were built, they both crashed, and Junkers never returned to this design.

The concept of the "lifting fuselage" or "lifting body" was developed first by Burnelli, a Texan, who began designing and building airplanes when he was still a teenager (he was eight years old when he heard about the Wright brothers' first flight).

His first such plane was built in 1921, and his last, of nine, in 1946. Every one of them was based on his original concept: turn the fuselage into an airfoil that contributes significant lift, and you have a plane that, in fact, is less expensive to build, structurally stronger, has greater capacity in terms of floor space and payload and is safer. The increased lift translated to lower wing loadings, and therefore lower takeoff and landing speeds, which offered a lower probability of mishap. The lifting-fuselage structure formed a protective cage around passengers and cargo, offering greater protection in the event of a crash.