Wing warping was a method of effecting lateral or roll control on early airplanes. The wings were actually twisted in a differential fashion via cables strung through pulleys leading back to the pilot's controls. For example, to roll or bank left, the trailing edge of the left wing would be flexed upward and the trailing edge of the right wing would be flexed downward. This would cause an effective increase in the angle of attack (the angle at which a wing's airfoil meets the oncoming airflow) on the right wing, and a decrease in AOA on the left wing, which correspondingly would cause the right wing to generate more lifting force than the left. The result would be a bank in that direction about the longitudinal axis of the aircraft.

This idea was one of the Wright brothers' crucial breakthroughs. Other aviation pioneers were at a roughly comparable stage of development in terms of engines, propellers, wing lifting surfaces, and so forth. The Wright's breakthrough was to realize that an airplane would be most effectivly turned not by the rudder, like a boat, but by angling the lift vector to the inside of the turn. This is what the bank angle accomplishes. The rudder is used chiefly as an assistent...because another thing the Wrights discovered was a phenomenon called adverse yaw. Go back to the description of the left bank maneuver, described above. As this occurs, the wing with the increased angle of attack (in this case, the right one) also develops more drag. This tends to pull the nose of the plane to the right, when you're trying to turn it left. The remedy is to feed in enough left rudder control to keep the nose of the plane pointed into the oncoming airflow. This is called coordinating the turn, and is the sort of thing you'll practice a lot during your first few flying lessons, should you take them, which I hope you do, since it's a priceless experience.

The Wrights began using wing warping on the gliders they practised with in the years leading up to their first attempt at powered flight, and, being good American entrepreneurs, patented it.

To get around the patent, another aviation pioneer by the name of Glenn Curtiss hit upon the idea of using separate hinged surfaces, namely ailerons, instead of twisting the entire wing. Ailerons, (the etymology of which word I believe is French, and if this is wrong please /msg me) turned out to have a number of advantages over wing warping; they tended to be easier to rig and operate, and the wing could be made stronger and more rigid.

The Wrights, however, got thoroughly bent out of shape, and interpreted Curtiss' ailerons as a patent infringement since, despite the fact that they were mechanically different, they still operated differentially like their wing warping concept. This led to one of the nastiest and most bitter patent infringement trials in the history of this area of law, a trial which was not settled until long after the point was completely moot.

Because wing warping becomes less and less practical as aircraft speeds, weights, and structural strengths go up. Warping wings are by definition flexible wings, and as such are susceptible at higher speeds to a phenomenon called flutter, which often rips flying surfaces completely off an aircraft. During the first year of WWI, that crucible in which aviation technology was so rapidly forged, wing warping virtually vanished as a design solution. And, of course, it's completely out of the question for all-metal structures, of which the first examples appeared late in WWI.

Which is why it was so astonishing to learn that they're bringing wing warping back! Really. At Edwards AFB they're testing an F-16 with flexible wings that warp to achieve roll control. It's all made possible by the fantastic recent advances in material science; the wings are of some new composite material, which allows them to be flexible and yet still strong enough for a supersonic jet fighter. I suppose, without knowing any other details about the project, that they can achieve drag reductions with a wing that twists slightly over its' whole surface in comparison with an aileron that deflects at a greater angle...