Quelltext der Seite Aeronautics History Vivian 1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest

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|Titel=History of Aeronautics
|Autor=Vivian-Charles-E
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|Auflage=1
|Entstehungsjahr=1920
|Erscheinungsjahr=1920
|Sprache=English
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|Typ=Monographie
|Kurzbeschreibung=Geschichte der Luftfahrt bis 1920.
|ISBN=1414217021
|ISBN13=9781414217024
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|Wikilink=Aeronautics_History_-_Charles_Vivian_-_1920
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}}
:A History of Aeronautics 
:by E. Charles Vivian
:1920

==XII. THE FIRST YEARS OF CONQUEST==

It is no derogation of the work accomplished by the Wright
Brothers to say that they won the honour of the first
power-propelled flights in a heavier-than-air machine only by a
short period.  In Europe, and especially in France, independent
experiment was being conducted by Ferber, by Santos-Dumont, and
others, while in England Cody was not far behind the other
giants of those days.  The history of the early years of
controlled power flights is a tangle of half-records; there were
no chroniclers, only workers, and much of what was done goes
unrecorded perforce, since it was not set down at the time.

Before passing to survey of those early years, let it be set
down that in 1907, when the Wright Brothers had proved the
practicability of their machines, negotiations were entered into
between the brothers and the British War office.  On April 12th
1907, the apostle of military stagnation, Haldane, then War
Minister, put an end to the negotiations by declaring that 'the
War office is not disposed to enter into relations at present
with any manufacturer of aeroplanes' The state of the British
air service in 1914 at the outbreak of hostilities, is eloquent
regarding the pursuance of the  policy which Haldane initiated.

'If I talked a lot,' said Wilbur Wright once, 'I should be like
the parrot, which is the bird that speaks most and flies least.'
That attitude is emblematic of the majority of the early fliers,
and because of it the record of their achievements is incomplete
to-day.  Ferber, for instance, has left little from which to
state what he did, and that little is scattered through various
periodicals, scrappily enough.  A French army officer, Captain
Ferber was experimenting with monoplane and biplane gliders at
the beginning of the century-his work was contemporary with that
of the Wrights.  He corresponded both with Chanute and with the
Wrights, and in the end he was commissioned by the French
Ministry of War to undertake the journey to America in order to
negotiate with the Wright Brothers concerning French rights in
the patents they had acquired, and to study their work at first
hand.

Ferber's experiments in gliding began in 1899 at the Military
School at Fountainebleau, with a canvas glider of some 80 square
feet supporting surface, and weighing 65 lbs.  Two years later
he constructed a larger and more satisfactory machine, with
which he made numerous excellent glides.  Later, he constructed
an apparatus which suspended a plane from a long arm which swung
on a tower, in order that experiments might be carried out
without risk to the experimenter, and it was not until 1905 that
he attempted power-driven free flight.  He took up the Voisin
design of biplane for his power-driven flights, and virtually
devoted all his energies to the study of aeronautics.  His book,
Aviation, its Dawn and Development, is a work of scientific
value--unlike many of his contemporaries, Ferber brought to the
study of the problems of flight a trained mind, and he was
concerned equally  with the theoretical problems of aeronautics
and the practical aspects of the subject.

After Bleriot's successful cross-Channel flight, it was proposed
to offer a prize of L1,000 for the feat which C. S. Rolls
subsequently accomplished (starting from the English side of the
Channel), a flight from Boulogne to Dover and back; in place of
this, however, an aviation week at Boulogne was organised, but,
although numerous aviators were invited to compete, the
condition of the flying grounds was such that no competitions
took place.  Ferber was virtually the only one to do any flying
at Boulogne, and at the outset he had his first accident; after
what was for those days a good flight, he made a series of
circles with his machine, when it suddenly struck the ground,
being partially wrecked.  Repairs were carried out, and Ferber
resumed his exhibition flights, carrying on up to Wednesday,
September 22nd, 1909.  On that day he remained in the air for
half an hour, and, as he was about to land, the machine struck a
mound of earth and overturned, pinning Ferber under the weight
of the motor.  After being extricated, Ferber seemed to show
little concern at the accident, but in a few minutes he
complained of great pain, when he was conveyed to the ambulance
shed on the ground.

'I was foolish,' he told those who were with him there.  'I was
flying too low.  It was my own fault and it will be a severe
lesson to me.  I wanted to turn round, and was only five metres
from the ground.'  A little after this, he got up from the couch
on which he had been placed, and almost immediately collapsed,
dying five minutes later.

Ferber's chief contemporaries in France were Santos-Dumont, of
airship fame, Henri and Maurice Farman, Hubert Latham, Ernest
Archdeacon, and Delagrange.  These are names that come at once to
mind, as does that of Bleriot, who accomplished the second great
feat of power-driven flight, but as a matter of fact the years
1903-10 are filled with a little host of investigators and
experimenters, many of whom, although their names do not survive
to any extent, are but a very little way behind those mentioned
here in enthusiasm and devotion.  Archdeacon and Gabriel Voisin,
the former of whom took to heart the success achieved by the
Wright Brothers, co-operated in experiments in gliding. 
Archdeacon constructed a glider in box-kite fashion, and Voisin
experimented with it on the Seine, the glider being towed by a
motorboat to attain the necessary speed.  It was Archdeacon who
offered a cup for the first straight flight of 200 metres, which
was won by Santos-Dumont, and he also combined with Henri Deutsch
de la Meurthe in giving the prize for the first circular flight
of a mile, which was won by Henry Farman on January 13th, 1908.

A history of the development of aviation in France in these, the
strenuous years, would fill volumes in itself.  Bleriot was
carrying out experiments with a biplane glider on the Seine, and
Robert Esnault-Pelterie was working on the lines of the Wright
Brothers, bringing American practice to France.  In America
others besides the Wrights had wakened to the possibilities of
heavier-than-air flight; Glenn Curtiss, in company with Dr
Alexander Graham Bell, with J. A. D. McCurdy, and with F. W.
Baldwin, a Canadian engineer, formed the Aerial Experiment
Company, which built a number of aeroplanes, most famous of
which were the 'June Bug,' the 'Red Wing,' and the 'White Wing.'
In 1908 the 'June Bug 'won a cup presented by the Scientific
American--it was the first prize offered in America in
connection with aeroplane flight.

Among the little group of French experimenters in these first
years of practical flight, Santos-Dumont takes high rank.  He
built his 'No. 14 bis' aeroplane in biplane form, with two
superposed main plane surfaces, and fitted it with an
eight-cylinder Antoinette motor driving a two-bladed aluminium
propeller, of which the blades were 6 feet only from tip to tip. 
The total lift surface of 860 square feet was given with a
wing-span of a little under 40 feet, and the weight of the
complete machine was 353 lbs., of which the engine weighed 158
lbs.  In July of 1906 Santos-Dumont flew a distance of a few
yards in this machine, but damaged it in striking the ground; on
October 23rd of the same year he made a flight of nearly 200
feet--which might have been longer, but that he feared a crowd
in front of the aeroplane and cut off his ignition.  This may be
regarded as the first effective flight in Europe, and by it
Santos-Dumont takes his place as one of the chief--if not the
chief--of the pioneers of the first years of practical flight,
so far as Europe is concerned.

Meanwhile, the Voisin Brothers, who in 1904 made cellular kites
for Archdeacon to test by towing on the Seine from a motor
launch, obtained data for the construction of the aeroplane
which Delagrange and Henry Farman were to use later.  The Voisin
was a biplane, constructed with due regard to the designs of
Langley, Lilienthal, and other earlier experimenters--both the
Voisins and M. Colliex, their engineer, studied Lilienthal
pretty exhaustively in getting out their design, though their
own researches were very thorough as well.  The weight of this
Voisin biplane was about 1,450 lbs., and its maximum speed was
some 38 to 40 miles per hour, the total supporting surface being
about 535 square feet.  It differed from the Wright design in
the possession of a tail-piece, a characteristic which marked
all the French school of early design as in opposition to the
American.  The Wright machine got its longitudinal stability by
means of the main planes and the elevating planes, while the
Voisin type added a third factor of stability in its sailplanes.
Further, the Voisins fitted their biplane with a wheeled
undercarriage, while the Wright machine, being fitted only with
runners, demanded a launching rail for starting.  Whether a
machine should be tailless or tailed was for some long time
matter for acute controversy, which in the end was settled by
the fitting of a tail to the Wright machines-France won the
dispute by the concession.

Henry Farman, who began his flying career with a Voisin machine,
evolved from it the aeroplane which bore his name, following the
main lines of the Voisin type fairly closely, but making
alterations in the controls, and in the design of the
undercarriage, which was somewhat elaborated, even to the
inclusion of shock absorbers.  The seven-cylinder 50 horse-power
Gnome rotary engine was fitted to the Farman machine--the
Voisins had fitted an eight-cylinder Antoinette, giving 50
horse-power at 1,100 revolutions per minute, with direct drive
to the propeller.  Farman reduced the weight of the machine from
the 1,450 lbs. of the Voisins to some 1,010 lbs. or
thereabouts, and the supporting area to 450 square feet.  This
machine won its chief fame with Paulhan as pilot in the famous
London to Manchester flight--it is to be remarked, too, that
Farman himself was the first man in Europe to accomplish a
flight of a mile.

Other notable designs of these early days were the 'R.E.P.',
Esnault Pelterie's machine, and the Curtiss-Herring biplane.  Of
these Esnault Pelterie's was a monoplane, designed in that form
since Esnault Pelterie had found by experiment that the wire
used in bracing offers far more resistance to the air than its
dimensions would seem to warrant.  He built the wings of
sufficient strength to stand the strain of flight without
bracing wires, and dependent only for their support on the
points of attachment to the body of the machine; for the rest,
it carried its propeller in front of the planes, and both
horizontal and vertical rudders at the stern--a distinct
departure from the Wright and similar types.  One wheel only was
fixed under the body where the undercarriage exists on a normal
design, but light wheels were fixed, one at the extremity of
each wing, and there was also a wheel under the tail portion of
the machine.  A single lever actuated all the controls for
steering.  With a supporting surface of 150 square feet the
machine weighed 946 lbs., about 6.4 lbs. per square foot of
lifting surface.

The Curtiss biplane, as flown by Glenn Curtiss at the Rheims
meeting, was built with a bamboo framework, stayed by means of
very fine steel-stranded cables.  A--then--novel feature of the
machine was the moving of the ailerons by the pilot leaning to
one side or the other in his seat, a light, tubular arm-rest
being pressed  by his body when he leaned to one side or the
other, and thus operating the movement of the ailerons employed
for tilting the plane when turning.  A steering-wheel fitted
immediately in front of the pilot's seat served to operate a
rear steering-rudder when the wheel was turned in either
direction, while pulling back the wheel altered the inclination
of the front elevating planes, and so gave lifting or depressing
control of the plane.

This machine ran on three wheels before leaving the ground, a
central undercarriage wheel being fitted in front, with two more
in line with a right angle line drawn through the centre of the
engine crank at the rear end of the crank-case.  The engine was
a  35 horsepower Vee design, water cooled, with overhead inlet
and exhaust valves, and Bosch high-tension magneto ignition. 
The total weight of the plane in flying order was about 700 lbs.

As great a figure in the early days as either Ferber or
Santos-Dumont was Louis Bleriot, who, as early as 1900 built a
flapping-wing model, this before ever he came to experimenting
with the Voisin biplane type of glider on the Seine.  Up to 1906
he had built four biplanes of his own design, and in March of
1907 he built his first monoplane, to wreck it only a few days
after completion in an accident from which he had a fortunate
escape.  His next machine was a double monoplane, designed after
Langley's precept, to a certain extent, and this was totally
wrecked in September of 1907.  His seventh machine, a
monoplane, was built within a month of this accident, and with
this he had a number of mishaps, also achieving some good
flights, including one in which he made a turn.  It was wrecked
in December of 1907, whereupon he built another monoplane on
which, on July 6th, 1908, Bleriot made a flight lasting eight
and a half minutes.  In October of that year he flew the machine
from Toury to Artenay and returned on it--this was just a day
after Farman's first cross-country flight--but, trying to repeat
the success five days later, Bleriot collided with a tree in a
fog and wrecked the machine past repair.  Thereupon he set about
building his eleventh machine, with which he was to achieve the
first flight across the English channel.

Henry Farman, to whom reference has already been made, was
engaged with his two brothers, Maurice and Richard, in the
motor-car business, and turned to active interest in flying in
1907, when the Voisin firm built his first biplane on the
box-kite principle.  In July of 1908 he won a prize of L400 for
a flight of thirteen miles, previously having completed the
first kilometre flown in Europe with a passenger, the said
passenger being Ernest Archdeaon. In September of 1908 Farman
put up a speed record of forty miles an hour in a flight lasting
forty minutes.

Santos-Dumont produced the famous 'Demoiselle' monoplane early
in 1909, a tiny machine in which the pilot had his seat in a
sort of miniature cage under the main plane.  It was a very
fast, light little machine but was difficult to fly, and owing
to its small wingspread was unable to glide at a reasonably safe
angle.  There has probably never been a cheaper flying machine
to build than the 'Demoiselle,' which could be so upset as to
seem completely wrecked, and then repaired ready for further
flight by a couple of hours' work.  Santos-Dumont retained no
patent in the design, but gave it out freely to any one who
chose to build 'Demoiselles'; the vogue of the pattern was
brief, owing to the difficulty of piloting the machine.

These were the years of records, broken almost as soon as made. 
There was Farman's mile, there was the flight of the Comte de
Lambert over the Eiffel Tower, Latham's flight at Blackpool in a
high wind, the Rheims records, and then Henry Farman's flight of
four hours later in 1909, Orville Wright's height record of
1,640 feet, and Delagrange's speed record of 49.9 miles per
hour.  The coming to fame of the Gnome rotary engine helped in
the making of these records to a very great extent, for in this
engine was a prime mover which gave the reliability that
aeroplane builders and pilots had been searching for, but
vainly.  The Wrights and Glenn Curtiss, of course, had their own
designs of engine, but the Gnome, in spite of its lack of
economy in fuel and oil, and its high cost, soon came to be
regarded as the best power plant for flight.

Delagrange, one of the very good pilots of the early days,
provided a curious insight to the way in which flying was
regarded, at the opening of the Juvisy aero aerodrome in May of
1909.  A huge crowd had gathered for the first day's flying, and
nine machines were announced to appear, but only three were
brought out.  Delagrange made what was considered an indifferent
little flight, and another pilot, one De Bischoff, attempted to
rise, but could not get his machine off the ground.  Thereupon
the crowd of 30,000 people lost their tempers, broke down the
barriers surrounding the flying course, and hissed the
officials, who were quite unable to maintain order. Delagrange,
however, saved the situation by making a circuit of the course
at a height of thirty feet from the ground, which won him rounds
of cheering and restored the crowd to good humour.  Possibly the
smash achieved by Rougier, the famous racing motorist, who
crashed his Voisin biplane after Delagrange had made his
circuit, completed the enjoyment of the spectators.  Delagrange,
flying at Argentan in June of 1909, made a flight of four
kilometres at a height of sixty feet; for those days this was a
noteworthy performance.  Contemporary with this was Hubert
Latham's flight of an hour and seven minutes on an Antoinette
monoplane; this won the adjective 'magnificent' from
contemporary recorders of aviation.

Viewing the work of the little group of French experimenters, it
is, at this length of time from their exploits, difficult to see
why they carried the art as far as they did.  There was in it
little of satisfaction, a certain measure of fame, and
practically no profit--the giants of those days got very little
for their pains.  Delagrange's experience at the opening of the
Juvisy ground was symptomatic of the way in which flight was
regarded by the great mass of people--it was a sport, and
nothing more, but a sport without the dividends attaching to
professional football or horse-racing.  For a brief period,
after the Rheims meeting, there was a golden harvest to be
reaped by the best of the pilots.  Henry Farman asked L2,000 for
a week's exhibition flying in England, and Paulhan asked half
that sum, but a rapid increase in the number of capable pilots,
together with the fact that most flying meetings were financial
failures, owing to great expense in organisation and the
doubtful factor of the weather, killed this goose before many
golden eggs had been gathered in by the star aviators.  Besides,
as height and distance records were broken one after another, it
became less and less necessary to pay for entrance to an
aerodrome in order to see a flight--the thing grew too big for a
mere sports ground.

Long before Rheims and the meeting there, aviation had grown too
big for the chronicling of every individual effort. In that
period of the first days of conquest of the air, so much was
done by so many whose names are now half-forgotten that it is
possible only to pick out the great figures and make brief
reference to their achievements and the machines with which they
accomplished so much, pausing to note such epoch-making events
as the London-Manchester flight, Bleriot's Channel crossing, and
the Rheims meeting itself, and then passing on beyond the days
of individual records to the time when the machine began to
dominate the man.  This latter because, in the early days, it
was heroism to trust life to the planes that were turned out
--the 'Demoiselle' and the Antoinette machine that Latham used
in his attempt to fly the Channel are good examples of the
flimsiness of early types--while in the later period, that of
the war and subsequently, the heroism turned itself in a
different--and nobler-direction.  Design became standardised,
though not perfected.  The domination of the machine may best be
expressed by contrasting the way in which machines came to be
regarded as compared with the men who flew them:  up to 1909,
flying enthusiasts talked of Farman, of Bleriot, of Paulhan,
Curtiss, and of other men; later, they began to talk of the
Voisin, the Deperdussin, and even to the Fokker, the Avro, and
the Bristol type.  With the standardising of the machine, the
days of the giants came to an end.



==XIII. FIRST FLIERS IN ENGLAND==

Certain experiments made in England by Mr Phillips seem to have
come near robbing the Wright Brothers of the honour of the first
flight; notes made by Colonel J. D. Fullerton on the Phillips
flying machine show that in 1893 the first machine was built
with a length of 25 feet, breadth of 22 feet, and height of 11
feet, the total weight, including a 72 lb. load, being 420 lbs. 
The machine was fitted with some fifty wood slats, in place of
the single supporting surface of the monoplane or two superposed
surfaces of the biplane, these slats being fixed in a steel
frame so that the whole machine rather resembled a Venetian
blind.  A steam engine giving about 9 horse-power provided the
motive power for the six-foot diameter propeller which drove the
machine.  As it was not possible to put a passenger in control
as pilot, the machine was attached to a central post by wire
guys and run round a circle 100 feet in diameter, the track
consisting of wooden planking 4 feet wide.  Pressure of air
under the slats caused the machine to rise some two or three
feet above the track when sufficient velocity had been attained,
and the best trials were made on June 19th 1893, when at a speed
of 40 miles an hour, with a total load of 385 lbs., all the
wheels were off the ground for a distance of 2,000 feet.

In 1904 a full-sized machine was constructed by Mr Phillips,
with a total weight, including that of the pilot, of 600 lbs. 
The machine was designed to lift when it had attained a velocity
of 50 feet per second, the motor fitted giving 22 horse-power. 
On trial, however, the longitudinal equilibrium was found to be
defective, and a further design was got out, the third machine
being completed in 1907.  In this the wood slats were held in
four parallel container frames, the weight of the machine,
excluding the pilot, being 500 lbs.  A motor similar to that
used in the 1904 machine was fitted, and the machine was
designed to lift at a velocity of about 30 miles an hour, a
seven-foot propeller doing the driving.  Mr Phillips tried out
this machine in a field about 400 yards across.  'The machine
was started close to the hedge, and rose from the ground when
about 200 yards had been covered.  When the machine touched the
ground again, about which there could be no doubt, owing to the
terrific jolting, it did not run many yards.  When it came to
rest I was about ten yards from the boundary.  Of course, I
stopped the engine before I commenced to descend.'[*]

[*] Aeronautical Journal, July, 1908. 

S. F. Cody, an American by birth, aroused the attention not only
of the British public, but of the War office and Admiralty as
well, as early as 1905 with his man-lifting kites.  In that year
a height of 1,600 feet was reached by one of these box-kites,
carrying a man, and later in the same year one Sapper Moreton,
of the Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers (the parent of the
Royal Flying Corps) remained for an hour at an altitude of 2,600
feet.  Following on the success of these kites, Cody constructed
an aeroplane which he designated a 'power kite,' which was in
reality a biplane that made the first flight in Great Britain. 
Speaking before the Aeronautical Society in 1908, Cody said that
'I have accomplished one thing that I hoped for very much, that
is, to be the first man to fly in Great Britain.... I made a
machine that left the ground the first time out; not high,
possibly five or six inches only.  I might have gone higher if I
wished.  I made some five flights in all, and the last flight
came to grief.... On the morning of the accident I went out
after adjusting my propellers at 8 feet pitch running at 600
(revolutions per minute).  I think that I flew at about
twenty-eight miles per hour.  I had 50 horsepower motor power in
the engine.  A bunch of trees, a flat common above these trees,
and from this flat there is a slope goes down... to another clump
of trees.  Now, these clumps of trees are a quarter of a mile
apart or thereabouts.... I was accused of doing nothing but
jumping with my machine, so I got a bit agitated and went to fly.

I went out this morning with an easterly wind, and left the
ground at the bottom of the hill and struck the ground at the
top, a distance of 74 yards.  That proved beyond a doubt that the
machine would fly--it flew uphill.  That was the most talented
flight the machine did, in my opinion.  Now, I turned round at
the top and started the machine and left the ground--remember, a
ten mile wind was blowing at the time.  Then, 60 yards from where
the men let go, the machine went off in this direction
(demonstrating)--I make a line now where I hoped to land--to cut
these trees off at that side and land right off in here.  I got
here somewhat excited, and started down and saw these trees right
in front of me.  I did not want to smash my head rudder to
pieces, so I raised it again and went up.  I got one wing direct
over that clump of trees, the right wing over the trees, the left
wing free; the wind, blowing with me, had to lift over these
trees.  So I consequently got a false lift on the right side and
no lift on the left side.  Being only about 8 feet from the tree
tops, that turned my machine up like that (demonstrating).  This
end struck the ground shortly after I had passed the trees.  I
pulled the steering handle over as far as I could.  Then I faced
another bunch of trees right in front of me.  Trying to avoid
this second bunch of trees I turned the rudder, and turned it
rather sharp.  That side of the machine struck, and it crumpled
up like so much tissue paper, and the machine spun round and
struck the ground that way on, and the framework was considerably
wrecked.  Now, I want to advise all aviators not to try to fly
with the wind and to cross over any big clump of earth or any
obstacle of any description unless they go square over the top of
it, because the lift is enormous crossing over anything like
that, and in coming the other way against the wind it would be
the same thing when you arrive at the windward side of the
obstacle.  That is a point I did not think of, and had I thought
of it I would have been more cautious.'

This Cody machine was a biplane with about 40 foot span, the
wings being about 7 feet in depth with about 8 feet between
upper and lower wing surfaces.  'Attached to the extremities of
the lower planes are two small horizontal planes or rudders,
while a third small vertical plane is fixed over the centre of
the upper plane.'  The tail-piece and principal rudder were
fitted behind the main body of the machine, and a horizontal
rudder plane was rigged out in front, on two supporting arms
extending from the centre of the machine.  The small end-planes
and the vertical plane were used in conjunction with the main
rudder when turning to right or left, the inner plane being
depressed on the turn, and the outer one correspondingly raised,
while the vertical plane, working in conjunction, assisted in
preserving stability.  Two two-bladed propellers were driven by
an eight-cylinder 50 horse-power Antoinette motor.  With this
machine Cody made his first flights over Laffan's plain, being
then definitely attached to the Balloon Section of the Royal
Engineers as military aviation specialist.

There were many months of experiment and trial, after the
accident which Cody detailed in the statement given above, and
then, on May 14th, 1909, Cody took the air and made a flight of
1,200 yards with entire success.  Meanwhile A. V. Roe was
experimenting at Lea Marshes with a triplane of rather curious
design the pilot having his seat between two sets of three
superposed planes, of which the front planes could be tilted and
twisted while the machine was in motion.  He comes but a little
way after Cody in the chronology of early British experimenters,
but Cody, a born inventor, must be regarded as the pioneer of
the present century so far as Britain is concerned.  He was
neither engineer nor trained mathematician, but he was a good
rule-of-thumb mechanic and a man of pluck and perseverance; he
never strove to fly on an imperfect machine, but made alteration
after alteration in order to find out what was improvement and
what was not, in consequence of which it was said of him that he
was 'always satisfied with his alterations.'

By July of 1909 he had fitted an 80 horse-power motor to his
biplane, and with this he made a flight of over four miles over
Laffan's Plain on July 21st.  By August he was carrying
passengers, the first being Colonel Capper of the R.E. Balloon
Section, who flew with Cody for over two miles, and on September
8th, 1909, he made a world's record cross-country flight of
over forty miles in sixty-six minutes, taking a course from
Laffan's Plain over Farnborough, Rushmoor, and Fleet, and back
to Laffan's Plain.  He was one of the competitors in the 1909
Doncaster Aviation Meeting, and in 1910 he competed at
Wolverhampton, Bournemouth, and Lanark.  It was on June 7th,
1910, that he qualified for his brevet, No. 9, on the Cody
biplane.

He built a machine which embodied all the improvements for which
he had gained experience, in 1911, a biplane with a length of
35 feet and span of 43 feet, known as the 'Cody cathedral' on
account of its rather cumbrous appearance.  With this, in 1911,
he won the two Michelin trophies presented in England, completed
the Daily Mail circuit of Britain, won the Michelin
cross-country prize in 1912 and altogether, by the end of 1912,
had covered more than 7,000 miles with the machine.  It was
fitted with a 120 horse-power Austro-Daimler engine, and was
characterised by an exceptionally wide range of speed--the great
wingspread gave a slow landing speed.

A few of his records may be given:  in 1910, flying at Laffan's
Plain in his biplane, fitted with a 50-60 horsepower Green
engine, on December 31st, he broke the records for distance and
time by flying 185 miles, 787 yards, in 4 hours 37 minutes.  On
October 31st, 1911, he beat this record by flying for 5 hours 15
minutes, in which period he covered 261 miles 810 yards with a 60
horse-power Green engine fitted to his biplane.  In 1912,
competing in the British War office tests of military
aeroplanes, he won the L5,000 offered by the War Office.  This
was in competition with no less than twenty-five other machines,
among which were the since-famous Deperdussin, Bristol,
Flanders, and Avro types, as well as the Maurice Farman and
Bleriot makes of machine.  Cody's remarkable speed range was
demonstrated in these trials, the speeds of his machine varying
between 72.4 and 48.5 miles per hour.  The machine was the only
one delivered for the trials by air, and during the three hours'
test imposed on all competitors a maximum height of 5,000 feet
was reached, the first thousand feet being achieved in three and
a half minutes.

During the summer of 1913 Cody put his energies into the
production of a large hydro-biplane, with which he intended to
win the L5,000 prize offered by the Daily Mail to the first
aviator to fly round Britain on a waterplane.  This machine was
fitted with landing gear for its tests, and, while flying it
over Laffan's Plain on August 7th, 1913, with Mr W. H. B. Evans
as passenger, Cody met with the accident that cost both
him and his passenger their lives.  Aviation lost a great figure
by his death, for his plodding, experimenting, and dogged
courage not only won him the fame that came to a few of the
pilots of those days, but also advanced the cause of flying very
considerably and contributed not a little to the sum of
knowledge in regard to design and construction.

Another figure of the early days was A. V. Roe, who came from
marine engineering to the motor industry and aviation in 1905. 
In 1906 he went out to Colorado, getting out drawings for the
Davidson helicopter, and in 1907 having returned to England, he
obtained highest award out of 200 entries in a model aeroplane
flying competition.  From the design of this model he built a
full-sized machine, and made a first flight on it, fitted with a
24 horse-power Antoinette engine, in June of 1908 Later, he
fitted a 9 horsepower motor-cycle engine to a triplane of his
own design, and with this made a number of short flights; he got
his flying brevet on a triplane with a motor of 35 horse-power,
which, together with a second triplane, was entered for the
Blackpool aviation meeting of 1910 but was burnt in transport to
the meeting.  He was responsible for the building of the first
seaplane to rise from English waters, and may be counted the
pioneer of the tractor type of biplane.  In 1913 he built a
two-seater tractor biplane with 80 horse-power engine, a machine
which for some considerable time ranked as a leader of design. 
Together with E. V. Roe and H. V. Roe, 'A. V.' controlled the
Avro works, which produced some of the most famous training
machines of the war period in a modification of the original 80
horse-power tractor.  The first of the series of Avro tractors
to be adopted by the military authorities was the 1912 biplane, a
two-seater fitted with 50 horsepower engine.  It was the first
tractor biplane with a closed fuselage to be used for military
work, and became standard for the type.  The Avro seaplane, of I 
100 horse-power (a fourteen-cylinder Gnome engine was used) was
taken up by the British Admiralty in 1913.  It had a length of 34
feet and a wing-span of 50 feet, and was of the twin-float type.

Geoffrey de Havilland, though of later rank, counts high among
designers of British machines.  He qualified for his brevet as
late as February, 1911, on a biplane of his own construction, and
became responsible for the design of the BE2, the first
successful British Government biplane.  On this he made a British
height record of 10,500 feet over Salisbury Plain, in August of
1912, when he took up Major Sykes as passenger.  In the war
period he was one of the principal designers of fighting and
reconnaissance machines. 

F. Handley Page, who started in business as an aeroplane
builder in 1908, having works at Barking, was one of the
principal exponents of the inherently stable machine, to which
he devoted practically all his experimental work up to the
outbreak of war.  The experiments were made with various
machines, both of monoplane and biplane type, and of these one
of the best was a two-seater monoplane built in 1911, while a
second was a larger machine, a biplane, built in 1913 and fitted
with a 110 horse-power Anzani engine.  The war period brought out
the giant biplane with which the name of Handley Page is most
associated, the twin-engined night-bomber being a familiar
feature of the later days of the war; the four-engined bomber had
hardly had a chance of proving itself under service conditions
when the war came to an end.

Another notable figure of the early period was 'Tommy' Sopwith,
who took his flying brevet at Brooklands in November of 1910,
and within four days made the British duration record of 108
miles in 3 hours 12 minutes.  On December 18th, 1910, he won the
Baron de Forrest prize of L4,000 for the longest flight from
England to the Continent, flying from Eastchurch to Tirlemont,
Belgium, in three hours, a distance of 161 miles.  After two
years of touring in America, he returned to England and
established a flying school.  In 1912 he won the first aerial
Derby, and in 1913 a machine of his design, a tractor biplane,
raised the British height record to 13,000 feet (June 16th, at
Brooklands).  First as aviator, and then as designer, Sopwith has
done much useful work in aviation.

These are but a few, out of a host who contributed to the
development of flying in this country, for, although France may
be said to have set the pace as regards development, Britain was
not far behind.  French experimenters received far more
Government aid than did the early British aviators and
designers--in the early days the two were practically
synonymous, and there are many stories of the very early days at
Brooklands, where, when funds ran low, the ardent spirits
patched their trousers with aeroplane fabric and went on with
their work with Bohemian cheeriness.  Cody, altering and
experimenting on Laffan's Plain, is the greatest figure of them
all, but others rank, too, as giants of the early days, before
the war brought full recognition of the aeroplane's
potentialities.

one of the first men actually to fly in England, Mr J. C. T. 
Moore-Brabazon, was a famous figure in the days of exhibition
flying, and won his reputation mainly through being first to fly
a circular mile on a machine designed and built in Great Britain
and piloted by a British subject.  Moore-Brabazon's earliest
flights were made in France on a Voisin biplane in 1908, and he
brought this machine over to England, to the Aero Club grounds
at Shellness, but soon decided that he would pilot a British
machine instead.  An order was placed for a Short machine, and
this, fitted with a 50-60 horse-power Green engine, was used for
the circular mile, which won a prize of L1,000 offered by the
Daily Mail, the feat being accomplished on October 30th, 1909.
Five days later, Moore-Brabazon achieved the longest flight up
to that time accomplished on a British-built machine, covering
three and a half miles.  In connection with early flying in
England, it is claimed that A. V. Roe, flying 'Avro B,',' on
June 8th, 1908, was actually the first man to leave the ground,
this being at Brooklands, but in point of fact Cody antedated
him.

No record of early British fliers could be made without the name
of C. S. Rolls, a son of Lord Llangattock, on June 2nd, 1910,
he flew across the English Channel to France, until he was duly
observed over French territory, when he returned to England
without alighting.  The trip was made on a Wright biplane, and
was the third Channel crossing by air, Bleriot having made the
first, and Jacques de Lesseps the second.  Rolls was first to
make the return journey in one trip.  He was eventually killed
through the breaking of the tail-plane of his machine in
descending at a flying meeting at Bournemouth.  The machine was
a Wright biplane, but the design of the tail-plane--which, by
the way, was an addition to the machine, and was not even
sanctioned by the Wrights--appears to have been carelessly
executed, and the plane itself was faulty in construction.  The
breakage caused the machine to overturn, killing Rolls, who was
piloting it.



==XIV. RHEIMS, AND AFTER==

The foregoing brief--and necessarily incomplete--survey of the
early British group of fliers has taken us far beyond some of
the great events of the early days of successful flight, and it
is necessary to go back to certain landmarks in the history of
aviation, first of which is the great meeting at Rheims in 1909. 
Wilbur Wright had come to Europe, and, flying at Le Mans and
Pau--it was on August 8th, 1908, that Wilbur Wright made the
first of his ascents in Europe--had stimulated public interest
in flying in France to a very great degree.  Meanwhile, Orville
Wright, flying at Fort Meyer, U.S.A., with Lieutenant Selfridge
as a passenger, sustained an accident which very nearly cost him
his life through the transmission gear of the motor breaking. 
Selfridge was killed and Orville Wright was severely injured--it
was the first fatal accident with a Wright machine.

Orville Wright made a flight of over an hour on September 9th,
1908, and on December 31st of that year Wilbur flew for 2 hours
19 minutes.  Thus, when the Rheims meeting was organised--more
notable because it was the first of its kind, there were already
records waiting to be broken.  The great week opened on August
22nd, there being thirty entrants, including all the most famous
men among the early fliers in France.  Bleriot, fresh from his
Channel conquest, was there, together with Henry Farman,
Paulhan, Curtiss, Latham, and the Comte de Lambert, first pupil
of the Wright machine in Europe to achieve a reputation as an
aviator.

'To say that this week marks an epoch in the history of the
world is to state a platitude.  Nevertheless, it is worth
stating, and for us who are lucky enough to be at Rheims during
this week there is a solid satisfaction in the idea that we are
present at the making of history.  In perhaps only a few years
to come the competitions of this week may look pathetically
small and the distances and speeds may appear paltry. 
Nevertheless, they are the first of their kind, and that is
sufficient.'

So wrote a newspaper correspondent who was present at the famous
meeting, and his words may stand, being more than mere
journalism; for the great flying week which opened on August
22nd, 1909, ranks as one of the great landmarks in the history
of heavier-than-air flight.  The day before the opening of the
meeting a downpour of rain spoilt the flying ground; Sunday
opened with a fairly high wind, and in a lull M. Guffroy turned
out on a crimson R.E.P. monoplane, but the wheels of his
undercarriage stuck in the mud and prevented him from rising in
the quarter of an hour allowed to competitors to get off the
ground.  Bleriot, following, succeeded in covering one side of
the triangular course, but then came down through grit in the
carburettor.  Latham, following him with thirteen as the number
of his machine, experienced his usual bad luck and came to earth
through engine trouble after a very short flight.  Captain
Ferber, who, owing to military regulations, always flew under
the name of De Rue, came out next with his Voisin biplane, but
failed to get off the ground; he was followed by Lefebvre on a
Wright biplane, who achieved the success of the morning by
rounding the course--a distance of six and a quarter miles--in
nine minutes with a twenty mile an hour wind blowing.  His
flight finished the morning.

Wind and rain kept competitors out of the air until the evening,
when Latham went up, to be followed almost immediately by the
Comte de Lambert.  Sommer, Cockburn (the only English
competitor), Delagrange, Fournier, Lefebvre, Bleriot,
Bunau-Varilla, Tissandier, Paulhan, and Ferber turned out after
the first two, and the excitement of the spectators at seeing so
many machines in the air at one time provoked wild cheering. 
The only accident of the day came when Bleriot damaged his
propeller in colliding with a haycock.

The main results of the day were that the Comte de Lambert flew
30 kilometres in 29 minutes 2 seconds; Lefebvre made the
ten-kilometre circle of the track in just a second under 9
minutes, while Tissandier did it in 9 1/4 minutes, and Paulhan
reached a height of 230 feet.  Small as these results seem to us
now, and ridiculous as may seem enthusiasm at the sight of a few
machines in the air at the same time, the Rheims Meeting remains
a great event, since it proved definitely to the whole world
that the conquest of the air had been achieved.

Throughout the week record after record was made and broken. 
Thus on the Monday, Lefebvre put up a record for rounding the
course and Bleriot beat it, to be beaten in turn by Glenn
Curtiss on his Curtiss-Herring biplane.  On that day, too,
Paulhan covered 34 3/4 miles in 1 hour 6 minutes.  On the next
day, Paulhan on his Voisin biplane took the air with Latham, and
Fournier followed, only to smash up his machine by striking an
eddy of wind which turned him over several times.  On the
Thursday, one of the chief events was Latham's 43 miles
accomplished in 1 hour 2 minutes in the morning and his 96.5
miles in 2 hours 13 minutes in the afternoon, the latter flight
only terminated by running out of petrol.  On the Friday, the
Colonel Renard French airship, which had flown over the ground
under the pilotage of M. Kapfarer, paid Rheims a second visit;
Latham manoeuvred round the airship on his Antoinette and finally
left it far behind.  Henry Farman won the Grand Prix de Champagne
on this day, covering 112 miles in 3 hours, 4 minutes, 56
seconds, Latham being second with his 96.5 miles flight, and
Paulhan third.

On the Saturday, Glenn Curtiss came to his own, winning the
Gordon-Bennett Cup by covering 20 kilometres in 15 minutes
50.6 seconds.  Bleriot made a good second with 15 minutes 56.2
seconds as his time, and Latham and Lefebvre were third and
fourth.  Farman carried off the passenger prize by carrying two
passengers a distance of 6 miles in 10 minutes 39 seconds.  On
the last day Delagrange narrowly escaped serious accident
through the bursting of his propeller while in the air, Curtiss
made a new speed record by travelling at the rate of over 50
miles an hour, and Latham, rising to 500 feet, won the altitude
prize.

These are the cold statistics of the meeting; at this length of
time it is difficult to convey any idea of the enthusiasm of the
crowds over the achievements of the various competitors, while
the incidents of the week, comic and otherwise, are nearly
forgotten now even by those present in this making of history. 
Latham's great flight on the Thursday was rendered a breathless
episode by a downpour of rain when he had covered all but a
kilometre of the record distance previously achieved by Paulhan,
and there was wild enthusiasm when Latham flew on through the
rain until he had put up a new record and his petrol had run
out.  Again, on the Friday afternoon, the Colonel Renard took
the air together with a little French dirigible, Zodiac III;
Latham was already in the air directly over Farman, who was also
flying, and three crows which turned out as rivals to the human
aviators received as much cheering for their appearance as had
been accorded to the machines, which doubtless they could not
understand.  Frightened by the cheering, the crows tried to
escape from the course, but as they came near the stands, the
crowd rose to cheer again and the crows wheeled away to make a
second charge towards safety, with the same result; the crowd
rose and cheered at them a third and fourth time; between ten
and fifteen thousand people stood on chairs and tables and waved
hats and handkerchiefs at three ordinary, everyday crows.  One
thoughtful spectator, having thoroughly enjoyed the funny side
of the incident, remarked that the ultimate mastery of the air
lies with the machine that comes nearest to natural flight. 
This still remains for the future to settle.

Farman's world record, which won the Grand Prix de Champagne,
was done with a Gnome Rotary Motor which had only been run on
the test bench and was fitted to his machine four hours before
he started on the great flight.  His propeller had never been
tested, having only been completed the night before.  The
closing laps of that flight, extending as they did into the
growing of the dusk, made a breathlessly eerie experience for
such of the spectators as stayed on to watch--and these were
many.  Night came on steadily and Farman covered lap after lap
just as steadily, a buzzing, circling mechanism with something
relentless in its isolated persistency.

The final day of the meeting provided a further record in the
quarter million spectators who turned up to witness the close of
the great week.  Bleriot, turning out in the morning, made a
landing in some such fashion as flooded the carburettor and
caused it to catch fire.  Bleriot himself was badly burned,
since the petrol tank burst and, in the end, only the metal
parts of the machine were left.  Glenn Curtis tried to beat
Bleriot's time for a lap of the course, but failed.  In the
evening, Farman and Latham went out and up in great circles,
Farman cleaving his way upward in what at the time counted for a
huge machine, on circles of about a mile diameter.  His first
round took him level with the top of the stands, and, in his
second, he circled the captive balloon anchored in the middle of
the grounds. After another circle, he came down on a long glide,
when Latham's lean Antoinette monoplane went up in circles more
graceful than those of Farman.  'Swiftly it rose and swept round
close to the balloon, veered round to the hangars, and out over
to the Rheims road.  Back it came high over the stands, the
people craning their necks as the shrill cry of the engine drew
nearer and nearer behind the stands.  Then of a sudden, the
little form appeared away up in the deep twilight blue vault of
the sky, heading straight as an arrow for the anchored balloon. 
Over it, and high, high above it went the Antoinette, seemingly
higher by many feet than the Farman machine.  Then, wheeling in
a long sweep to the left, Latham steered his machine round past
the stands, where the people, their nerve-tension released on
seeing the machine descending from its perilous height of 500
feet, shouted their frenzied acclamations to the hero of the
meeting.

'For certainly &quot;Le Tham,&quot; as the French call him, was the
popular hero.  He always flew high, he always flew well, and his
machine was a joy to the eye, either afar off or at close
quarters.  The public feeling for Bleriot is different. 
Bleriot, in the popular estimation, is the man who fights
against odds, who meets the adverse fates calmly and with good
courage, and to whom good luck comes once in a while as a reward
for much labour and anguish, bodily and mental.  Latham is the
darling of the Gods, to whom Fate has only been unkind in the
matter of the Channel flight, and only then because the honour
belonged to Bleriot.

'Next to these two, the public loved most Lefebvre, the joyous,
the gymnastic.  Lefebvre was the comedian of the meeting.  When
things began to flag, the gay little Lefebvre would trot out to
his starting rail, out at the back of the judge's enclosure
opposite the stands, and after a little twisting of propellers
his Wright machine would bounce off the end of its starting rail
and proceed to do the most marvellous tricks for the benefit of
the crowd, wheeling to right and left, darting up and down, now
flying over a troop of the cavalry who kept the plain clear of
people and sending their horses into hysterics, anon making
straight for an unfortunate photographer who would throw himself
and his precious camera flat on the ground to escape
annihilation as Lefebvre swept over him 6 or 7 feet off the
ground.  Lefebvre was great fun, and when he had once found that
his machine was not fast enough to compete for speed with the
Bleriots, Antoinettes, and Curtiss, he kept to his metier of
amusing people.  The promoters of the meeting owe Lefebvre a
debt of gratitude, for he provided just the necessary comic
relief.'--(The Aero, September 7th, 1909.)

It may be noted, in connection with the fact that Cockburn was
the only English competitor at the meeting, that the Rheims
Meeting did more than anything which had preceded it to waken
British interest in aviation.  Previously, heavier-than-air
flight in England had been regarded as a freak business by the
great majority, and the very few pioneers who persevered toward
winning England a share in the conquest of the air came in for
as much derision as acclamation.  Rheims altered this; it taught
the world in general, and England in particular, that a serious
rival to the dirigible balloon had come to being, and it
awakened the thinking portion of the British public to the fact
that the aeroplane had a future.

The success of this great meeting brought about a host of
imitations of which only a few deserve bare mention since,
unlike the first, they taught nothing and achieved little. 
There was the meeting at Boulogne late in September of 1909, of
which the only noteworthy event was Ferber's death.  There was a
meeting at Brescia where Curtiss again took first prize for
speed and Rougier put up a world's height record of 645 feet. 
The Blackpool meeting followed between 18th and 23rd of
October, 1909, forming, with the exception of Doncaster, the
first British Flying Meeting.  Chief among the competitors were
Henry Farman, who took the distance prize, Rougier, Paulhan, and
Latham, who, by a flight in a high wind, convinced the British
public that the theory that flying was only possible in a calm
was a fallacy.  A meeting at Doncaster was practically
simultaneous with the Blackpool week; Delagrange, Le Blon,
Sommer, and Cody were the principal figures in this event.  It
should be added that 130 miles was recorded as the total flown
at Doncaster, while at Blackpool only 115 miles were flown. 
Then there were Juvisy, the first Parisian meeting,
Wolverhampton, and the Comte de Lambert's flight round the
Eiffel Tower at a height estimated at between 1,200 and 1,300
feet.  This may be included in the record of these aerial
theatricals, since it was nothing more.

Probably wakened to realisation of the possibilities of the
aeroplane by the Rheims Meeting, Germany turned out its first
plane late in 1909.  It was known as the Grade monoplane, and
was a blend of the Bleriot and Santos-Dumont machines, with a
tail suggestive of the Antoinette type.  The main frame took the
form of a single steel tube, at the forward end of which was
rigged a triangular arrangement carrying the pilot's seat and
the landing wheels underneath, with the wing warping wires and
stays above.  The sweep of the wings was rather similar to the
later Taube design, though the sweep back was not so pronounced,
and the machine was driven by a four-cylinder, 20 horse-power,
air-cooled engine which drove a two-bladed tractor propeller. 
In spite of Lilienthal's pioneer work years before, this was the
first power-driven German plane which actually flew.

Eleven months after the Rheims meeting came what may be reckoned
the only really notable aviation meeting on English soil, in the
form of the Bournemouth week, July 10th to 16th, 1910.  This
gathering is noteworthy mainly in view of the amazing advance
which it registered on the Rheims performances.  Thus, in the
matter of altitude, Morane reached 4,107 feet and Drexel came
second with 2,490 feet.  Audemars on a Demoiselle monoplane made
a flight of 17 miles 1,480 yards in 27 minutes 17.2 seconds, a
great flight for the little Demoiselle.  Morane achieved a speed
of 56.64 miles per hour, and Grahame White climbed to 1,000 feet
altitude in 6 minutes 36.8 seconds.  Machines carrying the Gnome
engine as power unit took the great bulk of the prizes, and
British-built engines were far behind.

The Bournemouth Meeting will always be remembered with regret
for the tragedy of C. S. Rolls's death, which took place on
the Tuesday, the second day of the meeting.  The first
competition of the day was that for the landing prize; Grahame
White, Audemars, and Captain Dickson had landed with varying
luck, and Rolls, following on a Wright machine with a tail-plane
which ought never to have been fitted and was not part of the
Wright design, came down wind after a left-hand turn and turned
left again over the top of the stands in order to land up wind. 
He began to dive when just clear of the stands, and had dropped
to a height of 40 feet when he came over the heads of the people
against the barriers.  Finding his descent too steep, he pulled
back his elevator lever to bring the nose of the machine up,
tipping down the front end of the tail to present an almost flat
surface to the wind.  Had all gone well, the nose of the machine
would have been forced up, but the strain on the tail and its
four light supports was too great; the tail collapsed, the wind
pressed down the biplane elevator, and the machine dived
vertically for the remaining 20 feet of the descent, hitting the
ground vertically and crumpling up.  Major Kennedy, first to
reach the debris, found Rolls lying with his head doubled under
him on the overturned upper main plane; the lower plane had been
flung some few feet away with the engine and tanks under it. 
Rolls was instantaneously killed by concussion of the brain.

Antithesis to the tragedy was Audemars on his Demoiselle, which
was named 'The Infuriated Grasshopper.'  Concerning this, it was
recorded at the time that 'Nothing so excruciatingly funny as
the action of this machine has ever been seen at any aviation
ground.  The little two-cylinder engine pops away with a sound
like the frantic drawing of ginger beer corks; the machine
scutters along the ground with its tail well up; then down comes
the tail suddenly and seems to slap the ground while the front
jumps up, and all the spectators rock with laughter.  The whole
attitude and the jerky action of the machine suggest a
grasshopper in a furious rage, and the impression is intensified
when it comes down, as it did twice on Wednesday, in long grass,
burying its head in the ground in its temper.'--(The Aero, July,
1910.)

The Lanark Meeting followed in August of the same year, and with
the bare mention of this, the subject of flying meetings may he
left alone, since they became mere matters of show until there
came military competitions such as the Berlin Meeting at the end
of August, 1910, and the British War office Trials on Salisbury
Plain, when Cody won his greatest triumphs.  The Berlin meeting
proved that, from the time of the construction of the first
successful German machine mentioned above, to the date of the
meeting, a good number of German aviators had qualified for
flight, but principally on Wright and Antoinette machines, though
by that time the Aviatik and Dorner German makes had taken the
air.  The British War office Trials deserve separate and longer
mention.

In 1910 in spite of official discouragement, Captain Dickson
proved the value of the aeroplane for scouting purposes by
observing movements of troops during the Military Manoeuvres on
Salisbury Plain.  Lieut. Lancelot Gibbs and Robert Loraine,
the actor-aviator, also made flights over the manoeuvre area,
locating troops and in a way anticipating the formation and work
of the Royal Flying Corps by a usefulness which could not be
officially recognised.



==XV. THE CHANNEL CROSSING==

It may be said that Louis Bleriot was responsible for the second
great landmark in the history of successful flight.  The day when
the brothers Wright succeeded in accomplishing power-driven
flight ranks as the first of these landmarks.  Ader may or may
not have left the ground, but the wreckage of his 'Avion' at the
end of his experiment places his doubtful success in a different
category from that of the brothers Wright and leaves them the
first definite conquerors, just as Bleriot ranks as first
definite conqueror of the English Channel by air.

In a way, Louis Bleriot ranks before Farman in point of time;
his first flapping-wing model was built as early as 1900, and
Voisin flew a biplane glider of his on the Seine in the very
early experimental days.  Bleriot's first four machines were
biplanes, and his fifth, a monoplane, was wrecked almost
immediately after its construction. Bleriot had studied
Langley's work to a certain extent, and his sixth construction
was a double monoplane based on the Langley principle.  A month
after he had wrecked this without damaging himself-- for Bleriot
had as many miraculous escapes as any of the other fliers-he
brought out number seven, a fairly average monoplane.  It was in
December of 1907 after a series of flights that he wrecked this
machine, and on its successor, in July of 1908, he made a
flight of over 8 minutes.  Sundry flights, more or less
successful, including the first cross-country flight from Toury
to Artenay, kept him busy up to the beginning of November, 1908,
when the wreckage in a fog of the machine he was flying sent him
to the building of 'number eleven,' the famous cross-channel
aeroplane.

Number eleven was shown at the French Aero Show in the Grand
Palais and was given its first trials on the 18th January, 1909. 
It was first fitted with a R.E.P. motor and had a lifting area
of 120 square feet, which was later increased to 150 square
feet.  The framework was of oak and poplar spliced and
reinforced with piano wire; the weight of the machine was 47
lbs. and the undercarriage weight a further 60 lbs., this
consisting of rubber cord shock absorbers mounted on two wheels. 
The R.E.P. motor was found unsatisfactory, and a three-cylinder
Anzani of 105 mm. bore and 120 mm. stroke replaced it.  An
accident seriously damaged the machine on June 2nd, but Bleriot
repaired it and tested it at Issy, where between June 19th and
June 23rd he accomplished flights of 8, 12, 15, 16, and 36
minutes.  On July 4th he made a 50-minute flight and on the 13th
flew from Etampes to Chevilly.

A few further details of construction may be given:  the wings
themselves and an elevator at the tail controlled the rate of
ascent and descent, while a rudder was also fitted at the tail. 
The steering lever, working on a universally jointed
shaft--forerunner of the modern joystick--controlled both the
rudder and the wings, while a pedal actuated the elevator.  The
engine drove a two-bladed tractor screw of 6 feet 7 inches
diameter, and the angle of incidence of the wings was 20
degrees.  Timed at Issy, the speed of the machine was given as 36
miles an hour, and as Bleriot accomplished the Channel flight of
20 miles in 37 minutes, he probably had a slight following wind.

The Daily Mail had offered a prize of L1,000 for the first
Cross-Channel flight, and Hubert Latham set his mind on winning
it.  He put up a shelter on the French coast at Sangatte,
half-way between Calais and Cape Blanc Nez.  From here he made
his first attempt to fly to England on Monday the 19th of July. 
He soared to a fair height, circling, and reached an estimated
height of about 900 feet as he came over the water with every
appearance of capturing the Cross-Channel prize.  The luck which
dogged his career throughout was against him, for, after he had
covered some 8 miles, his engine stopped and he came down to the
water in a series of long glides.  It was discovered afterward
that a small piece of wire had worked its way into a vital part
of the engine to rob Latham of the honour he coveted.  The tug
that came to his rescue found him seated on the fuselage of his
Antoinette, smoking a cigarette and waiting for a boat to take
him to the tug.  It may be remarked that Latham merely assumed
his Antoinette would float in case he failed to make the English
coast; he had no actual proof.

Bleriot immediately entered his machine for the prize and took
up his quarters at Barraques.  On Sunday, July 25th, 1909,
shortly after 4 a.m., Bleriot had his machine taken out from its
shelter and prepared for flight.  He had been recently injured
in a petrol explosion and hobbled out on crutches to make his
cross-Channel attempt; he made two great circles in the air to
try the machine, and then alighted.  'In ten  minutes I start
for England,' he declared, and at 4.35 the motor was started up. 
After a run of 100 yards, the machine rose in the air and got a
height of about 100 feet over the land, then wheeling sharply
seaward and heading for Dover.

Bleriot had no means of telling direction, and any change of
wind might have driven him out over the North Sea, to be lost,
as were Cecil Grace and Hamel later on.  Luck was with him,
however, and at 5.12 a.m. of that July Sunday, he made his
landing in the North Fall meadow, just behind Dover Castle. 
Twenty minutes out from the French coast, he lost sight of the
destroyer which was patrolling the Channel, and at the same time
he was out of sight of land without compass or any other means
of ascertaining his direction.  Sighting the English coast, he
found that he had gone too far to the east, for the wind
increased in strength throughout the flight, this to such an
extent as almost to turn the machine round when he came over
English soil.  Profiting by Latham's experience, Bleriot had
fitted an inflated rubber cylinder a foot in diameter by 5 feet
in length along the middle of his fuselage, to render floating a
certainty in case he had to alight on the water.

Latham in his camp at Sangatte had been allowed to sleep through
the calm of the early morning through a mistake on the part of a
friend, and when his machine was turned out--in order that he
might emulate Bleriot, although he no longer hoped to make the
first flight, it took so long to get the machine ready and
dragged up to its starting-point that there was a 25 mile an
hour wind by the time everything was in readiness.  Latham was
anxious to make the start in spite of the wind, but the
Directors of the Antoinette Company refused permission.  It was
not until two days later that the weather again became
favourable, and then with a fresh machine, since the one on
which he made his first attempt had been very badly damaged in
being towed ashore, he made a circular trial flight of about 5
miles.  In landing from this, a side gust of wind drove the nose
of the machine against a small hillock, damaging both propeller
blades and chassis, and it was not until evening that the damage
was repaired.

French torpedo boats were set to mark the route, and Latham set
out on his second attempt at six o'clock.  Flying at a height of
200 feet, he headed over the torpedo boats for Dover and seemed
certain of making the English coast, but a mile and a half out
from Dover his engine failed him again, and he dropped to the
water to be picked up by the steam pinnace of an English warship
and put aboard the French destroyer Escopette.

There is little to choose between the two aviators for courage
in attempting what would have been considered a foolhardy feat a
year or two before.  Bleriot's state, with an abscess in the
burnt foot which had to control the elevator of his machine,
renders his success all the more remarkable.  His machine was
exhibited in London for a time, and was afterwards placed in the
Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, while a memorial in stone,
copying his monoplane in form, was let into the turf at the
point where he landed.

The second Channel crossing was not made until 1910, a year of
new records.  The altitude record had been lifted to over 10,000
feet, the duration record to 8 hours 12 minutes, and the
distance for a single flight to 365 miles, while a speed of over
65 miles an hour had been achieved, when Jacques de Lesseps, son
of the famous engineer of Suez Canal and Panama fame, crossed
from France to England on a Bleriot monoplane. By this time
flying had dropped so far from the marvellous that this second
conquest of the Channel aroused but slight public interest in
comparison with Bleriot's feat.

The total weight of Bleriot's machine in Cross Channel trim was
660 lbs., including the pilot and sufficient petrol for a three
hours' run; at a speed of 37 miles an hour, it was capable of
carrying about 5 lbs. per square foot of lifting surface.  It
was the three-cylinder 25 horse-power Anzani motor which drove
the machine for the flight.  Shortly after the flight had been
accomplished, it was announced that the Bleriot firm would
construct similar machines for sale at L400 apiece--a good
commentary on the prices of those days.

On June the 2nd, 1910, the third Channel crossing was made by C.
S. Rolls, who flew from Dover, got himself officially observed
over French soil at Barraques, and then flew back without
landing.  He was the first to cross from the British side of the
Channel and also was the first aviator who made the double
journey.  By that time, however, distance flights had so far
increased as to reduce the value of the feat, and thenceforth
the Channel crossing was no exceptional matter.  The honour,
second only to that of the Wright Brothers, remains with Bleriot.



==XVI. LONDON TO MANCHESTER==

The last of the great contests to arouse public enthusiasm was
the London to Manchester Flight of 1910.  As far back as 1906,
the Daily Mail had offered a prize of L10,000 to the first
aviator who should accomplish this journey, and, for a long time,
the offer was regarded as a perfectly safe one for any person or
paper to make--it brought forth far more ridicule than belief. 
Punch offered a similar sum to the first man who should swim the
Atlantic and also for the first flight to Mars and back within a
week, but in the spring of 1910 Claude Grahame White and Paulhan,
the famous French pilot, entered  for the 183 mile run on which
the prize depended.  Both these competitors flew the Farman
biplane with the 50 horse-power Gnome motor as propulsive power.
Grahame White surveyed the ground along the route, and the L. &amp;
N. W. Railway Company, at his request, whitewashed the sleepers
for 100 yards on the north side of all junctions to give him his
direction on the course. The machine was run out on to the
starting ground at Park Royal and set going at 5.19 a.m. on April
23rd.  After a run of 100 yards, the machine went up over
Wormwood Scrubs on its journey to Normandy, near Hillmorten,
which was the first arranged stopping place en route; Grahame
White landed here in good trim at 7.20 a.m., having covered 75
miles and made a world's record cross country flight.  At 8.15 he
set off again to come down at Whittington, four miles short of
Lichfield, at about 9.20, with his machine in good order except
for a cracked landing skid.  Twice, on this second stage of the
journey, he had been caught by gusts of wind which turned the
machine fully round toward London, and, when over a wood near
Tamworth, the engine stopped through a defect in the balance
springs of two exhaust valves; although it started up again
after a 100 foot glide, it did not give enough power to give him
safety in the gale he was facing.  The rising wind kept him on
the ground throughout the day, and, though he hoped for better
weather, the gale kept up until the Sunday evening.  The men in
charge of the machine during its halt had attempted to hold the
machine down instead of anchoring it with stakes and ropes, and,
in consequence of this, the wind blew the machine over on its
back, breaking the upper planes and the tail.  Grahame White had
to return to London, while the damaged machine was prepared for
a second flight.  The conditions of the competition enacted that
the full journey should be completed within 24 hours, which made
return to the starting ground inevitable.

Louis Paulhan, who had just arrived with his Farman machine,
immediately got it unpacked and put together in order to be
ready to make his attempt for the prize as soon as the weather
conditions should admit.  At 5.31 p.m., on April 27th, he went
up from Hendon and had travelled 50 miles when Grahame White,
informed of his rival's start, set out to overtake him.  Before
nightfall Paulhan landed at Lichfield, 117 miles from London,
while Grahame White had to come down at Roden, only 60 miles out.
The English aviator's chance was not so small as it seemed, for,
as Latham had found in his cross-Channel attempts, engine failure
was more the rule than the exception, and a very little thing
might reverse the relative positions.

A special train accompanied Paulhan along the North-Western
route, conveying Madame Paulhan, Henry Farman, and the mechanics
who fitted the Farman biplane together.  Paulhan himself, who
had flown at a height of 1,000 feet, spent the night at
Lichfield, starting again at 4.9 a.m.  On the 28th, passing
Stafford at 4.45, Crewe at 5.20, and landing at Burnage, near
Didsbury, at 5.32, having had a clean run.

Meanwhile, Grahame White had made a most heroic attempt to beat
his rival.  An hour before dawn on the 28th, he went to the
small field in which his machine had landed, and in the darkness
managed to make an ascent from ground which made starting
difficult even in daylight.  Purely by instinct and his
recollection of the aspect of things the night before, he had to
clear telegraph wires and a railway bridge, neither of which he
could possibly see at that hour.  His engine, too, was
faltering, and it was obvious to those who witnessed his start
that its note was far from perfect.

At 3.50 he was over Nuneaton and making good progress; between
Atherstone and Lichfield the wind caught him and the engine
failed more and more, until at 4.13 in the morning he was forced
to come to earth, having covered 6 miles less distance than in
his first attempt.  It was purely a case of engine failure, for,
with full power, he would have passed over Paulhan just as the
latter was preparing for the restart.  Taking into consideration
the two machines, there is little doubt that Grahame White
showed the greater flying skill, although he lost the prize. 
After landing and hearing of Paulhan's victory, on which he
wired congratulations, he made up his mind to fly to Manchester
within the 24 hours.  He started at 5 o'clock in the afternoon
from Polesworth, his landing place, but was forced to land at
5.30 at Whittington, where he had landed on the previous
Saturday.  The wind, which had forced his descent, fell again
and permitted of starting once more; on this third stage he
reached Lichfield, only to make his final landing at 7.15 p.m.,
near the Trent Valley station.  The defective running of the
Gnome engine prevented his completing the course, and his Farman
machine had to be brought back to London by rail.

The presentation of the prize to Paulhan was made the occasion
for the announcement of a further competition, consisting of a
1,000 mile flight round a part of Great Britain.  In this,
nineteen competitors started, and only four finished; the end of
the race was a great fight between Beaumont and Vedrines, both
of whom scorned weather conditions in their determination to
win.  Beaumont made the distance in a flying time of 22 hours 28
minutes 19 seconds, and Vedrines covered the journey in a little
over 23 1/2 hours.  Valentine came third on a Deperdussin
monoplane and S. F. Cody on his Cathedral biplane was fourth. 
This was in 1911, and by that time heavier-than-air flight had
so far advanced that some pilots had had war experience in the
Italian campaign in Tripoli, while long cross-country flights
were an everyday event, and bad weather no longer counted.



==XVII. A SUMMARY, TO 1911==

There is so much overlapping in the crowded story of the first
years of successful power-driven flight that at this point it is
advisable to make a concise chronological survey of the chief
events of the period of early development, although much of this
is of necessity recapitulation.  The story begins, of course,
with Orville Wright's first flight of 852 feet at Kitty Hawk on
December 19th, 1903.  The next event of note was Wright's flight
of 11.12 miles in 18 minutes 9 seconds at Dayton, Ohio, on
September 26th, 1905, this being the first officially recorded
flight.  On October 4th of the same year, Wright flew 20.75 miles
in 33 minutes 17 seconds, this being the first flight of over 20
miles ever made.  Then on September 14th 1906, Alberto
Santos-Dumont made a flight of eight seconds on the second
heavier-than-air machine he had constructed.  It was a big
box-kite-like machine; this was the second power-driven aeroplane
in Europe to fly, for although Santos-Dumont's first machine
produced in 1905 was reckoned an unsuccessful design, it had
actually got off the ground for brief periods.  Louis Bleriot
came into the ring on April 5th, 1907, with a first flight of 6
seconds on a Bleriot monoplane, his eighth but first successful
construction.

Henry Farman made his first appearance in the history of aviation
with a flight of 935 feet on a Voisin biplane on October 15th
1907.  On October 25th, in a flight of 2,530 feet, he made the
first recorded turn in the air, and on March 29th, 1908, carrying
Leon Delagrange on a Voisin biplane, he made the first passenger
flight.  On April 10th of this year, Delagrange, in flying 1 1/2
miles, made the first flight in Europe exceeding a mile in
distance.  He improved on this by flying 10 1/2 miles at Milan on
June 22nd, while on July 8th, at Turin, he took up Madame
Peltier, the first woman to make an aeroplane flight.

Wilbur Wright, coming over to Europe, made his first appearance
on the Continent with a flight of 1 3/4 minutes at Hunaudieres,
France, on August 8th, 1908.  On September 6th, at Chalons, he
flew for 1 hour 4 minutes 26 seconds with a passenger, this
being the first flight in which an hour in the air was exceeded
with a passenger on board.

on September 12th 1908, Orville Wright, flying at Fort Meyer,
U.S.A., with Lieut. Selfridge as passenger, crashed his
machine, suffering severe injuries, while Selfridge was killed. 
This was the first aeroplane fatality.  On October 30th, 1908,
Farman made the first cross-country flight, covering the
distance of 17 miles between Bouy and Rheims.  The next day,
Louis Bleriot, in flying from Toury to Artenay, made two
landings en route, this being the first cross-country flight
with landings.  On the last day of the year, Wilbur Wright won
the Michelin Cup at Auvours with a flight of 90 miles, which,
lasting 2 hours 20 minutes 23 seconds, exceeded 2 hours in the
air for the first time.

On January 2nd, 1909, S. F. Cody opened the New Year by making
the first observed flight at Farnborough on a British Army
aeroplane.  It was not until July 18th of 1909 that the first
European height record deserving of mention was put up by
Paulhan, who achieved a height of 450 feet on a Voisin
biplane.  This preceded Latham's first attempt to fly the
Channel by two days, and five days later, on the 25th of the
month, Bleriot made the first Channel crossing.  The Rheims
Meeting followed on August 22nd, and it was a great day for
aviation when nine machines were seen in the air at once.  It
was here that Farman, with a 118 mile flight, first exceeded
the hundred miles, and Latham raised the height record
officially to 500 feet, though actually he claimed to have
reached 1,200 feet.  On September 8th, Cody, flying from
Aldershot, made a 40 mile journey, setting up a new
cross-country record.  On October 19th the Comte de Lambert
flew from Juvisy to Paris, rounded the Eiffel Tower and flew
back.  J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon made the first circular mile
flight by a British aviator on an all-British machine in Great
Britain, on October 30th, flying a Short biplane with a Green
engine.  Paulhan, flying at Brooklands on November 2nd,
accomplished 96 miles in 2 hours 48 minutes, creating a British
distance record; on the following day, Henry Farman made a
flight of 150 miles in 4 hours 22 minutes at Mourmelon, and on
the 5th of the month, Paulhan, flying a Farman biplane, made a
world's height record of 977 feet.  This, however, was not to
stand long, for Latham got up to 1,560 feet on an Antoinette at
Mourmelon on December 1st.  December 31st witnessed the first
flight in Ireland, made by H. Ferguson on a monoplane which he
himself had constructed at Downshire Park, Lisburn.

These, thus briefly summarised, are the principal events up to
the end of 1909.  1910 opened with tragedy, for on January 4th
Leon Delagrange, one of the greatest pilots of his time, was
killed while flying at Pau.  The machine was the Bleriot XI which
Delagrange had used at the Doncaster meeting, and to which
Delagrange had fitted a 50 horse-power Gnome engine, increasing
the speed of the machine from its original 30 to 45 miles per
hour.  With the Rotary Gnome engine there was of necessity a
certain gyroscopic effect, the strain of which proved too much
for the machine.  Delagrange had come to assist in the
inauguration of the Croix d'Hins aerodrome, and had twice lapped
the course at a height of about 60 feet.  At the beginning of
the third lap, the strain of the Gnome engine became too great
for the machine; one wing collapsed as if the stay wires had
broken, and the whole machine turned over and fell, killing
Delagrange.

On January 7th Latham, flying at Mourmelon, first made the
vertical kilometre and dedicated the record to Delagrange, this
being the day of his friend's funeral.  The record was
thoroughly authenticated by a large registering barometer which
Latham carried, certified by the officials of the French Aero
Club.  Three days later Paulhan, who was at Los Angeles,
California, raised the height record to 4,146 feet.

On January 25th the Brussels Exhibition opened, when the
Antoinette monoplane, the Gaffaux and Hanriot monoplanes,
together with the d'Hespel aeroplane, were shown; there were
also the dirigible Belgica and a number of interesting aero
engines, including a German airship engine and a four-cylinder
50 horse-power Miesse, this last air-cooled by means of 22
fans driving a current of air through air jackets surrounding
fluted cylinders.

On April 2nd Hubert Le Blon, flying a Bleriot with an Anzani
engine, was killed while flying over the water.  His machine was
flying quite steadily, when it suddenly heeled over and came
down sideways into the sea; the motor continued running for some
seconds and the whole machine was drawn under water.  When boats
reached the spot, Le Blon was found lying back in the driving
seat floating just below the surface.  He had done good flying
at Doncaster, and at Heliopolis had broken the world's speed
records for 5 and 10 kilometres.  The accident was attributed
to fracture of one of the wing stay wires when running into a
gust of wind.

The next notable event was Paulhan's London-Manchester flight,
of which full details have already been given.  In May Captain
Bertram Dickson, flying at the Tours meeting, beat all the
Continental fliers whom he encountered, including Chavez, the
Peruvian, who later made the first crossing of the Alps. 
Dickson was the first British winner of international aviation
prizes.

C. S. Rolls, of whom full details have already been given, was
killed at Bournemouth on July 12th, being the first British
aviator of note to be killed in an aeroplane accident.  His
return trip across the Channel had taken place on June 2nd. 
Chavez, who was rapidly leaping into fame, as a pilot, raised
the British height record to 5,750 feet while flying at
Blackpool on August 3rd.  On the 11th of that month, Armstrong
Drexel, flying a Bleriot, made a world's height record of 6,745
feet.

It was in 1910 that the British War office first began fully to
realise that there might be military possibilities in
heavier-than-air flying.  C. S. Rolls had placed a Wright
biplane at the disposal of the military authorities, and Cody,
as already recorded, had been experimenting with a biplane type
of his own for some long period.  Such development as was
achieved was mainly due to the enterprise and energy of Colonel
J. E. Capper, C.B., appointed to the superintendency of the
Balloon Factory and Balloon School at Farnborough in 1906. 
Colonel Capper's retirement in 1910 brought (then) Mr Mervyn
O'Gorman to command, and by that time the series of successes of
the Cody biplane, together with the proved efficiency of the
aeroplane in various civilian meetings, had convinced the
British military authorities that the mastery of the air did not
lie altogether with dirigible airships, and it may be said that
in 1910 the British War office first began seriously to consider
the possibilities of the aeroplane, though two years more were
to elapse before the formation of the Royal Flying Corps marked
full realisation of its value.

A triumph and a tragedy were combined in September of 1910.  On
the 23rd of the month, Georges Chavez set out to fly across the
Alps on a Bleriot monoplane.  Prizes had been offered by the
Milan Aviation Committee for a flight from Brigue in Switzerland
over the Simplon Pass to Milan, a distance of 94 miles with a
minimum height of 6,600 feet above sea level.  Chavez started at
1.30 p.m.  On the 23rd, and 41 minutes later he reached
Domodossola, 25 miles distant.  Here he descended, numbed with
the cold of the journey; it was said that the wings of his
machine collapsed when about 30 feet from the ground, but
however this may have been, he smashed the machine on landing,
and broke both legs, in addition to sustaining other serious
injuries.  He lay in hospital until the 27th September, when he
died, having given his life to the conquest of the Alps.  His
death in the moment of success was as great a tragedy as were
those of Pilcher and Lilienthal.

The day after Chavez's death, Maurice Tabuteau flew across the
Pyrenees, landing in the square at Biarritz.  On December 30th,
Tabuteau made a flight of 365 miles in 7 hours 48 minutes. 
Farman, on December 18th, had flown for over 8 hours, but his
total distance was only 282 miles.  The autumn of this year was
also noteworthy for the fact that aeroplanes were first
successfully used in the French Military Manoeuvres.  The
British War Office, by the end of the year, had bought two
machines, a military type Farman and a Paulhan, ignoring British
experimenters and aeroplane builders of proved reliability. 
These machines, added to an old Bleriot two-seater, appear to
have constituted the British aeroplane fleet of the period.

There were by this time three main centres of aviation in
England, apart from Cody, alone on Laffan's Plain. These three
were Brooklands, Hendon, and the Isle of Sheppey, and of the
three Brooklands was chief.  Here such men as Graham Gilmour,
Rippen, Leake, Wickham, and Thomas persistently experimented. 
Hendon had its own little group, and Shellbeach, Isle of
Sheppey, held such giants of those days as C. S. Rolls and
Moore Brabazon, together with Cecil Grace and Rawlinson.  One or
other, and sometimes all of these were deserted on the occasion
of some meeting or other, but they were the points where the
spade work was done, Brooklands taking chief place.  'If you want
the early history of flying in England, it is there,' one of the
early school remarked, pointing over toward Brooklands course.

1911 inaugurated a new series of records of varying character. 
On the 17th January, E. B. Ely, an American, flew from the shore
of San Francisco to the U.S. cruiser Pennsylvania, landing on the
cruiser, and then flew back to the shore.  The British military
designing of aeroplanes had been taken up at Farnborough by G. H.
de Havilland, who by the end of January was flying a machine of
his own design, when he narrowly escaped becoming a casualty
through collision with an obstacle on the ground, which swept the
undercarriage from his machine.

A list of certified pilots of the countries of the world was
issued early in 1911, showing certificates granted up to the
end of 1910.  France led the way easily with 353 pilots; England
came next with 57, and Germany next with 46; Italy owned 32,
Belgium 27, America 26, and Austria 19; Holland and Switzerland
had 6 aviators apiece, while Denmark followed with 3, Spain with
2, and Sweden with 1.  The first certificate in England was that
of J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon, while Louis Bleriot was first on
the French list and Glenn Curtiss, first holder of an American
certificate, also held the second French brevet.

On the 7th March, Eugene Renaux won the Michelin Grand Prize by
flying from the French Aero Club ground at St Cloud and landing
on the Puy de Dome.  The landing, which was one of the
conditions of the prize, was one of the most dangerous
conditions ever attached to a competition; it involved dropping
on to a little plateau 150 yards square, with a possibility of
either smashing the machine against the face of the mountain, or
diving over the edge of the plateau into the gulf beneath.  The
length of the journey was slightly over 200 miles and the height
of the landing point 1,465 metres, or roughly 4,500 feet above
sea-level.  Renaux carried a passenger, Doctor Senoucque, a
member of Charcot's South Polar Expedition.

The 1911 Aero Exhibition held at Olympia bore witness to the
enormous strides made in construction, more especially by
British designers, between 1908 and the opening of the Show. 
The Bristol Firm showed three machines, including a military
biplane, and the first British built biplane with tractor screw. 
The Cody biplane, with its enormous size rendering it a
prominent feature of the show, was exhibited.  Its designer
anticipated later engines by expressing his desire for a motor
of 150 horse-power, which in his opinion was necessary to get
the best results from the machine.  The then famous Dunne
monoplane was exhibited at this show, its planes being V-shaped
in plan, with apex leading.  It embodied the results of very
lengthy experiments carried out both with gliders and
power-driven machines by Colonel Capper, Lieut. Gibbs, and
Lieut. Dunne, and constituted the longest step so far taken in
the direction of inherent stability.

Such forerunners of the notable planes of the war period as the
Martin Handasyde, the Nieuport, Sopwith, Bristol, and Farman
machines, were features of the show; the Handley-Page monoplane,
with a span of 32 feet over all, a length of 22 feet, and a
weight of 422 lbs., bore no relation at all to the twin-engined
giant which later made this firm famous.  In the matter of
engines, the principal survivals to the present day, of which
this show held specimens, were the Gnome, Green, Renault
air-cooled, Mercedes four-cylinder dirigible engine of 115
horse-power, and 120 horsepower Wolseley of eight cylinders for
use with dirigibles.

On April 12th, of 1911, Paprier, instructor at the Bleriot
school at Hendon, made the first non-stop flight between London
and Paris.  He left the aerodrome at 1.37 p.m., and arrived at
Issy-les-Moulineaux at 5.33 p.m., thus travelling 250 miles in a
little under 4 hours.  He followed the railway route practically
throughout, crossing from Dover to nearly opposite Calais,
keeping along the coast to Boulogne, and then following the Nord
Railway to Amiens, Beauvais, and finally Paris.

In May, the Paris-Madrid race took place; Vedrines, flying a
Morane biplane, carried off the prize by first completing the
distance of 732 miles.  The Paris-Rome race of 916 miles was won
in the same month by Beaumont, flying a Bleriot monoplane.  In
July, Koenig won the German National Circuit race of 1,168 miles
on an Albatross biplane.  This was practically simultaneous with
the Circuit of Britain won by Beaumont, who covered 1,010 miles
on a Bleriot monoplane, having already won the
Paris-Brussels-London-Paris Circuit of 1,080 miles, this also on
a Bleriot.  It was in August that a new world's height record of
11,152 feet was set up by Captain Felix at Etampes, while
on the 7th of the month Renaux flew nearly 600 miles on a
Maurice Farman machine in 12 hours.  Cody and Valentine were
keeping interest alive in the Circuit of Britain race, although
this had long been won, by determinedly plodding on at finishing
the course.

On September 9th, the first aerial post was tried between Hendon
and Windsor, as an experiment in sending mails by aeroplane. 
Gustave Hamel flew from Hendon to Windsor and back in a strong
wind.  A few days later, Hamel went on strike, refusing to carry
further mails unless the promoters of the Aerial Postal Service
agreed to pay compensation to Hubert, who fractured both his legs
on the 11th of the month while engaged in aero postal work.  The
strike ended on September 25th, when Hamel resumed mail-carrying
in consequence of the capitulation of the Postmaster-General, who
agreed to set aside L500 as compensation to Hubert.

September also witnessed the completion in America of a flight
across the Continent, a distance of 2,600 miles. The only
competitor who completed the full distance was C. P. Rogers,
who was disqualified through failing to comply with the time
limit.  Rogers needed so many replacements to his machine on the
journey that, expressing it in American fashion, he arrived with
practically a dfferent aeroplane from that with which he
started.

With regard to the aerial postal service, analysis of the matter
carried and the cost of the service seemed to show that with a
special charge of one shilling for letters and sixpence for post
cards, the revenue just balanced the expenditure.  It was not
possible to keep to the time-table as, although the trials were
made in the most favourable season of the year, aviation was not
sufficiently advanced to admit of facing all weathers and
complying with time-table regulations.

French military aeroplane trials took place at Rheims in
October, the noteworthy machines being Antoinette, Farman,
Nieuport, and Deperdussin.  The tests showed the Nieuport
monoplane with Gnome motor as first in position; the Breguet
biplane was second, and the Deperdussin monoplanes third.  The
first five machines in order of merit were all engined with the
Gnome motor.

The records quoted for 1911 form the best evidence that can
be given of advance in design and performance during the year. 
It will be seen that the days of the giants were over; design
was becoming more and more standardised and aviation not so much
a matter of individual courage and even daring, as of the
reliability of the machine and its engine.  This was the first
year in which the twin-engined aeroplane made its appearance,
and it was the year, too, in which flying may be said to have
grown so common that the 'meetings' which began with Rheims were
hardly worth holding, owing to the fact that increase in height
and distance flown rendered it no longer necessary for a
would-be spectator of a flight to pay half a crown and enter an
enclosure.  Henceforth, flying as a spectacle was very little to
be considered; its commercial aspects were talked of, and to a
very slight degree exploited, but, more and more, the fact that
the aeroplane was primarily an engine of war, and the growing
German menace against the peace of the world combined to point
the way of speediest development, and the arrangements for the
British Military Trials to be held in August, 1912, showed that
even the British War office was waking up to the potentialities
of this new engine of war.


:Fortsetzung: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XVIII.  A SUMMARY--TO 1914]]


==CONTENTS==

:Part I--THE EVOLUTION OF THE AEROPLANE
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 01 Evolution of the Aeroplane Early Phase|I.  THE PERIOD OF LEGEND]]
: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 01 Evolution of the Aeroplane Early Phase|II.  EARLY EXPERIMENTS]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 01 Evolution of the Aeroplane Early Phase|III.  SIR GEORGE CAYLEY--THOMAS WALKER]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 01 Evolution of the Aeroplane Early Phase|IV.  THE MIDDLE NINETEENTH CENTURY]]
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 01 Evolution of the Aeroplane Early Phase|V.  WENHAM, LE BRIS, AND SOME OTHERS]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|VI.  THE AGE OF THE GIANTS]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|VII.  LILIENTHAL AND PILCHER]]
: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|VIII.  AMERICAN GLIDING EXPERIMENTS]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|IX.  NOT PROVEN]]
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|X.  SAMUEL PIERPOINT LANGLEY]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 02 Evolution of the Aeroplane Age of the Giants|XI.  THE WRIGHT BROTHERS]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XII.  THE FIRST YEARS OF CONQUEST]]
: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XIII.  FIRST FLIERS IN ENGLAND]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XIV.  RHEIMS, AND AFTER]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XV.  THE CHANNEL CROSSING]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XVI.  LONDON TO MANCHESTER]]
: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 03 Evolution of the Aeroplane Years of Conquest|XVII.  A SUMMARY--TO 1911]]
:[[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XVIII.  A SUMMARY--TO 1914]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XIX.  THE WAR PERIOD--I]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XX.  THE WAR PERIOD--II]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XXI.  RECONSTRUCTION]]
: [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 04 Evolution of the Aeroplane Pre-war,WW1, Post-war to 1920|XXII.  1919-1920]]

:Part II--1903-1920: PROGRESS IN DESIGN
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 05 Progress in Design|I.  THE BEGINNINGS]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 05 Progress in Design|II.  MULTIPLICITY OF IDEAS]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 05 Progress in Design|III.  PROGRESS ON STANDARDISED LINES]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 05 Progress in Design|IV.  THE WAR PERIOD]]

:Part III--AEROSTATICS
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|I.  BEGINNINGS]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|II.  THE FIRST DIRIGIBLES]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|III.  SANTOS-DUMONT]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|IV.  THE MILITARY DIRIGIBLE]]
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|V.  BRITISH AIRSHIP  DESIGN]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|VI.  THE AIRSHIP  COMMERCIALLY]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 06 Aerostatics|VII.  KITE  BALLOONS]]

:PART IV--ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|I.  THE VERTICAL TYPE]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|II.  THE VEE TYPE]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|III.  THE RADIAL TYPE]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|IV.  THE ROTARY TYPE]]
:    [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|V.  THE HORIZONTALLY-OPPOSED ENGINE]]
:   [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|VI.  THE TWO-STROKE CYCLE ENGINE]]
:  [[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 07 Engine Development|VII.  ENGINES OF THE WAR  PERIOD]]

:[[Aeronautics_History_Vivian_1920 08 Appendixes|APPENDICES]]


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