modern dirigible. It is now our purpose, in this and subsequent
chapters, to follow the course of the pioneers of aviation.

It must not be supposed that the invention of the steerable
balloon was greatly in advance of that of the heavier-than-air
machine. Indeed, developments in both the dirigible airship and
the aeroplane have taken place side by side. In some cases men
like Santos Dumont have given earnest attention to both forms of
air-craft, and produced practical results with both. Thus, after
the famous Brazilian aeronaut had won the Deutsch prize for a
flight in an air-ship round the Eiffel tower, he immediately set
to work to construct an aeroplane which he subsequently piloted
at Bagatelle and was awarded the first "Deutsch prize" for
aviation.

It is generally agreed that the undoubted inventor of the
aeroplane, practically in the form in which it now appears, was
an English engineer, Sir George Cayley. Just over a hundred
years ago this clever Englishman worked out complete plans for an
aeroplane, which in many vital respects embodied the principal
parts of the monoplane as it exists to-day.

There were wings which were inclined so that they formed a
lifting plane; moreover, the wings were curved, or "cambered",
similar to the wing of a bird, and, as we shall see in a later
chapter, this curve is one of the salient features of the plane
of a modern heavier-than-air machine. Sir George also advocated
the screw propeller worked by some form of "explosion" motor,
which at that time had not arrived. Indeed, if there had been a
motor available it is quite possible that England would have led