safer than any other machine previously evolved, solving, as he
states in his monograph, the problem of inherent equilibrium as
fully as this could be done. Unfortunately, very few
photographs were taken of the work in the first year, but one
view of a multiple wing-glider survives, showing the machine in
flight. In 1897 a series of photographs was taken exhibiting
the consecutive phases of a single flight; this series of
photographs represents the experience gained in a total of about
one thousand glides, but the point of view was varied so as to
exhibit the consecutive phases of one single flight.

The experience gained is best told in Chanute's own words. 'The
first thing,' he says, 'which we discovered practically was that
the wind flowing up a hill-side is not a steadily-flowing
current like that of a river. It comes as a rolling mass, full
of tumultuous whirls and eddies, like those issuing from a
chimney; and they strike the apparatus with constantly varying
force and direction, sometimes withdrawing support when most
needed. It has long been known, through instrumental
observations, that the wind is constantly changing in force and
direction; but it needed the experience of an operator afloat on
a gliding machine to realise that this all proceeded from
cyclonic action; so that more was learned in this respect in a
week than had previously been acquired by several years of
experiments with models. There was a pair of eagles, living in
the top of a dead tree about two miles from our tent, that came
almost daily to show us how such wind effects are overcome and
utilised. The birds swept in circles overhead on pulseless
wings, and rose high up in the air. Occasionally there was a
side-rocking motion, as of a ship rolling at sea, and then the