study of the pioneers of aeronautical enterprise. If he failed,
he failed magnificently, and if he succeeded, then the student
of aeronautics does him an injustice and confers on the Brothers
Wright an honour which, in spite of the value of their work,
they do not deserve. There was one earlier than Ader, Alphonse
Penaud, who, in the face of a lesser disappointment than that
which Ader must have felt in gazing on the wreckage of his
machine, committed suicide; Ader himself, rendered unable to do
more, remained content with his achievement, and with the
knowledge that he had played a good part in the long search
which must eventually end in triumph. Whatever the world might
say, he himself was certain that he had achieved flight. This,
for him, was perforce enough.

Before turning to consideration of the work accomplished by the
Brothers Wright, and their proved conquest of the air, it is
necessary first to sketch as briefly as may be the experimental
work of Sir (then Mr) Hiram Maxim, who, in his book, Artificial
and Natural Flight, has given a fairly complete account of his
various experiments. He began by experimenting with models,
with screw-propelled planes so attached to a horizontal movable
arm that when the screw was set in motion the plane described a
circle round a central point, and, eventually, he built a giant
aeroplane having a total supporting area of 1,500 square feet,
and a wing-span of fifty feet. It has been thought advisable to
give a fairly full description of the power plant used to the
propulsion of this machine in the section devoted to engine
development. The aeroplane, as Maxim describes it, had five
long and narrow planes projecting from each side, and a main or
central plane of pterygoid aspect. A fore and aft rudder was