their first ascent. In that age of the giants was evolved the
flying man, the new type in human species which found full
expression and came to full development in the days of the war,
achieving feats of daring and endurance which leave the
commonplace landsman staggered at thought of that of which his
fellows prove themselves capable. He is a new type, this flying
man, a being of self-forgetfulness; of such was Lilienthal, of
such was Pilcher; of such in later days were Farman, Bleriot,
Hamel, Rolls, and their fellows; great names that will live for
as long as man flies, adventurers equally with those of the
spacious days of Elizabeth. To each of these came the call, and
he worked and dared and passed, having, perhaps, advanced one
little step in the long march that has led toward the perfecting
of flight.

It is not yet twenty years since man first flew, but into that
twenty years have been compressed a century or so of progress,
while, in the two decades that preceded it, was compressed still
more. We have only to recall and recount the work of four men:
Lilienthal, Langley, Pilcher, and Clement Ader to see the
immense stride that was made between the time when Penaud pulled
a trigger for the last time and the Wright Brothers first left
the earth. Into those two decades was compressed the
investigation that meant knowledge of the qualities of the air,
together with the development of the one prime mover that
rendered flight a possibility--the internal combustion engine.
The coming and progress of this latter is a thing apart, to be
detailed separately; for the present we are concerned with the
evolution of the driven plane, and with it the evolution of that
daring being, the flying man. The two are inseparable, for the