was properly set at an angle to the longitudinal axis of
the body and dropped from a balloon, it travelled back
against the wind for a considerable distance before
alighting. The course could be varied by a rudder. No
practical application seems to have been made of this
device by the French War Department, but Mr. J. P.
Holland, the inventor of the submarine boat which bears
his name, proposed in 1893 an arrangement of pivoted
framework attached to the body of a flying machine
which combines the principle of Commandant Renard
with the curved blades experimented with by Mr. Phillips,
now to be noticed, with the addition of lifting screws
inserted among the blades.

Phillips Fails on Stability Problem.

In 1893 Mr. Horatio Phillips, of England, after some
very interesting experiments with various wing sections,
from which he deduced conclusions as to the shape of
maximum lift, tested an apparatus resembling a Venetian
blind which consisted of fifty wooden slats of
peculiar shape, 22 feet long, one and a half inches wide,
and two inches apart, set in ten vertical upright boards.
All this was carried upon a body provided with three
wheels. It weighed 420 pounds and was driven at 40
miles an hour on a wooden sidewalk by a steam engine
of nine horsepower which actuated a two-bladed screw.
The lift was satisfactory, being perhaps 70 pounds per
horsepower, but the equilibrium was quite bad and the
experiments were discontinued. They were taken up