PROGRESS IN AVIATION CHANUTE. 151 



of August last he made his first exhibition there, flying 15 minutes. 

 On the 8th of September he went up with Capt. Hildebrandt ; on the 

 18th of September he went up with Capt. Englehardt, and on the 

 17th of September he made a demonstration before the court. On 

 the 2d of October he took up into the air the Crown Prince, who gave 

 him a handsome present, and on the 4th of October he made a flight 

 of 21 miles, reaching a height estimated at 1,600 feet. This is the 

 latest performance which he has made, although there is no telling 

 what another day will bring forth. He is now in Paris. In London 

 he may make some demonstrations with his machine in the course of a 

 week or two. 



The French, in 1905, became partly acquainted with what had been 

 done in this country, and they thought it would never do to let the 

 Americans obtain priority in the air, so a good many people began to 

 experiment. Among the first was Santos Dumont, who made a flight 

 on the 12th of November, 1906, of 720 feet in 21 seconds with his No. 

 14 machine, Hargrave type. That flight created great excitement, 

 and the French people thought they were on the high road to beat the 

 Americans, but it required a good deal of further experimenting be- 

 fore that result was even partially accomplished. 



Santos Dumont brought the machine out a second time but broke 

 it. He then concluded that it was not built on the right plan and 

 began to experiment with a modified machine. It proved unsatisfac- 

 tory in various ways, and after it was broken he discarded it. 



The next machine he tried was the biplane, the cellular partitions 

 being removed. That ought, in my judgment, to have given satisfac- 

 tion, but it did not and he abandoned it, although with that machine 

 he made a flight, in Paris, on the I7th of November, 1907, of 500 feet. 



He then went over to still another plan which he called the " Bird 

 of Prey." In this design he placed the motor up in the top and had 

 a dihedral angle in the biplane. But that did not give him satisfac- 

 tion, and in the next machine he finally went over to the monoplane, 

 which the French people have always insisted was the best design for 

 a flying machine, and which they have promoted as against the 

 biplane. 



Plate 8, figure 1, is a view of the monoplane of Santos Dumont, and 

 with that on the 10th of March, 1909, he made a flight of 1,300 feet. 

 On the 10th of April he made another flight of 1.2 miles. On the 19th 

 of June he made a flight at Issy, near Paris, of 820 feet, at which 

 time his machine was struck by a downward rush of air, and to his 

 great astonishment he found himself suddenly on the ground. The 

 machine had gone down without his knowing what was happening. 

 Fortunately the machine was not broken and he was not injured. 



Santos Dumont's idea had been all along to have a handy machine, 

 and he finally built a baby monoplane, which he called the " Demoi- 



