156 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1910. 



on the 11th of September, 2-f miles, from Nancy to Lenoncourt. 

 Plate 15, figure 1, shows a flight in company with Farman. 



E. Lefebvre, an automobile dealer, having purchased a Wright 

 machine, laid down lines of rails and taught himself how to operate 

 and fly the machine. At Rheims he made some very good perform- 

 ances. On the 27th of August he flew 12.5 miles in 20 minutes and 

 47 seconds. Unfortunately, upon the 7th of September, when test- 

 ing a new Wright machine, he was upset and killed, this being the 

 first fatal accident to occur in 1909. 



One of the last men to come into prominence in France has been 

 Mr. Henri Rougier, who operates a Voisin machine (pi. 15, fig. 2), 

 and who has made some remarkable high flights. At Brescia he 

 reached 328 feet of altitude, and later, on another occasion, 650 feet 

 of altitude was reached. At Berlin he won the first prize for dis- 

 tance. On the 18th of October, at Blackpool meeting in England, 

 he made a flight of 18 miles in 25 mimites, but all of those perform- 

 ances in height fall far short of the performances of Orville Wright, 

 who rose to a height of 1,600 feet. 



By the contract in which the Wright brothers agreed to sell their 

 French patents to a syndicate, Mr. Wilbur Wright was to teach three 

 pupils to operate the machines. The men selected were the Count 

 de Lambert, Mr. Paul Tissandier, and Capt. Lucas-Girardville. The 

 latter, being an army cJfficer, has not appeared in any public tourna- 

 ment, but Mr. Tissandier has made many good flights, the longest 

 up to the present time being one of 69 miles at Rheims. and he has 

 been training pupils of his own. Count de Lambert made a flight 

 of 72 miles at Rheims, and day before yesterday (Oct. 18) he 

 made a sensational journey from the aviation grounds at Juvisy, 

 where plate 16, figure 1, shows one of his flights over a portion of 

 Paris to the Eiffel Tower and back, some 30 miles. This feat, as 

 well as the flight of Latham on September 27 over the suburbs of 

 Berlin, is disfavored by the Wrights' as involving undue risks of 

 accident. 



Wilbur Wright also taught two pupils in Italy (where he sold a 

 machine) — Lieut. Calderara, who flew at Rome and at Brescia, win- 

 ning some prizes and meeting with accidents, and Lieut. Savoya, 

 whose performances have not been made known. 



Mr. Legagneux and Mr. Bunau-Varilla also made creditable flights 

 at Rheims upon machines built by Voisin Bros. (pi. 16, fig. 2), but 

 the performances most commented upon at that tournament were 

 those of Mr. Glen Curtiss, who, with a machine built by himself, 

 won the Gordon Bennett cup by making the shortest time over 20 

 kilometers; won the first prize for speed in a flight of 30 kilometers 

 (4G miles an hour), and the second prize for speed over 10 kilo- 

 meters, in which he flew at 48 miles per hour. Plate 17 shows these 



