THE TRIUMPH OF THE AEROPLANE 



to sacrifice anything for the cause. And so, although 

 Lilienthal was gone, the work he had carried so far 

 toward success was continued by others, Chanute and 

 Hering, the American "soaring men," and later 

 eclipsed by the Wright brothers, who were finally to 

 solve the problem. 



THE FLYING MACHINES OF MAXIM AND LANGLEY 



At the same time that Lilienthal was making his 

 initial experiments, another champion of the same school 

 of aviators was achieving equally successful results 

 along somewhat different, and yet on the whole, similar 

 lines. Sir Hiram Maxim, the inventor of so many 

 destructive types of guns, was devoting much time and 

 energy to the construction of a flying-machine. His 

 apparatus was of the aeroplane type, but unlike that of 

 Lilienthal, Chanute, or Hering, was to be propelled by 

 steam-driven screw-propellers. Nor was the apparatus 

 he proposed to make a diminutive affair weighing a 

 few pounds and capable of lifting only the weight of a 

 man. His huge machine weighed in the neighbor- 

 hood of four tons and carried a steam-engine that 

 developed some three hundred and sixty horse-power 

 in the screws. It was two hundred feet in width, and 

 mounted on a car track, along which it was to be run 

 to acquire the necessary initial velocity before mounting 

 into the air. 



On July 31, 1894, this huge machine started on a 

 tn il spin, carrying a crew of three persons, besides fuel 

 and water for the boilers. When a speed of thirty-six 



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