THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



predecessors, yet, as they tell us, "we saw that the cal- 

 culations upon which all flying-machines had been 

 based were unreliable, and that all were simply groping 

 in the dark. Having set out with absolute faith in the 

 existing scientific data, we were driven to doubt one 

 thing after another, till finally, after two years of ex- 

 periment, we cast it all aside, and decided to rely 

 entirely upon our own investigations. Truth and 

 error were everywhere so intimately mixed as to be 

 indistinguishable. Nevertheless, the time expended in 

 preliminary study of books was not misspent, for they 

 gave us a good general understanding of the subject, 

 and enabled us at the outset to avoid effort in many 

 directions in which results would have been hope- 

 less." 



From mere gliding machines without self-con- 

 tained power the brothers progressed through the vari- 

 ous stages of achievement until in the fall of 1903 they 

 had created the type of flying-machine now made so 

 familiar to everyone through the pictorial publications. 

 Incidentally they had invented and constructed their 

 own gasoline motor for furnishing the power — an 

 accomplishment of no mean importance in itseK. 

 On December 17th, 1903, in the presence of a small 

 company of witnesses who had braved the cold, the 

 Wright machine, carrying one of the brothers, made a 

 short but successful flight — the first ever accom- 

 plished in which a machine carrying a passenger had 

 raised itself by its own power, sailed a certain distance 

 in free flight, yet subject to guidance, and landed itself 

 and its passenger safely. Mr. Hiram Maxim's machine 



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