CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



to the test. In the presence of accredited witnesses, 

 with one of the inventors aboard, the weird contri- 

 vance lifted itself into the air, made a flight of 852 

 feet in the face of a twenty-mile wind, and landed its 

 passenger in safety. 



That day the aeroplane was born. The body 

 of this wonderful mechanism consisted of two 

 horizontal planes of canvas stretched over light 

 wooden frames, with their long diameters ad- 

 justed transversely to the direction of flight, like the 

 wings of a bird. The box kite had supplied the ob- 

 vious model for the body of the aeroplane; and a 

 gasoline motor driving two pairs of wooden propeller 

 blades served to push the apparatus forward and vir- 

 tually supplied a buoying air current comparable to 

 that supplied the box kite by the wind. A kite can- 

 not fly unless the wind has a certain strength; nor 

 could the Wright -aeroplane sustain itself in the air 

 unless driven forward at a relatively high speed not 

 far from forty miles an hour. As originally operated, 

 it received initial momentum from a catapult-like 

 arrangement, and needed also the aid of the wind 

 to help support it until it acquired full momentum. 

 Once in the air, however, it attained a speed of forty 

 or fifty miles an hour, and its course could be steered 

 in any given direction regardless of the air currents. 



A pair of horizontal rudders, originally placed in 

 front of the main wings but it later models at the 

 rear, provided for the vertical guidance of the appar- 

 atus; and a pair of vertical rudders at the back 

 steered the machine to right or left. 



An equally vital feature of the steering mechanism 

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