, near Chard. It did not fly. Henson, completely discouraged,
married and went to America; Stringfellow persisted, and in 1848 made a
smaller model, ten feet in span, with airscrews sixteen inches in
diameter. This machine, which had wings slightly cambered, with a rigid
leading edge and a flexible trailing edge, made several successful
flights, first in a long covered room at Chard, and later, before a
number of witnesses, at Cremorne Gardens. After this success
Stringfellow did no more for many years, until the foundation of the
Aeronautical Society of Great Britain in 1866 roused him again to
activity. At the society's exhibition of 1868, held in the Crystal
Palace, he produced a model triplane, which ran along suspended from a
wire, and, when its engine was in action, lifted itself as it ran.

The foundation of the Aeronautical Society, with the Duke of Argyll as
president and with a council of men of science, attracted fresh minds to
the study of flight, and gave the subject a respectable standing. Mr.
Wenham's paper, read to the society on the 27th of June 1866, proved
that the effective sustaining area of a wing is limited to a narrow
portion behind the leading edge; that, in order to increase this area,
the planes of a flying machine might advantageously be placed one above
another--an idea which was borrowed and put into practice by Mr.
Stringfellow in his triplane--and that a heavy body, supported on
planes, requires less power to drive it through the air at a high speed
than to maintain it in flight at a low speed. For some years the society
flourished; then its energies declined, and it fell into a state of
suspended animation. At its second exhibition, in 1885, there were only
sixteen exhibits as against seventy-eight at the exhibition of 1868. The
prospects of practical success seemed remoter than ever. At last, thirty
years after its foundation, it sprang into renewed activity, and, with
Major B. F. S. Baden-Powell as secretary, did an immense work, from 1897
onwards, in directing and furthering the study of aviation. The
_Aeronautical Journal_, which was published quarterly by the revived
society, is a record of the years of progress and triumph.

The cause of this sudden revival is to be sought in the extraordinary
fermentation which had been going on under the surface, both in Europe
and America. The public was careless and sceptical; inventors who were
seeking practical success were shy of premature p