ssfully
flown. In 1893 Horatio Phillips flew a model, with many planes arranged
one above another like a Venetian blind, on a circular track at Harrow;
and in the same year Sir Hiram Maxim's large machine, with four thousand
feet of supporting surface, was built at Baldwin's Park in Kent, and,
when it was tested, developed so great a lift that it broke the guide
rails placed to restrain it. Clement Ader, a French electrical engineer,
worked at the problem of flight for many years, and, having obtained the
support of the French Government, constructed a large bat-like machine,
driven by a steam-engine of forty horse-power. In 1897 this machine was
secretly tried, at the military camp of Satory, near Paris, and was
reported on by a Government commission; all that was known thereafter
was that the Government had refused to advance further funds, and that
Ader had abandoned his attempts. When the Wrights had made their
successful flights, a legend of earlier flights by Ader grew up in
France; a heated controversy ensued, and the friends of M. Santos
Dumont, who claimed that he was the first to fly over French soil, at
length induced the French Government to publish the report on the trial
of Ader's machine. The report proved that the machine had not left the
ground.

It is not in mortals to command success; but those who study the record
of the ingenious, persevering, and helpful work done for a quarter of a
century by Mr. Laurence Hargrave, of Sydney, New South Wales, will agree
with Mr. Chanute that this man deserved success. His earliest important
paper was read to the Royal Society of New South Wales in 1884. In the
course of the next ten years he made with his own hands eighteen
different flying machines, of increasing size, all of which flew. His
earlier machines were not much larger than toys, and were supplied with
power by the pull of stretched india-rubber. On this scale he was
successful with a machine driven by an airscrew and with a machine
driven by the flapping of wings. As his machines grew in size he turned
his attention to engines. He was successful with compressed air; he made
many experiments with explosion motors; and he succeeded in producing a
steam-engine which weighed seven pounds and developed almost two-thirds
of one horse-power. In 1893 he invented the box-kite, which is a true
biplane, with the vertical sides of the kite doing the work of a
stabilizing fin. This kite had a marked influence on th