tus', says Wilbur Wright,
speaking of the glider of 1902, 'we made nearly seven hundred glides in
the two or three weeks following. We flew it in calms and we flew it in
winds as high as thirty-five miles an hour. We steered it to right and
left, and performed all the evolutions necessary for flight. This was
the first time in the history of the world that a movable vertical tail
had been used in controlling the direction or the balance of a flying
machine. It was also the first time that a movable vertical tail had
been used, in combination with wings adjustable to different angles of
incidence, in controlling the balance and direction of an aeroplane. We
were the first to functionally employ a movable vertical tail in a
flying aeroplane. We were the first to employ wings adjustable to
respectively different angles of incidence in a flying aeroplane. We
were the first to use the two in combination in a flying aeroplane.'

It is a large claim, and every word of it is true. New inventions are
commonly the work of many minds, and it would be easy to name at least
half a dozen men to whose work the Wrights were indebted. But these were
tributaries; the main achievement belongs wholly to the Wrights. Their
quiet perseverance, through long years, in the face of every kind of
difficulty, is only a part of their distinction; the alertness and
humility of mind which refused all traffic with fixed ideas, and made
dangers and disappointments the material of education, is what stamps
them with greatness. They put themselves to school to the winds. They
knew that there is no cheap or easy way to master nature, and that only
the human spirit, at its best and highest, can win through in that long
struggle. Their patience never failed. 'Skill', says Wilbur Wright,
'comes by the constant repetition of familiar feats rather than by a few
overbold attempts at feats for which the performer is yet hardly
prepared.' Man must learn to fly as he learns to walk. 'Before trying to
rise to any dangerous height a man ought to know that in an emergency
his mind and muscles will work by instinct rather than by conscious
effort. There is no time to think.'

The machine of 1902, which might be called the victory machine, deserves
a full description. It was a double-decked machine, with two planes
fixed by struts one above the other about five feet apart. The planes
were thirty-two feet in span, and five feet in chord. The total area of
their support