ll of disappointment, much unlike the
earlier years of progress and open-air holiday and happiness. No one,
except a few intimates and disciples, believed in the Wrights'
achievements. The American Government would not touch their invention.
When it was thrice offered to the British Government, between the years
1906 and 1908, it was thrice refused, twice by the War Office and once
by the Admiralty. At an earlier period the French Government, more
active than the other two, sent Captain Ferber, who had made many
gliding experiments of his own, to report after viewing the machine at
Dayton. The Wrights refused to show it to him, but their account of what
they had done impressed him by its truthfulness, and he reported in
their favour, though he told them that there was not a man in all France
who believed that they had done what they claimed. The French Government
would not buy; and things were at a standstill, until Mr. Hart O. Berg,
a good man of business who had helped the Wrights to secure their
patents, urged on them the necessity of putting in an appearance in
Europe and showing what they could do. By this time they had made
various improvements, especially in their engine, and had supplied
themselves with two machines. With one of these, in the summer of 1908,
Wilbur Wright came to France; with the other Orville Wright was to
attempt to secure the contract in America for an army aeroplane. A
French syndicate had agreed to buy the Wright patents and a certain
number of machines on condition that two flights of not less than fifty
kilometres each should be made in a single week, the machines to carry a
passenger or an equivalent weight, and the flights to be made in a wind
of not less than eleven metres a second, that is, about twenty-five
miles an hour. The conditions for the American army contract were no
less severe. The machine was to remain in continuous flight for at least
an hour; it was to be steered in all directions; and was to land,
without damage, at its starting-point. The place chosen for the French
tests was the Hunaudieres racecourse, near Le Mans. There Wilbur Wright
set up his shed, and, from the 8th of August onward, made many little
flights, showing his complete control of his machine by the elaborate
manoeuvres which he performed in the air. On the 9th of September there
came the news that Orville Wright had flown for over an hour at Fort
Myer in America. This liberated Wilbur Wright, who had been