pean
inventors were busy with experiments. There were rumours of the American
success, but the rumours were disbelieved, and the problem was attacked
again from the beginning. Long after the Wrights had circled in the air,
at their own free will, over the Huffman Prairie, European inventors
were establishing records, as they believed, by hopping off the ground
for a few yards in machines of their own construction.

The earliest of these European pioneers was Mr. I. C. H. Ellehammer, a
Danish engineer, who had built motor-cycles and light cars. In 1904 he
built a flying machine, and having prepared a ground in the small Danish
island of Lindholm, suspended the machine by a wire attached to a
central mast, and tested its lifting power. In the course of his
experiments he increased his engine-power, and added to the first
bird-like pair of wings a second pair placed above them. With this
improved machine he claims to have made, on the 12th of September 1906,
the first free flight in Europe, travelling in the air for forty-two
metres at a height of a metre and a half. With later machines he had
some successes, but the rapid progress of French aviation left him
behind, and his latest invention was an application to the aeroplane of
a helicopter, to raise it vertically in the air. The helicopter idea
continues to fascinate some inventors, and it would be rash to condemn
it, but the most it seems to promise is a flight like that of the
lark--an almost vertical ascent and a glide to earth again. A machine of
this kind might conceivably, at some future time, become a substitute,
in war, for the kite balloon; it is not likely to supersede the
aeroplane.

Of all European countries France was the most intelligent and the most
alert in taking up the problem of flight. The enduring rivalry between
the airship and the flying machine is well illustrated in the history of
French effort. Long before the first true flying machine was built and
flown balloons of a fish-like shape had been driven through the air by
mechanical airscrews. A bird is much heavier than the air it displaces;
a fish is about the same weight as the water it displaces; and the
question which of the two examples is better for aircraft, whether
flying or swimming is the better mode, remained an open question,
dividing opinion and distracting effort. The debate is not yet
concluded. It is now not very hazardous to say that both methods are
good, and that the partisan