h aviation.

Ferber himself was carrying out a series of experiments at Nice with an
aeroplane which he fitted with a six horse-power engine and suspended
from a tall mast, when he was invited by Colonel Renard to help with the
work of the official research laboratory at Chalais Meudon. He joined
the staff, but found that the officials of a Government organization are
as ill qualified as the theorists of a university for progress in
practical invention. The lower members of the hierarchy are men under
orders, who do what they are told to do; the higher members are hampered
by having to work through subordinates, who often do not understand
their aims and take no particular interest in the work in hand.
Nevertheless, he improved his aeroplane, stabilizing it by means of a
long tail, and fitting it with wheels for landing, in place of the skids
which were used by the Wrights. Then, like those who had gone before
him, he was held up by the question of the engine. Engineers are a
conservative race of men, and perhaps the perfected aeroplane would
still be waiting for a suitable engine if they had not been prompted to
innovation by the fashion of motor-racing. There are strange links in
the chain of cause and effect; the pneumatic tyre made the motor-bicycle
possible; for motor-bicycle races a light engine was devised which later
on was adapted to the needs of the aeroplane. Ferber made acquaintance
with M. Levavasseur, who had invented an engine of eighty horse-power
weighing less than five pounds per horse-power, and had won many races
with it. This engine was named the _Antoinette_ in honour of the
daughter of M. Gastambide, a capitalist, who had supplied the inventor
with funds. The most famous of early French aviators, Santos Dumont,
Farman, Bleriot, Delagrange, and others, owed much to this engine.
Ferber might have had it before any of them, for M. Levavasseur offered
to build it for him--twenty-four horse-power with a weight of about a
hundred and twelve pounds--but public moneys could not be advanced for
an engine that did not exist, so the other pioneers, who had followed
Ferber in gliding experiments, preceded him in flying. In 1906 Ferber
obtained Government permission to join the Antoinette firm for a period,
and by 1908 he was flying in an aeroplane of his own design. He was
killed in September 1909, on the aerodrome of Beuvrequen, near Boulogne,
by capsizing on rough ground in the act of alighting. His own esti