engine and wheels so that it might attempt to rise from the ground. The
Voisins collaborated with most of the early French aviators, with Louis
Bleriot and Robert Esnault-Pelterie, as well as with Farman and
Delagrange. At one time they were closely associated with Bleriot, at
another time with Farman. Their first machines depended for lateral
stability on the vertical panels of the box-kite structure. This was
insufficient, and the French designers had to grapple, one by one, with
all the difficulties that had been met and conquered by the Wrights.
They had this advantage, that the design of the Wrights' machine was,
though not exactly, yet in its main features known to them. All the
early aeroplanes which mounted their elevators in front of the machine
may, without much doubt, be affiliated to the Wrights. The elevator is
not best placed in front; its action in that position is too quick and
violent, but it is under the eye of the operator, and with cool nerves
he can learn to work it.

While the group of enthusiasts who gathered round the Voisins were
designing and experimenting, Santos Dumont, having turned his attention
to machines heavier than air, suddenly appeared among them, made the
first successful flight over French soil, and carried off the Archdeacon
prize. His machine was a biplane, built on the box-kite principle, with
three vertical panels on each side between the planes, and a box-kite
elevator projecting far in front. The wings were fixed at a considerable
dihedral angle, and the engine was a twenty-four horse-power Antoinette.
In his first trial, which took place at Bagatelle on the 23rd of July
1906, Santos Dumont attached a spindle-shaped balloon to the upper
surface of the machine, to help it into the air. The combination of the
two modes he soon found to be impossible; with the balloon attached to
it the machine could not develop speed enough to support itself in the
air. His next step was to practise the machine by running it down an
inclined cable; then he discarded as much weight as he could, doubled
the horse-power of the motor, and began to taxi freely along the ground.
On a day in September the machine raised itself for a very short space
into the air. The first officially witnessed flight, of about eighty
yards, took place on the 23rd of October 1906, and gained the Archdeacon
Cup. About a month later he made a flight of more than a furlong.
Thereafter he established himself at Saint-Cyr an