spring of the same year Delagrange began to execute
turning flights; on the 6th of July Farman gained the prize offered by
M. Armengaud, the president of the society of aerial navigation, for a
flight of a quarter of an hour's duration, and after the arrival of
Wilbur Wright at Le Mans progress became so rapid that records were
broken week by week and almost day by day. In January 1909 the Aero Club
of France issued their first list of pilots' certificates. Eight names,
all famous, made up the list--Leon Delagrange, Alberto Santos Dumont,
Robert Esnault-Pelterie, Henri Farman, Wilbur Wright, Orville Wright,
Captain Ferdinand Ferber, Louis Bleriot. To make this a list of the
chief French pioneers, the names of the Wrights would have to be
omitted, and the names of some who were not famous pilots but who did
much for flying, especially the names of M. Ernest Archdeacon and
Gabriel Voisin, would have to be included.

These men, and those who worked for them, gave to France her own school
of aviation. Louis Bleriot and Robert Esnault-Pelterie broke away from
what, since the days of Francis Wenham, had been accepted as the
orthodox doctrine of the biplane, and, taking the bird for master,
devised swift, light, and easily handled monoplanes. The Bleriot
monoplane, which first flew the Channel; the R.E.P. (or Robert
Esnault-Pelterie) monoplane; the Antoinette monoplane, on which Hubert
Latham performed his exploits; the small and swift Demoiselle monoplane,
designed and flown by Santos Dumont; and the Tellier monoplane, which
for a time held the record for cross-country flight--all these made
history by their performances in the crowded years from 1908 to 1910.
The monoplane is, without any doubt, the prettiest of machines in the
air. When Captain Ferber gave this reason to Mr. Chanute for preferring
it to the biplane, Mr. Chanute, he says, laughed a good deal at an
argument so characteristically French. But there is sense and weight in
the argument. No flying animal is half so ugly as the early Wright
biplane. In the world of natural fliers beauty and efficiency are one.
Purity of line and economy of parts are beautiful and efficient. A good
illustration of this may be found in the question of the airscrew. The
early French biplanes of the Voisin and Farman type were what would now
be called 'pusher' machines; their airscrews operated behind the main
planes, and their tails were supported by an open structure of wood or
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