e promotion of
aerial navigation. When it was founded no power-driven aeroplane had as
yet carried a man in the air, and the original interest of its members
was in the airship, which had been brought into high credit by M. Santos
Dumont; but they were quick to recognize the coming of the aeroplane,
and the Hon. C. S. Rolls, who helped Mr. Butler to found the club, was
one of the boldest and most skilful of early pilots. The club brought
together inventors and sportsmen, and supplied them with a suitable
ground for their experiments. It undertook the training of aviators, and
from 1910 onwards, issued its certificates, which, when the Government
began to build the Flying Corps, were officially recognized as a warrant
of proficiency in the new art. An immense service was rendered in these
early years by gentlemen adventurers, engineers and pilots, who, all for
love and nothing for reward, built machines and flew them. Some of
these, when the storm broke, became the mainstay of the national force.
To take only two names out of the first hundred to whom the Aero Club
granted its certificate--a list crowded with distinction and
achievement--it is not easy to assess the national debt to Mr. T. O. M.
Sopwith and Mr. Geoffrey de Havilland. It was in the latter part of 1911
that Mr. Sopwith, having flown with skill and distinction on the
machines which he had bought, began to build an aeroplane from his own
designs. At that time there were no aeroplane draughtsmen, and he had to
stand by and instruct his mechanics point by point. He could not afford
to rent a proper workshop; the machine was built in a rough wooden shed,
unsupplied with water, and lighted after dark by paraffin lamps. Six men
built the machine, and Mr. Sopwith flew it from the ground on which the
shed stood. Its performance was better than had ever been obtained from
a machine of equal horse-power. It was subsequently bought by the
Admiralty, and Mr. Sopwith began to build another aeroplane of higher
power, and a flying boat. In 1912 he took premises at Kingston, and
there finished these two machines. The aeroplane was successful; the
flying boat was smashed during its trial flight. Another was put in
hand, and was bought by the Admiralty. Aeroplane designing was in its
experimental stage, so that no large orders were obtainable, and even
where three of a kind were ordered, numerous alterations, demanded
during the process of construction, prevented three of a ki