firms.

Other early aerodromes, almost contemporary with Brooklands, were
Hendon, in the northern suburbs of London, and Larkhill, on Salisbury
Plain, a few miles from Amesbury. The Hendon aerodrome, like Brooklands,
owed its first fame to the initiative of Mr. Holt Thomas. After the
Brooklands adventure he kept in touch with M. Louis Paulhan, and in
April 1910 persuaded him to make an attempt to win the L10,000 prize
offered by the _Daily Mail_ for a flight from London to Manchester.
During the previous winter M. Paulhan had been flying with success in
America, while his rival, Mr. Grahame-White, had been busy with his
flying school at Pau, in the south of France. Mr. Grahame-White brought
a Farman biplane to London, and obtained permission to use Wormwood
Scrubbs for his starting-place. Mr. Holt Thomas, looking for a
starting-place for Paulhan, heard of a field at Hendon which was being
used by a firm of electrical engineers for experiments with a small
monoplane, and got leave to start Paulhan thence. After Paulhan's
success, Mr. Grahame-White and his business partner, the late Mr.
Richard T. Gates, visited Hendon, and finding that the field was one of
a number bordering the Midland Railway without any roads cutting across
them, fixed on the place as the site of what was afterwards called the
London aerodrome. Here the Grahame-White Aviation Company made it their
business, from 1911 onwards, to familiarize Londoners with the spectacle
of flying and with its practice. They built a number of sheds and let
them to manufacturing firms. One of these was the Aircraft Manufacturing
Company, formed in 1911 by Mr. Holt Thomas, who at that time was working
the British rights for the French Farman Company. Another was the W. H.
Ewen Aviation Company, which subsequently became the British Caudron
Company. A third was the British Deperdussin Company; the wonderful
little Deperdussin monoplane, in the 1912 Gordon Bennett Trials at
Rheims, carried its pilot, M. Vedrines, at a speed of nearly two miles a
minute for a flight of over an hour. Hendon, moreover, laid itself out
to attract spectators. There were stands and enclosures, with prices of
admission to suit all purses. Aeroplane racing was a regular feature of
the meetings. As early as 1911 about a hundred and twenty members of the
two Houses of Parliament paid a visit to the place by invitation and
were some of them taken into the air. In July 1911 two great races,
modelled o