machine to a great height,
turning her nose down and letting go the controls. As he expected, she
righted. To test the machine he flew her in all weathers, hurling her
against the wind storms. For the purposes of these practical tests he
invented an instrument of his own called the Ripograph, which recorded
on a single strip all the pilot's movements in warping and steering, as
well as the speed, inclination, and roll of the machine. This machine,
when the rudder was turned right or left, automatically banked itself;
and when the engine was cut off, took the angle of gliding flight. It
was a later variant of the same machine, an R.E. 8 belonging to the
Australian Flying Corps, of which it is told that, when the pilot and
observer had both been shot dead, in December 1917, the machine
continued to fly in wide left-hand circles, and ultimately, when the
fuel was exhausted and the engine stopped, fell near St.-Pol, some
thirty miles from the scene of combat, without completely wrecking
itself. When the war broke out Mr. Busk was more than ever needed at the
factory. On the 5th of November 1914 he mounted in an experimental B.E.
2c machine to a height of about eight hundred feet. Exactly what
happened will never be known; the petrol vapour must have been ignited
by a spark; the machine burst into flames, and after drifting aimlessly
for a time, fell on Laffan's Plain. The death of such men as Charles
Rolls and Edward Busk was a part of the heavy price that had to be paid
for victory; before victory was in sight. There was no other way; the
work that they did could not be spared, and could never have been even
attempted except by the quiet of absolute courage.

The business undertaken by the factory, apart from its main business of
research and experiment, was almost bewildering in its diversity. From
the first the officials of the factory insisted on maintaining a high
standard of workmanship, which spells safety in the air. This question
of workmanship became doubly important during the war, when, in order to
improve the performance of machines, all avoidable weight had to be
sacrificed, and the factor of safety, as it is called, reduced to the
lowest permissible limit. The breaking of a spar or a wire, the failure
of a bolt or a nut, may mean a fatal accident. Further, the factory did
what it could to standardize the component parts of an aeroplane, so as
to facilitate repair; and this, before the war came, had been large