ay
mainly in the direction of investigation into the curvature of plane
surfaces, with a view to obtaining the greatest amount of support.
Phillips was one of the first to treat the problem of curvature of
planes as a matter for scientific experiment, and, great as has been the
development of the driven plane in the 36 years that have passed since
he began, there is still room for investigation into the subject which
he studied so persistently and with such valuable result.

At this point it may be noted that, with the solitary exception of
Le Bris, practically every student of flight had so far set about
constructing the means of launching humanity into the air without any
attempt at ascertaining the nature and peculiarities of the sustaining
medium. The attitude of experimenters in general might be compared to
that of a man who from boyhood had grown up away from open water, and,
at the first sight of an expanse of water, set to work to construct a
boat with a vague idea that, since wood would float, only sufficient
power was required to make him an efficient navigator. Accident,
perhaps, in the shape of lack of means of procuring driving power, drove
Le Bris to the form of experiment which he actually carried out; it
remained for the later years of the nineteenth century to produce men
who were content to ascertain the nature of the support the air would
afford before attempting to drive themselves through it.

Of the age in which these men lived and worked, giving their all in many
cases to the science they loved, even to life itself, it may be said
with truth that 'there were giants on the earth in those days,' as far
as aeronautics is in question. It was an age of giants who lived and
dared and died, venturing into uncharted space, knowing nothing of its
dangers, giving, as a man gives to his mistress, without stint and
for the joy of the giving. The science of to-day, compared with the
glimmerings that were in that age of the giants, is a fixed and certain
thing; the problems of to-day are minor problems, for the great major
problem vanished in solution when the Wright Brothers made their first
ascent. In that age of the giants was evolved the flying man, the new
type in human species which found full expression and came to full
development in the days of the war, achieving feats of daring and
endurance which leave the commonplace landsman staggered at thought of
that of which his fellows prove themselves capabl