n operator to report upon
what occurred in flight, and to acquire practical experience of the work
of the human factor in imitation of bird flight. From this point of
view he conducted his own experiments; it must be noted that he was
over sixty years of age when he began, and, being no longer sufficiently
young and active to perform any but short and insignificant glides, the
courage of the man becomes all the more noteworthy; he set to work to
evolve the state required by the problem of stability, and without any
expectation of advancing to the construction of a flying machine which
might be of commercial value. His main idea was the testing of devices
to secure equilibrium; for this purpose he employed assistants to
carry out the practical work, where he himself was unable to supply the
necessary physical energy.

Together with his assistants he found a suitable place for experiments
among the sandhills on the shore of Lake Michigan, about thirty miles
eastward from Chicago. Here a hill about ninety-five feet high was
selected as a point from which Chanute's gliders could set off; in
practice, it was found that the best observation was to be obtained
from short glides at low speed, and, consequently, a hill which was
only sixty-one feet above the shore of the lake was employed for the
experimental work done by the party.

In the years 1896 and 1897, with parties of from four to six persons,
five full-sized gliders were tried out, and from these two distinct
types were evolved: of these one was a machine consisting of five tiers
of wings and a steering tail, and the other was of the biplane type;
Chanute believed these to be safer than any other machine previously
evolved, solving, as he states in his monograph, the problem of inherent
equilibrium as fully as this could be done. Unfortunately, very few
photographs were taken of the work in the first year, but one view of a
multiple wing-glider survives, showing the machine in flight. In 1897 a
series of photographs was taken exhibiting the consecutive phases of
a single flight; this series of photographs represents the experience
gained in a total of about one thousand glides, but the point of view
was varied so as to exhibit the consecutive phases of one single flight.

The experience gained is best told in Chanute's own words. 'The first
thing,' he says, 'which we discovered practically was that the wind
flowing up a hill-side is not a steadily-flowing current lik