riment. Ader and his friends alleged that a flight of nearly a
thousand feet was made; again the machine was wrecked at the end of the
trial, and there Ader's practical work may be said to have ended, since
no more funds were forthcoming for the subsidy of experiments.

There is the bald narrative, but it is worthy of some amplification. If
Ader actually did what he claimed, then the position which the Wright
Brothers hold as first to navigate the air in a power-driven plane is
nullified. Although at this time of writing it is not a quarter of a
century since Ader's experiment in the presence of witnesses competent
to judge on his accomplishment, there is no proof either way, and
whether he was or was not the first man to fly remains a mystery in the
story of the conquest of the air.

The full story of Ader's work reveals a persistence and determination to
solve the problem that faced him which was equal to that of Lilienthal.
He began by penetrating into the interior of Algeria after having
disguised himself as an Arab, and there he spent some months in studying
flight as practiced by the vultures of the district. Returning to France
in 1886 he began to construct the 'Eole,' modelling it, not on the
vulture, but in the shape of a bat. Like the Lilienthal and Pilcher
gliders this machine was fitted with wings which could be folded; the
first flight made, as already noted, on October 9th, 1890, took place
in the grounds of the chateau d'Amainvilliers, near Bretz; two
fellow-enthusiasts named Espinosa and Vallier stated that a flight
was actually made; no statement in the history of aeronautics has been
subject of so much question, and the claim remains unproved.

It was in September of 1891 that Ader, by permission of the Minister of
War, moved the 'Eole' to the military establishment at Satory for the
purpose of further trial. By this time, whether he had flown or not,
his nineteen years of work in connection with the problems attendant on
mechanical flight had attracted so much attention that henceforth
his work was subject to the approval of the military authorities, for
already it was recognised that an efficient flying machine would confer
an inestimable advantage on the power that possessed it in the event
of war. At Satory the 'Eole' was alleged to have made a flight of 109
yards, or, according to another account, 164 feet, as stated above, in
the trial in which the machine wrecked itself through colliding with