uous flight under power; Ader
attacked the problem from the other end; like many other experimenters
he regarded the air as a stable fluid capable of giving such support to
his machine as still water might give to a fish, and he reckoned that he
had only to produce the machine in order to achieve flight. The wrecked
'Avion' and the refusal of the French War Ministry to grant any more
funds for further experiment are sufficient evidence of the need for
working along the lines taken by the pioneers of gliding rather than on
those which Ader himself adopted.

Let it not be thought that in this comment there is any desire to
derogate from the position which Ader should occupy in any study of
the pioneers of aeronautical enterprise. If he failed, he failed
magnificently, and if he succeeded, then the student of aeronautics does
him an injustice and confers on the Brothers Wright an honour which,
in spite of the value of their work, they do not deserve. There was
one earlier than Ader, Alphonse Penaud, who, in the face of a lesser
disappointment than that which Ader must have felt in gazing on the
wreckage of his machine, committed suicide; Ader himself, rendered
unable to do more, remained content with his achievement, and with the
knowledge that he had played a good part in the long search which must
eventually end in triumph. Whatever the world might say, he himself was
certain that he had achieved flight. This, for him, was perforce enough.

Before turning to consideration of the work accomplished by the Brothers
Wright, and their proved conquest of the air, it is necessary first to
sketch as briefly as may be the experimental work of Sir (then Mr) Hiram
Maxim, who, in his book, Artificial and Natural Flight, has given
a fairly complete account of his various experiments. He began by
experimenting with models, with screw-propelled planes so attached to a
horizontal movable arm that when the screw was set in motion the plane
described a circle round a central point, and, eventually, he built a
giant aeroplane having a total supporting area of 1,500 square feet,
and a wing-span of fifty feet. It has been thought advisable to give
a fairly full description of the power plant used to the propulsion
of this machine in the section devoted to engine development. The
aeroplane, as Maxim describes it, had five long and narrow planes
projecting from each side, and a main or central plane of pterygoid
aspect. A fore and aft rudder