m there. 'I was flying
too low. It was my own fault and it will be a severe lesson to me.
I wanted to turn round, and was only five metres from the ground.' A
little after this, he got up from the couch on which he had been placed,
and almost immediately collapsed, dying five minutes later.

Ferber's chief contemporaries in France were Santos-Dumont, of airship
fame, Henri and Maurice Farman, Hubert Latham, Ernest Archdeacon, and
Delagrange. These are names that come at once to mind, as does that of
Bleriot, who accomplished the second great feat of power-driven flight,
but as a matter of fact the years 1903-10 are filled with a little host
of investigators and experimenters, many of whom, although their names
do not survive to any extent, are but a very little way behind those
mentioned here in enthusiasm and devotion. Archdeacon and Gabriel
Voisin, the former of whom took to heart the success achieved by the
Wright Brothers, co-operated in experiments in gliding. Archdeacon
constructed a glider in box-kite fashion, and Voisin experimented with
it on the Seine, the glider being towed by a motorboat to attain the
necessary speed. It was Archdeacon who offered a cup for the first
straight flight of 200 metres, which was won by Santos-Dumont, and he
also combined with Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe in giving the prize for
the first circular flight of a mile, which was won by Henry Farman on
January 13th, 1908.

A history of the development of aviation in France in these, the
strenuous years, would fill volumes in itself. Bleriot was carrying
out experiments with a biplane glider on the Seine, and Robert
Esnault-Pelterie was working on the lines of the Wright Brothers,
bringing American practice to France. In America others besides the
Wrights had wakened to the possibilities of heavier-than-air flight;
Glenn Curtiss, in company with Dr Alexander Graham Bell, with J. A. D.
McCurdy, and with F. W. Baldwin, a Canadian engineer, formed the Aerial
Experiment Company, which built a number of aeroplanes, most famous of
which were the 'June Bug,' the 'Red Wing,' and the 'White Wing.' In 1908
the 'June Bug 'won a cup presented by the Scientific American--it was
the first prize offered in America in connection with aeroplane flight.

Among the little group of French experimenters in these first years of
practical flight, Santos-Dumont takes high rank. He built his 'No. 14
bis' aeroplane in biplane form, with two superposed main plan