-rudder when the wheel was turned in either direction, while
pulling back the wheel altered the inclination of the front elevating
planes, and so gave lifting or depressing control of the plane.

This machine ran on three wheels before leaving the ground, a central
undercarriage wheel being fitted in front, with two more in line with
a right angle line drawn through the centre of the engine crank at the
rear end of the crank-case. The engine was a 35 horsepower Vee design,
water cooled, with overhead inlet and exhaust valves, and Bosch
high-tension magneto ignition. The total weight of the plane in flying
order was about 700 lbs.

As great a figure in the early days as either Ferber or Santos-Dumont
was Louis Bleriot, who, as early as 1900 built a flapping-wing model,
this before ever he came to experimenting with the Voisin biplane type
of glider on the Seine. Up to 1906 he had built four biplanes of his own
design, and in March of 1907 he built his first monoplane, to wreck
it only a few days after completion in an accident from which he had
a fortunate escape. His next machine was a double monoplane, designed
after Langley's precept, to a certain extent, and this was totally
wrecked in September of 1907. His seventh machine, a monoplane, was
built within a month of this accident, and with this he had a number
of mishaps, also achieving some good flights, including one in which
he made a turn. It was wrecked in December of 1907, whereupon he built
another monoplane on which, on July 6th, 1908, Bleriot made a flight
lasting eight and a half minutes. In October of that year he flew the
machine from Toury to Artenay and returned on it--this was just a day
after Farman's first cross-country flight--but, trying to repeat the
success five days later, Bleriot collided with a tree in a fog and
wrecked the machine past repair. Thereupon he set about building his
eleventh machine, with which he was to achieve the first flight across
the English channel.

Henry Farman, to whom reference has already been made, was engaged with
his two brothers, Maurice and Richard, in the motor-car business, and
turned to active interest in flying in 1907, when the Voisin firm built
his first biplane on the box-kite principle. In July of 1908 he won
a prize of L400 for a flight of thirteen miles, previously having
completed the first kilometre flown in Europe with a passenger, the said
passenger being Ernest Archdeaon. In September of 1908 Farm