tained a velocity of 50 feet per
second, the motor fitted giving 22 horse-power. On trial, however, the
longitudinal equilibrium was found to be defective, and a further design
was got out, the third machine being completed in 1907. In this the wood
slats were held in four parallel container frames, the weight of the
machine, excluding the pilot, being 500 lbs. A motor similar to that
used in the 1904 machine was fitted, and the machine was designed to
lift at a velocity of about 30 miles an hour, a seven-foot propeller
doing the driving. Mr Phillips tried out this machine in a field about
400 yards across. 'The machine was started close to the hedge, and rose
from the ground when about 200 yards had been covered. When the machine
touched the ground again, about which there could be no doubt, owing to
the terrific jolting, it did not run many yards. When it came to rest I
was about ten yards from the boundary. Of course, I stopped the engine
before I commenced to descend.'[*]

[*] Aeronautical Journal, July, 1908.

S. F. Cody, an American by birth, aroused the attention not only of the
British public, but of the War office and Admiralty as well, as early as
1905 with his man-lifting kites. In that year a height of 1,600 feet was
reached by one of these box-kites, carrying a man, and later in the same
year one Sapper Moreton, of the Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers
(the parent of the Royal Flying Corps) remained for an hour at an
altitude of 2,600 feet. Following on the success of these kites, Cody
constructed an aeroplane which he designated a 'power kite,' which
was in reality a biplane that made the first flight in Great Britain.
Speaking before the Aeronautical Society in 1908, Cody said that 'I have
accomplished one thing that I hoped for very much, that is, to be the
first man to fly in Great Britain.... I made a machine that left the
ground the first time out; not high, possibly five or six inches only. I
might have gone higher if I wished. I made some five flights in all, and
the last flight came to grief.... On the morning of the accident I
went out after adjusting my propellers at 8 feet pitch running at 600
(revolutions per minute). I think that I flew at about twenty-eight
miles per hour. I had 50 horsepower motor power in the engine. A bunch
of trees, a flat common above these trees, and from this flat there is a
slope goes down... to another clump of trees. Now, these clumps of trees
are a quarter of