kes as passenger. In
the war period he was one of the principal designers of fighting and
reconnaissance machines.

F. Handley Page, who started in business as an aeroplane builder in
1908, having works at Barking, was one of the principal exponents of
the inherently stable machine, to which he devoted practically all his
experimental work up to the outbreak of war. The experiments were made
with various machines, both of monoplane and biplane type, and of these
one of the best was a two-seater monoplane built in 1911, while a second
was a larger machine, a biplane, built in 1913 and fitted with a 110
horse-power Anzani engine. The war period brought out the giant biplane
with which the name of Handley Page is most associated, the twin-engined
night-bomber being a familiar feature of the later days of the war;
the four-engined bomber had hardly had a chance of proving itself under
service conditions when the war came to an end.

Another notable figure of the early period was 'Tommy' Sopwith, who took
his flying brevet at Brooklands in November of 1910, and within four
days made the British duration record of 108 miles in 3 hours 12
minutes. On December 18th, 1910, he won the Baron de Forrest prize of
L4,000 for the longest flight from England to the Continent, flying
from Eastchurch to Tirlemont, Belgium, in three hours, a distance of 161
miles. After two years of touring in America, he returned to England and
established a flying school. In 1912 he won the first aerial Derby, and
in 1913 a machine of his design, a tractor biplane, raised the British
height record to 13,000 feet (June 16th, at Brooklands). First as
aviator, and then as designer, Sopwith has done much useful work in
aviation.

These are but a few, out of a host who contributed to the development of
flying in this country, for, although France may be said to have set
the pace as regards development, Britain was not far behind. French
experimenters received far more Government aid than did the early
British aviators and designers--in the early days the two were
practically synonymous, and there are many stories of the very early
days at Brooklands, where, when funds ran low, the ardent spirits
patched their trousers with aeroplane fabric and went on with their work
with Bohemian cheeriness. Cody, altering and experimenting on Laffan's
Plain, is the greatest figure of them all, but others rank, too, as
giants of the early days, before the war brought ful