wakened the
thinking portion of the British public to the fact that the aeroplane
had a future.

The success of this great meeting brought about a host of imitations
of which only a few deserve bare mention since, unlike the first, they
taught nothing and achieved little. There was the meeting at Boulogne
late in September of 1909, of which the only noteworthy event was
Ferber's death. There was a meeting at Brescia where Curtiss again took
first prize for speed and Rougier put up a world's height record of 645
feet. The Blackpool meeting followed between 18th and 23rd of October,
1909, forming, with the exception of Doncaster, the first British Flying
Meeting. Chief among the competitors were Henry Farman, who took the
distance prize, Rougier, Paulhan, and Latham, who, by a flight in a high
wind, convinced the British public that the theory that flying was only
possible in a calm was a fallacy. A meeting at Doncaster was practically
simultaneous with the Blackpool week; Delagrange, Le Blon, Sommer, and
Cody were the principal figures in this event. It should be added
that 130 miles was recorded as the total flown at Doncaster, while at
Blackpool only 115 miles were flown. Then there were Juvisy, the first
Parisian meeting, Wolverhampton, and the Comte de Lambert's flight round
the Eiffel Tower at a height estimated at between 1,200 and 1,300 feet.
This may be included in the record of these aerial theatricals, since it
was nothing more.

Probably wakened to realisation of the possibilities of the aeroplane by
the Rheims Meeting, Germany turned out its first plane late in 1909.
It was known as the Grade monoplane, and was a blend of the Bleriot and
Santos-Dumont machines, with a tail suggestive of the Antoinette type.
The main frame took the form of a single steel tube, at the forward end
of which was rigged a triangular arrangement carrying the pilot's seat
and the landing wheels underneath, with the wing warping wires and stays
above. The sweep of the wings was rather similar to the later Taube
design, though the sweep back was not so pronounced, and the machine was
driven by a four-cylinder, 20 horse-power, air-cooled engine which drove
a two-bladed tractor propeller. In spite of Lilienthal's pioneer
work years before, this was the first power-driven German plane which
actually flew.

Eleven months after the Rheims meeting came what may be reckoned the
only really notable aviation meeting on English soil, in the f