nsiderable
improvements were to be seen, such as the general adoption of stranded
steel cable in place of piano wire for the mail bracing.

IV. THE WAR PERIOD

Up to this point an attempt has been made to give some idea of the
progress that was made during the eleven years that had elapsed since
the days of the Wrights' first flights. Much advance had been made and
aeroplanes had settled down, superficially at any rate, into more or
less standardised forms in three main types--tractor monoplanes, tractor
biplanes, and pusher biplanes. Through the application of the results
of experiments with models in wind tunnels to full-scale machines,
considerable improvements had been made in the design of wing sections,
which had greatly increased the efficiency of aeroplanes by raising the
amount of 'lift' obtained from the wing compared with the 'drag' (or
resistance to forward motion) which the same wing would cause. In the
same way the shape of bodies, interplane struts, etc., had been
improved to be of better stream-line shape, for the further reduction
of resistance; while the problems of stability were beginning to be
tolerably well understood. Records (for what they are worth) stood
at 21,000 feet as far as height was concerned, 126 miles per hour for
speed, and 24 hours duration. That there was considerable room for
development is, however, evidenced by a statement made by the late B.
C. Hucks (the famous pilot) in the course of an address delivered before
the Royal Aeronautical Society in July, 1914. 'I consider,' he said,
'that the present day standard of flying is due far more to the
improvement in piloting than to the improvement in machines.... I
consider those (early 1914) machines are only slight improvements on
the machines of three years ago, and yet they are put through evolutions
which, at that time, were not even dreamed of. I can take a good example
of the way improvement in piloting has outdistanced improvement in
machines--in the case of myself, my 'looping' Bleriot. Most of you know
that there is very little difference between that machine and the 50
horse-power Bleriot of three years ago.' This statement was, of course,
to some extent an exaggeration and was by no means agreed with by
designers, but there was at the same time a germ of truth in it. There
is at any rate little doubt that the theory and practice of aeroplane
design made far greater strides towards becoming an exact science during
th