ne surface for aerial supremacy.

It does not appear that Paucton went beyond theory, nor is there in his
theory any advance toward practical flight--da Vinci could have told
him as much as he knew. He was followed by Meerwein, who invented an
apparatus apparently something between a flapping wing machine and a
glider, consisting of two wings, which were to be operated by means of a
rod; the venturesome one who would fly by means of this apparatus had to
lie in a horizontal position beneath the wings to work the rod. Meerwein
deserves a place of mention, however, by reason of his investigations
into the amount of surface necessary to support a given weight. Taking
that weight at 200 pounds--which would allow for the weight of a man
and a very light apparatus--he estimated that 126 square feet would be
necessary for support. His pamphlet, published at Basle in 1784, shows
him to have been a painstaking student of the potentialities of flight.

Jean-Pierre Blanchard, later to acquire fame in connection with balloon
flight, conceived and described a curious vehicle, of which he even
announced trials as impending. His trials were postponed time after
time, and it appears that he became convinced in the end of the futility
of his device, being assisted to such a conclusion by Lalande, the
astronomer, who repeated Borelli's statement that it was impossible for
man ever to fly by his own strength. This was in the closing days of
the French monarchy, and the ascent of the Montgolfiers' first hot-air
balloon in 1783--which shall be told more fully in its place--put an
end to all French experiments with heavier-than-air apparatus, though in
England the genius of Cayley was about to bud, and even in France there
were those who understood that ballooning was not true flight.

III. SIR GEORGE CAYLEY--THOMAS WALKER

On the fifth of June, 1783, the Montgolfiers' hot-air balloon rose at
Versailles, and in its rising divided the study of the conquest of the
air into two definite parts, the one being concerned with the
propulsion of gas lifted, lighter-than-air vehicles, and the other being
crystallised in one sentence by Sir George Cayley: 'The whole problem,'
he stated, 'is confined within these limits, viz.: to make a surface
support a given weight by the application of power to the resistance of
the air.' For about ten years the balloon held the field entirely, being
regarded as the only solution of the problem of flight that