l
composed of one vertical and one horizontal plane extended to the
rear, and in the middle the aviator hung by his armpits, in an erect
position. With this device he made some experimental glides, leaping
from slight eminences. With his body, which swung at will from its
cushioned supports, he could balance, and even steer the fabric
which supported him, and accomplished long glides against the wind.
Not infrequently, running into the teeth of the breeze down a gentle
slope he would find himself gently wafted into the air and would
make flights of as much as three hundred yards, steering to either
side, or rising and falling at will. He was even able to make a
circuitous flight and return to his starting place--a feat that was
not accomplished with a motor-driven airplane until years later.
Lilienthal achieved it with no mechanical aid, except the wings. He
became passionately devoted to the art, made more than two thousand
flights, and at the time of his death had just completed a
motor-driven airplane, which he was never able to test. His earlier
gliding wings he developed into a form of biplane, with which he
made several successful flights, but met his death in 1896 by the
collapse of this machine, of the bad condition of which he had been
warned.

[Illustration: (C) Kadel & Herbert.

_French Airdrome near the Front._]

Lilienthal was more of a factor in the conquest of the air than his
actual accomplishments would imply. His persistent experiments, his
voluminous writings, and above all his friendly and intelligent
interest in the work of other and younger men won him a host of
disciples in other lands who took up the work that dropped from his
lifeless hands.

[Illustration: Lilienthal's Glider.]

In England Percy S. Pilcher emulated the Lilienthal glides, and was
at work on a motor-propelled machine when he was killed by the
breakage of a seemingly unimportant part of his machine. He was on
the edge of the greater success, not to that moment attained by
anyone, of building a true airplane propelled by motor. Many
historians think that to Lilienthal and Pilcher is justly due the
title "the first flying men." But Le Bris, a French sailor, utterly
without scientific or technical equipment, as far back as 1854 had
accomplished a wonderful feat in that line. While on a cruise he had
watched an albatross that followed his ship day after day apparently
without rest and equally without fatigue. His imagination w