own
on them a certain amount of ridicule. Europe laughed long at the
_sang-froid_ with which Wilbur Wright, having won the Michelin prize
of eight hundred pounds, gave no heed to the applause which the
assembled throng gave him as the money was transferred to him with a
neat presentation speech. Without a word he divided the notes into
two packets, handed one to his brother Orville, and thrust the other
into his own pocket. For the glory which attended his achievement he
cared nothing. It was all in the day's work. Later in the course of
trials of a machine for the United States Government at Fort Myer,
just across the Potomac from Washington, the Wrights seriously
offended a certain sort of public sentiment in a way which
undoubtedly set back the encouragement of aviation by the United
States Government very seriously.

[Illustration: Permission of _Scientific American_.

_The Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Dirigibles at the
Opening of the War._

_France must be credited with at least eighteen airships of various
types--England had only seven--Russia had probably not more than
three airships available--Belgium had one airship Austria had not
less than three, not more than five airships available--Germany had
twenty three airships of the rigid, semi-rigid, and non-rigid
type._]

In 1909, they had received a contract from the government for a
machine for the use of the Signal Service. The price was fixed at
$25,000, but a bonus of $2500 was to be paid for every mile above
forty miles an hour made by the machine on its trial trip. That
bonus looked big to the Wrights, but it cost the cause of aviation
many times its face value in the congressional disfavour it caused.
Aviation was then in its infancy in the United States. Every man in
Congress wanted to see the flights. But Fort Myer, whose parade was
to be the testing ground, was fully fourteen miles from the Capitol,
and reached only most inconveniently from Washington by trolley, or
most expensively by carriage or automobile. Day after day members
of the House and Senate made the long journey across the Potomac.
Time and again they journeyed back without even a sight of the
flyer in the hangar. One after another little flaws discovered in
the machine led the aviators to postpone their flight. Investigating
statesmen who thought that their position justified them in seeking
special privileges were brusquely turned away by the military guard.
The dusk of