for me to build a flying
machine, how long it would take, and how much it would cost. My reply
was that it would take five years and would cost L50,000. The first
three years would be devoted to developing a light internal-combustion
engine, and the remaining two years to making a flying machine.

"Later on a considerable sum of money was placed at my disposal, and the
experiments commenced, but unfortunately the gun business called for
my attention abroad, and during the first two years of the experimental
work I was out of England eighteen months.

"Although I had thought much of the internal-combustion engine it seemed
to me that it would take too long to develop one and that it would be a
hopeless task in my absence from England; so I decided that in my first
experiments at least I would use a steam-engine. I therefore designed
and made a steam-engine and boiler of which Mr. Charles Parsons has
since said that, next to the Maxim gun, it developed more energy for its
weight than any other heat engine ever made. That was true at the time,
but is very wide of the mark now."

Speaking of motors, the veteran lecturer remarked: "Perhaps there was no
problem in the world on which mathematicians had differed so widely as
on the problem of flight. Twenty years ago experimenters said: 'Give us
a motor that will develop 1 horse-power with the weight of a barnyard
fowl, and we will very soon fly.' At the present moment they had motors
which would develop over 2 horse-power and did not weigh more than a
12-pound barnyard fowl. These engines had been developed--I might say
created--by the builders of motor cars. Extreme lightness had been
gradually obtained by those making racing cars, and that had been
intensified by aviators. In many cases a speed of 80 or 100 miles per
hour had been attained, and machines had remained in the air for hours
and had flown long distances. In some cases nearly a ton had been
carried for a short distance."

Such words as these, coming from the lips of a great inventor, give us a
deep insight into the working of the inventor's mind, and, incidentally,
show us some of the difficulties which beset all pioneers in their
tasks. The science of aviation is, indeed, greatly indebted to these
early inventors, not the least of whom is the gallant Sir Hiram Maxim.

CHAPTER XIX. The Wright Brothers and their Secret Experiments

In the beginning of the twentieth century many of the leading European
ne