r
task to sail back again.

At length in October, 1901, he was thought to have completed the course
in the allotted time; but the Aero Club held that he had exceeded the
time limit by forty seconds. This decision aroused great indignation
among Parisians--especially among those who had watched the flight--many
of whom were convinced that the journey had been accomplished in the
half-hour. After much argument the committee which had charge of the
race, acting on the advice of M. Deutsch, who was very anxious that the
prize should be awarded to Santos Dumont, decided that the conditions
of the flight had been complied with, and that the prize had been
legitimately won. It is interesting to read that the famous aeronaut
divided the money among the poor.

But important though Santos Dumont's experiments were with the air-ship,
they were of even greater value when he turned his attention to the
aeroplane.

One of his first trials with a heavier-than-air machine was made with a
huge glider, which was fitted with floats. The curious craft was towed
along the River Seine by a fast motor boat named the Rapiere, and it
actually succeeded in rising into the air and flying behind the boat
like a gigantic kite.

12th November, 1906, is a red-letter day in the history of aviation,
for it was then that Santos Dumont made his first little flight in an
aeroplane. This took place at Bagatelle, not far from Paris.

Two months before this the airman had succeeded in driving his little
machine, called the Bird of Prey, many yards into the air, and "11 yards
through the air", as the newspapers reported; but the craft was badly
smashed. It was not until November that the first really satisfactory
flight took place.

A description of this flight appeared in most of the European
newspapers, and I give a quotation from one of them: "The aeroplane
rose gracefully and gently to a height of about 15 feet above the earth,
covering in this most remarkable dash through the air a distance of
about 700 feet in twenty-one seconds.

"It thus progressed through the atmosphere at the rate of nearly 30
miles an hour. Nothing like this has ever been accomplished before....
The aeroplane has now reached the practical stage."

The dimensions of this aeroplane were:

Length 32 feet
Greatest width 39 feet
Weight with one passenger 465 pounds
Speed 30 miles an hour

A modern aeroplane with airman and passenger frequently weighs o