k against the wind for
a considerable distance before alighting. The course could be varied
by a rudder. No practical application seems to have been made of this
device by the French War Department, but Mr. J. P. Holland, the
inventor of the submarine boat which bears his name, proposed in 1893
an arrangement of pivoted framework attached to the body of a flying
machine which combines the principle of Commandant Renard with the
curved blades experimented with by Mr. Phillips, now to be noticed, with
the addition of lifting screws inserted among the blades.

Phillips Fails on Stability Problem.

In 1893 Mr. Horatio Phillips, of England, after some very interesting
experiments with various wing sections, from which he deduced
conclusions as to the shape of maximum lift, tested an apparatus
resembling a Venetian blind which consisted of fifty wooden slats of
peculiar shape, 22 feet long, one and a half inches wide, and two inches
apart, set in ten vertical upright boards. All this was carried upon a
body provided with three wheels. It weighed 420 pounds and was driven
at 40 miles an hour on a wooden sidewalk by a steam engine of nine
horsepower which actuated a two-bladed screw. The lift was satisfactory,
being perhaps 70 pounds per horsepower, but the equilibrium was quite
bad and the experiments were discontinued. They were taken up again in
1904 with a similar apparatus large enough to carry a passenger, but the
longitudinal equilibrium was found to be defective. Then in 1907 a new
machine was tested, in which four sets of frames, carrying similar
sets of slat "sustainers" were inserted, and with this arrangement the
longitudinal stability was found to be very satisfactory. The whole
apparatus, with the operator, weighed 650 pounds. It flew about 200
yards when driven by a motor of 20 to 22 h.p. at 30 miles an hour,
thus exhibiting a lift of about 32 pounds per h.p., while it will be
remembered that the aeroplane of Wright Brothers exhibits a lifting
capacity of 50 pounds to the h.p.

Hargrave's Kite Experiments.

After experimenting with very many models and building no less than
eighteen monoplane flying model machines, actuated by rubber, by
compressed air and by steam, Mr. Lawrence Hargrave, of Sydney, New South
Wales, invented the cellular kite which bears his name and made it known
in a paper contributed to the Chicago Conference on Aerial Navigation
in 1893, describing several varieties. The modern constructi