ach
might develop unhampered by alien control. The navy trusted more to
private firms, and less to the factory. It was a difference of tendency
rather than a clean-cut difference of policy. Both army and navy made
use of the results obtained at the laboratory and the factory. The army
employed many private makers for the supply of machines and engines, and
the navy, in the course of the war, ordered a very large number of that
most famous of factory machines--the B.E. 2c. But the navy stood as far
aloof from the factory as possible, and looked mainly to private firms
not only for the supply of machines and engines, but for much of its
experimental work. Several of the firms who devoted themselves to the
needs of naval aviation did excellent service as pioneers. The most
distinguished of these was the firm of the Short brothers--that is, of
Messrs. Oswald, Eustace, and Horace Short. The impulse of their work was
scientific, not commercial. As early as 1897 Mr. Eustace Short was an
amateur balloonist, and his younger brother Oswald, at the age of
fifteen, began to accompany him on his voyages. In a public library they
came across that celebrated record of balloon voyages, _Travels in the
Air_, by James Glaisher, and made up their minds to construct a balloon
of their own. Success led them on step by step; in 1905 they contracted
to supply captive war balloons for the Government of India, and in 1906
they became the club engineers of the newly formed Royal Aero Club. The
reported successes of the Wright brothers in America shifted the
interest of the club, and of the club engineers, from balloons to
flying machines; in 1908 they built their first glider--a complete
miniature Wright machine, without the power plant--for the Hon. C. S.
Rolls. At about this time they were joined by the eldest of the three
brothers, Mr. Horace Short, an accomplished man of science and a lover
of adventure; from this time onward the firm of the Short brothers never
looked back. From sketches made by Mr. Horace Short, they built six
biplanes to the order of the Wrights. They constructed, in 1909, the
aeroplane on which Mr. J. T. C. Moore-Brabazon won the prize offered by
the _Daily Mail_ for the first all-British machine which should fly a
circular mile. They made the outer cover, gas-bags, valves,
pressure-gauges, and controlling rudders for the first rigid airship
constructed to the order of the Admiralty. Their early work was done at
Shellness