voted so much attention that we
were regarded as experts. But as we became older we had to give up this
fascinating sport as unbecoming to boys of our ages.

It was not till the news of the sad death of Lilienthal reached America
in the summer of 1896 that we again gave more than passing attention to
the subject of flying. We then studied with great interest Chanute's
"Progress in Flying Machines," Langley's "Experiments in Aerodynamics,"
the "Aeronautical Annuals" of 1905, 1906, and 1907, and several
pamphlets published by the Smithsonian Institution, especially articles
by Lilienthal and extracts from Mouillard's "Empire of the Air." The
larger works gave us a good understanding of the nature of the flying
problem, and the difficulties in past attempts to solve it, while
Mouillard and Lilienthal, the great missionaries of the flying cause,
infected us with their own unquenchable enthusiasm, and transformed idle
curiosity into the active zeal of workers.

In the field of aviation there were two schools. The first,
represented by such men as Professor Langley and Sir Hiram Maxim,
gave chief attention to power flight; the second, represented by
Lilienthal, Mouillard, and Chanute, to soaring flight. Our sympathies
were with the latter school, partly from impatience at the wasteful
extravagance of mounting delicate and costly machinery on wings
which no one knew how to manage, and partly, no doubt, from the
extraordinary charm and enthusiasm with which the apostles of soaring
flight set forth the beauties of sailing through the air on fixed
wings, deriving the motive power from the wind itself.

The balancing of a flyer may seem, at first thought, to be a very simple
matter, yet almost every experimenter had found in this one point which
he could not satisfactorily master. Many different methods were tried.
Some experimenters placed the center of gravity far below the wings, in
the belief that the weight would naturally seek to remain at the lowest
point. It is true, that, like the pendulum, it tended to seek the lowest
point; but also, like the pendulum, it tended to oscillate in a manner
destructive of all stability. A more satisfactory system, especially for
lateral balance, was that of arranging the wings in the shape of a broad
V, to form a dihedral angle, with the center low and the wing-tips
elevated. In theory this was an automatic system, but in practice it had
two serious defects: first, it tended to keep the m