lly landed without being wrecked,' said Wilbur
Wright concerning the achievement.[*] The next two flights were slightly
longer, and the fourth and last of the day was one second short of the
complete minute; it was made into the teeth of a 20 mile an hour wind,
and the distance travelled was 852 feet.

[*] Century Magazine, September, 1908.

This bald statement of the day's doings is as Wilbur Wright himself
has given it, and there is in truth nothing more to say; no amount of
statement could add to the importance of the achievement, and no more
than the bare record is necessary. The faith that had inspired the long
roll of pioneers, from da Vinci onward, was justified at last.

Having made their conquest, the brothers took the machine back to camp,
and, as they thought, placed it in safety. Talking with the little group
of spectators about the flights, they forgot about the machine, and then
a sudden gust of wind struck it. Seeing that it was being overturned,
all made a rush toward it to save it, and Mr Daniels, a man of large
proportions, was in some way lifted off his feet, falling between the
planes. The machine overturned fully, and Daniels was shaken like a die
in a cup as the wind rolled the machine over and over--he came out at
the end of his experience with a series of bad bruises, and no more, but
the damage done to the machine by the accident was sufficient to render
it useless for further experiment that season.

A new machine, stronger and heavier, was constructed by the brothers,
and in the spring of 1904 they began experiments again at Sims
Station, eight miles to the east of Dayton, their home town. Press
representatives were invited for the first trial, and about a dozen
came--the whole gathering did not number more than fifty people. 'When
preparations had been concluded,' Wilbur Wright wrote of this trial, 'a
wind of only three or four miles an hour was blowing--insufficient for
starting on so short a track--but since many had come a long way to
see the machine in action, an attempt was made. To add to the other
difficulty, the engine refused to work properly. The machine, after
running the length of the track, slid off the end without rising into
the air at all. Several of the newspaper men returned next day but were
again disappointed. The engine performed badly, and after a glide of
only sixty feet the machine again came to the ground. Further trial was
postponed till the motor could be put in