s drawn into
the same current in which the eagles were soaring and was carried
up like the birds.

It was by such painstaking methods as these, coupled with the
mathematical reduction of the fruits of such observations to terms
of angles and supporting planes, that the Wrights gradually
perfected their machine. The first airplane to which they fitted a
motor and which actually flew has been widely exhibited in the
United States, and is to find final repose in some public museum.
Study it as you will you can find little resemblance in those
rectangular rigid planes to the wings of a bird. But it was built
according to deductions drawn from natural flight.

[Illustration: Photo by Paul Thompson.

_A German Taube Pursued by British Planes._]

The method of progress in these preliminary experiments was, by
repeated tests, to determine what form of airplane, and of what
proportions, would best support a man. It was evident that for free
and continuous flight it must be able to carry not only the pilot,
but an engine and a store of fuel as well. Having, as they thought,
determined these conditions the Wrights essayed their first flight
at their home near Dayton, Ohio. It was a cold December day in 1903.
The first flight, with motor and all, lasted twelve seconds; the
fourth fifty-nine seconds. The handful of people who came out to
witness the marvel went home jeering. In the spring of the next year
a new flight was announced near Dayton. The newspapers had been
asked to send reporters. A crowd of perhaps fifty persons had
gathered. Again fate was hostile. The engine worked badly and the
airplane refused to rise. The crowd dispersed and the newspapermen,
returning the next day, met only with another disappointment.

[Illustration: The First Wright Glider.]

These repeated failures in public exhibitions resulted in creating
general indifference to the real progress that the Wrights were
making in solving the flight problem. While the gliding experiments
at Kitty-Hawk were furnishing the data for the plans on which the
tens of thousands of airplanes used in the European war were
afterwards built, no American newspaper was sufficiently interested
to send representatives to the spot. The people of the United States
were supremely indifferent. Perhaps this was due to the fact that
superficially regarded the machine the Wrights were trying to
perfect gave promise of usefulness only in war or in sport. We are
not e