ortune and energy to the practical study
of aerial navigation, and had prosecuted experiments on a large scale.
Eventually, having formed a company with a large capital, he was enabled
to construct an airship which in size has been compared to a British
man-of-war. Cigar-shaped, its length was no less than 420 feet, and
diameter 40 feet, while its weight amounted to no more than 7,250 lbs.
The framework, which for lightness had been made of aluminium, was,
with the object of preventing all the gas collecting at one end of its
elongated form, subdivided into seventeen compartments, each of these
compartments containing a completely fitted gas balloon, made of oiled
cotton and marvellously gas tight. A steering apparatus was placed
both fore and aft, and at a safe distance below the main structure were
fixed, also forward and aft, on aluminium platforms, two Daimler motor
engines of 16-horse power, working aluminium propellers of four blades
at the rate of 1,000 revolutions a minute. Finally, firmly attached
to the inner framework by rods of aluminium, were two cars of the same
metal, furnished with buffer springs to break the force of a fall. The
trial trip was not made till the summer following--June, 1900--and, in
the meanwhile, experiments had gone forward with another mode of flight,
terminating, unhappily, in the death of one of the most expert and
ingenious of mechanical aeronauts.

Mr. Percy S. Pilcher, now thirty-three years of age, having received his
early training in the Navy, retired from the Service to become a civil
engineer, and had been for some time a partner in the firm of Wilson
and Pilcher. For four or five years he had been experimenting in soaring
flight, using a Lilienthal machine, which he improved to suit his own
methods. Among these was the device of rising off the ground by being
rapidly towed by a line against the wind.

At the end of September he gave an exhibition at Stamford Park before
Lord Bray and a select party of friends--this in spite of an unsuitable
afternoon of unsteady wind and occasional showers. A long towing line
was provided, which, being passed round pulley blocks and dragged by
a couple of horses, was capable of being hauled in at high speed. The
first trial, though ending in an accident, was eminently satisfactory.
The apparatus, running against the wind, had risen some distance,
when the line broke, yet the inventor descended slowly and safely with
outstretched wings. The