n the wing did not, of course, begin with the
invention of the balloon. Perhaps the dream of flying man came first
to some primitive poet of the Stone Age, as he watched, fearfully, the
gyrations of the winged creatures of the air; even as in a later age
it came to Langley and Maxim, who studied the wing motions of birds
and insects, not in fear but in the light and confidence of advancing
science.

Crudely outlined by some ancient Egyptian sculptor, a winged human
figure broods upon the tomb of Rameses III. In the Hebrew parable of
Genesis winged cherubim guarded the gates of Paradise against the man
and woman who had stifled aspiration with sin. Fairies, witches, and
magicians ride the wind in the legends and folklore of all peoples.
The Greeks had gods and goddesses many; and one of these Greek art
represents as moving earthward on great spreading pinions. Victory came
by the air. When Demetrius, King of Macedonia, set up the Winged Victory
of Samothrace to commemorate the naval triumph of the Greeks over the
ships of Egypt, Greek art poetically foreshadowed the relation of the
air service to the fleet in our own day.

Man has always dreamed of flight; but when did men first actually fly?
We smile at the story of Daedalus, the Greek architect, and his son,
Icarus, who made themselves wings and flew from the realm of their foes;
and the tale of Simon, the magician, who pestered the early Christian
Church by exhibitions of flight into the air amid smoke and flame in
mockery of the ascension. But do the many tales of sorcerers in the
Middle Ages, who rose from the ground with their cloaks apparently
filled with wind, to awe the rabble, suggest that they had deduced the
principle of the aerostat from watching the action of smoke as did the
Montgolfiers hundreds of years later? At all events one of these alleged
exhibitions about the year 800 inspired the good Bishop Agobard of Lyons
to write a book against superstition, in which he proved conclusively
that it was impossible for human beings to rise through the air.
Later, Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci, each in his turn ruminated in
manuscript upon the subject of flight. Bacon, the scientist, put forward
a theory of thin copper globes filled with liquid fire, which would
soar. Leonardo, artist, studied the wings of birds. The Jesuit Francisco
Lana, in 1670, working on Bacon's theory sketched an airship made of
four copper balls with a skiff attached; this machine was