A. Pilot’s seat;
B. Wheel for operating elevator;
C. Shoulder-pieces and vertical rod for aileron control.
Of famous aeroplanes at Rheims, five types stood out by themselves—the Farman, the Voisin, the Wright, the Bleriot, and the Antoinette, all of which have been described. But there was one other, which few people had heard of before it appeared here. This was the Curtiss biplane, built by an American named Glenn H. Curtiss, and engined with a motor which also bore his name. Curtiss had experimented with many power-driven machines—motor-cycles, motor-cars, airships, and aeroplanes—and had won a prize in America with a small, light biplane, and it was a craft of this type—as seen in [Fig. 48]—that he brought with him to Rheims, his idea being to compete for the speed prize. The machine had a front elevator and tail-planes, according to the practice in biplane construction; but an innovation was the setting of the ailerons midway between the main-planes—a position that will be noted in the sketch; another novelty was the way these ailerons operated. At the pilot’s back, as he sat in his driving seat, was an upright rod with two shoulder-pieces—by means of which, should he shift his body, he could swing the rod from side to side. Wires ran from the rod to the ailerons; and if the pilot leaned over, say, to the right, he drew down the ailerons on the left side of the machine. The merit of such a control was that it was instinctive; that is to say, should the biplane tip down on one side, it was natural for the pilot to lean away from the plane-ends that were sinking; and he operated the ailerons automatically, as he did this, and so brought the machine level again. This ingenious system is illustrated in [Fig. 49].
Photo, F. N. Birkett.
PLATE VIII.—THE GNOME MOTOR.
This engine—of which Mr. Grahame-White is testing an exhaust valve—is here seen fitted to a Farman biplane, the three tanks above it containing petrol and oil.
Features of the Curtiss biplane were its smallness and lightness. The span of its main-planes was only 28 feet 9 inches—no more than the span of the Bleriot; and it weighed, with its pilot on board, a total of only 710 lbs. Driving the machine was an 8-cylindered 30-h.p. motor; therefore it was expected to be fast in flight. The speed contest, as a matter of fact, became a duel between Curtiss—who flew his machine himself—and Bleriot, who piloted his fastest monoplane; and in the end Curtiss won, attaining a speed of a little more than 47 miles an hour. Bleriot had built for the contest a new racing monoplane, which had a motor of 80 h.p., and in which the pilot sat below the wings. The photograph on [Plate IX] shows the appearance of this type of craft.
Latham, in his Antoinette, won the height prize at Rheims, rising to an altitude of 500 feet. Others who distinguished themselves were Paulhan and Rougier, on Voisin biplanes—the former to become famous afterwards as the winner of the Daily Mail £10,000 prize for the flight from London to Manchester. But the Voisins, although they flew steadily, seemed slow, clumsy machines in comparison with the Farman. The Wright biplanes, of which there were three in competition, did not distinguish themselves particularly. The pilots who had charge of them, and had been taught to fly by Wilbur Wright, were the Comte de Lambert and M. Tissandier, who have been mentioned already, and M. Lefevre—a pilot who was the first to make trick flights, wheeling, diving, and swinging in circles, and astonishing people who watched him from the stands. Not long after the Rheims meeting, while testing a new machine, this airman met with an accident that proved fatal, his craft diving suddenly and being wrecked.
The Wright machines, to tell the truth, were not regarded favourably in France. Many men were attracted by the speed and simplicity of the monoplane; many others, again, championed the Farman with its Gnome. The chain-drive of the Wright propellers was said to be a source of danger, and their need to start from a rail was, in view of the wheeled under-carriages of the French machines, declared a clumsy makeshift. So, although the machine was the first power-driven craft to fly successfully, and despite the feats of Wilbur in 1908, the Wright biplane did not conquer France. Although they had lagged behind the Wrights in the building of practicable machines, the enthusiasm of French makers soon carried them ahead of their rivals. The Wrights handicapped themselves; they would not, for a long time, discard the starting-rail; they would not adopt the Gnome motor; they were averse from making alterations in the construction of their machine. So their biplane, although its efficiency was always granted, never took the place to which it seemed entitled.