This mechanism was patented in 1906, and the patent office specifications then became accessible to other experimenters. The French scientific workers had for some time recognized the success of the Wright brothers' efforts, even when most Americans were still skeptical. Now that the manner in which this success had been obtained was disclosed, numerous experimenters began copying the Wright brothers' successful machine, making sundry modifications, while still adhering to the main principles through which success had been obtained. The first of these experimenters to win conspicuous success was Mr. Henry Farman, an Englishman residing in Paris, who on the 13th of January, 1908, aroused the enthusiasm of the entire world, and won a £2000 prize, by flying in a heavier-than-air machine in a prescribed circle, covering about sixteen hundred yards, and alighting at the starting-point.
This was more than four years after the Wright brothers had made far more remarkable flights, to which few persons had paid any attention, and of which most people had never heard. But in the autumn of the same year Orville Wright in America, and Wilbur Wright in France began a series of public flights which demonstrated for all time that the air at last had been conquered, and that they were the unquestionable conquerors. Orville, at Fort Myer, near Washington, on September 12th, electrified the world by flying continuously around a circular course for an hour and fifteen minutes. This was the most conclusive performance yet accomplished and set at rest all doubts as to the possibility of mechanical flight. For no one could doubt that a machine which could maintain itself in the air by its own power for more than an hour was truly a flying-machine in the most exacting sense of the term.
A few days after this performance an accident to the propeller of this machine wrecked it, the resulting fall breaking the leg of the inventor, and killing his companion, Lieutenant Selfridge of the United States Army.
Almost simultaneously Wilbur Wright began a series of flights at Le Mans, France, which demonstrated still more conclusively that erstwhile earth-bound man had really learned to fly. His longest flight lasted for two hours, twenty minutes, and twenty-three seconds; while by flying over captive balloons at an altitude of three hundred and sixty feet, he demonstrated that the mere matter of altitude offered no obstacle.
From this time forward the number of aeronauts increased day by day, and new records were made in bewildering confusion. Only a few of the more spectacular of these need be referred to. On July 19, 1909, Hubert Latham attempted a flight across the English Channel, but his motor failed him and his machine plunged into the water, from which, however, he was rescued, having suffered no injury. On July 25th, Louis Blériot made a similar attempt with better results. Starting from the cliffs near Calais he made the passage without mishap and landed near Dover.
THE FARMAN AEROPLANE.
This is the machine with which Mr. Farman, an Englishman living in France, won the Deutsch prize in the early spring of 1908. This performance was notable as being the most important public flight hitherto made by a heavier-than-air machine. The Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, had made numerous flights of far greater length, but the general public was not aware of that fact and for a time Mr. Farman was popularly regarded as the foremost of aviators. His best performances were, however, eclipsed by the public flights of the Wright brothers a few months later.
There was of course no particular difficulty involved in the flight across the Channel; but its obvious dangers, together with the suggestion as to the new possibilities of the use of the airship in war time,—the virtual elimination of that all-important barrier of water that had proved so effective against England's foes in the past,—gave to Blériot's flight a popular interest not exceeded by any preceding achievement even of the Wright brothers. We may add that Blériot's feat was presently duplicated by another Frenchman, Count Jacques de Lesseps by name, who crossed the Channel in an aeroplane in May, 1910; and excelled by the Hon. Charles S. Rolls, an Englishman, who on June 2nd, 1910, made a still more remarkable flight, in which he crossed the Channel, starting from the cliffs near Dover, and after circling over French soil without landing, returned to his starting-place. The aeroplanes used by the two Frenchmen were of the monoplane type; that used by Mr. Rolls was a Wright bi-plane.
Just at the time when the first successful cross-Channel flight was made, the attention of aviators was focussed on the flights being made near Washington by Mr. Orville Wright in the attempt to fulfill the Government tests which had been so tragically interrupted the year before. On July 27th, 1909, Mr. Wright successfully met the conditions of the endurance test, by flying more than an hour carrying as a passenger Lieutenant Frank P. Lahm. Three days later a more spectacular flight, to a distance of five miles across country and return, over tree-tops, hills, and valleys, with a passenger (Lieutenant Foulois), was accomplished without mishap. This was in many respects the most important flight, as suggesting the possible practical utility of the aeroplane, that had hitherto been made.