brethren. He built himself a machine with wings; then, in order to put it to the test, he ascended a tall tower, faced the wind, and sprang into the air. That he had studied weighting and balance to some purpose was evident, for he glided a short distance without accident; then, struck perhaps by a sudden gust, lost equilibrium and came crashing to the ground. He was not killed, as were many less rash than he; but broke his legs, and nothing more is read of him as an experimenter. Of the doings of another of these brave but reckless men—a Saracen who tried to fly in the twelfth century—there is fuller information. He provided himself with wings which he stiffened with wooden rods, and held out upon either side of his body. Wearing these, he mounted to the top of a tower in Constantinople (Fig. 1) and stood waiting for a favourable gust of wind. When this came and caught his wings, he “rose into the air like a bird.” And then, of course, seeing that he had no idea of balancing himself when actually aloft, he fell pell-mell and “broke his bones.” People who had gathered to watch, seeing this inglorious ending to the flight, burst into laughter: ridicule rather than praise, indeed, was the fate of the pioneers, even to the days when the first real flights were made.

In the fifteenth century, working upon more sensible lines of thought, Leonardo da Vinci—an Italian genius who was painter, inventor, sculptor, writer, and musician —devised several machines by which men might navigate the air. Success did not come to him, as he had no motive power with which he could equip a craft; but how keen a watcher he was of the birds is shown by a passage from one of his manuscripts:

“The kite and other birds, which beat their wings little, go seeking the course of the wind, and when the wind prevails on high then will they be seen at a great height, and if it prevails low they will hold themselves low. When the wind does not prevail at all, then the kite beats its wings several times in its flight in such a way that it raises itself high and acquires a start, descending afterwards a little and progressing without beating its wings, repeating the same performance time after time.”

Da Vinci, too, had some notion as to the need for balancing a machine while in the air, and did not seem—like most others of the early pioneers—to imagine that once a man had launched himself from a height he would be able to control his craft by instinct. He wrote, indeed, suggesting the position of a pilot in a flying machine, that “he should be free from the waist upwards, in order that he might keep himself in equilibrium, as one does in a boat.”

He realised, too, a fact that the modern airman always bears in mind; and that is the value of flying high. Da Vinci wrote in this regard: “Safety lies in flying at a considerable height from the ground, so that if equilibrium be temporarily upset there may be time and space for regaining it.”

Among the machines Da Vinci planned was an ornithopter, or craft with arched wings which would flap like those of a bird; and a helicopter, or apparatus in which revolving screws are used to draw it up into the air. He devised mechanism by which a man might move two wings, shaped like those of the bird, and thus imitate natural fight. These wings were planned ingeniously, so that they would contract on the up-stroke and expand when forced downward. In one of his notebooks, too, he made a sketch of a helicopter machine which was to have a lifting propeller 96 feet in diameter, and to be built of iron with a bamboo framework. He made paper helicopters, or whirling screws, and sent them spinning into the air; and to him, also, was due the first suggestion for the use of a parachute.

Fig. 2.—Besnier’s Apparatus.

From this time, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, men still strove to fly, but all of them failed to see a vital point: that they must learn gradually to balance themselves in the air, even as the young birds have to do. So those who were not killed were badly injured, and those who persisted in experiments were looked upon either as madmen or fools. Some, however, were not so foolish as they seemed. They brought forward schemes so as to attract the attention of kings and those in high places; and this was particularly the case in France, during the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. But the notoriety they won was short-lived. The day came when they needed to make good their claims—when they were called upon to fly; and then they met death, disablement, or disgrace, and were forgotten quickly. Of the devices suggested many showed ingenuity; and some were quaint, in view of what we know of flight to-day. In the machine, for instance, designed by an experimenter named Besnier—who was a locksmith by trade—there were four lifting planes, closing on the up-stroke and opening on the down, and these the operator was to flap by the use of his hands and feet (Fig. 2). A rather similar idea was suggested as long ago as 1744, by the inventor De Bacqueville; his plan was to fix four planes or wings to his hands and feet, and then propel himself through the air by vigorous motions of his arms, and kickings of his legs (Fig. 3). He made a flight from a balcony overlooking a river, but finished his trial ingloriously by falling into a barge. Such schemes, indeed, were doomed to failure; and they are only interesting because they show how, even in those far-off days, men were ready to risk their lives in attempts to conquer the air.

Fig. 3.—De Bacqueville (1744).

CHAPTER II
THE WORK OF SCIENTISTS

Sir George Cayley’s forecasts—A steam-driven model which flew—The shape and curve of planes.

So passed the haphazard stage of flight; and now history moves to a second and more important period, that in which men of science were attracted to the problem. They worked upon theories, and made experiments with models; they studied the shape which Nature has given the birds; they sifted false notions and showed where error lay. But they did not fly. They were merely clearers of the ground, gathering information and classifying it, and paving the way for those daring workers who were to follow them—men who, by putting science to the test, were willing to risk their lives.

Fig. 4.—Sir George Cayley’s
suggestion for an
Arched Plane.

To England goes the distinction of the first practical attempts to solve the problems of flight; and it is the work of Sir George Cayley, an eminent