> The Childrens Encyclopedia, страница 1 > One of the strangest things In the history of Invention

One of the strangest things In the history of Invention

The next step lay with the men of the motor-engine. Between balloons and aeroplanes came the men who risked their lives by constructing planes and throwing themselves off walls and buildings and cliff-faces, and gliding to earth like the so- called flying animals. A man would begin by launching himself off a bank three feet high and plane across his lawn, and would end by skimming down from a house-top.

Otto Lilienthal, in Germany, and Percy Pilcher in England, both made extensive experiments with gliders, and both were killed while gaining knowledge for the world. Octave Chanute, a Frenchman living in America, also contributed largely in this way to our knowledge of flight, and the Wright brothers owed much of their success to these three earlier men.

Such men revived the old idea that planes could be made to carry them great distances. They failed, yet in failing they left milestones to guide others.

Now we are brought to one of the strangest things in history. The successful aeroplane in the end had a double origin. The first actual flying machine that would carry a man lay for eleven years in the world, practically perfect, yet was never flown until - after its inventor′s death; while the first men to fly proceeded on independent lines to their triumph.