At six o' clock on the evening of August 8, 1908, a flying machine took off from the Hunaudières race track near Le Mans, France, and made two seemingly effortless circuits of the field, taking less than 2 min. The machine was the Wright Type A, a larger and more powerful version of earlier Wright aircraft, and the latest in the progression that began with the historic Wright Flyer in 1903. Wilbur Wright was giving the first public performance of a Wright airplane. An excellent pilot, Wilbur made four wide turns, each time banking the aircraft using the coordinated effects of wing warping and rudder control. The early evening was clear and windless, and the small number of people in the grandstand had no trouble seeing the great aeronautical feat. Among the sparse audience were a few French aviators, including Louis Blériot and Ernest Archdeacon, who knew better than most that they were seeing history in the making. Over the next five days Wilbur flew eight more times, the longest flight lasting more than 8 min. By that time the word of the stunning flights had spread throughout France, and the race track was packed with people, the crowds growing larger each day. Orville and Wilbur had first flown in relative obscurity on December 17, 1903, and there had been tenuous flights by others since then (e.g., Santos-Dumont in Paris in 1906, and Glenn Curtiss in 1908 at Hammondsport, New York), but it was not until Wilbur's spectacular performance in France in 1908 that the general public discovered the existence of the airplane.