March 18th is the 50th anniversary of a free flight of some 40 ft. made at Montesson, near Paris, by Traian Vuia credited by L'Aérophile (September 1906) with being “ the first person in France to have really attempted, with a machine able to carry a man, the direct take-off of an aeroplane having a wheeled undercarriage.”

Vuia, a Rumanian, submitted a paper to the Academy of Sciences in February 1903 which included a description of what he called an “ aeroplane-automobile ” which was a light weight monoplane with wheels and an engine driving a single tractor propeller; it was to be controlled by a rudder and by altering the incidence of the wing.