Just a month or two more than twenty years ago, Orville Wright made the. first flight on a power-driven man-carrying aeroplane. This original Wright biplane was very far from being the first serious attempt to produce a man-carrying aeroplane, and it is not unfair to say that the machine itself was in its essential principles, and in respect to the skill and ingenuity displayed in its design and construction, no revolutionary advance upon certain previous machines which had been designed for the same end.

As a matter of fact, the machine, including engine, was designed and built in little more than a year, and regarded purely as an engineering structure it was considerably cruder than certain earlier aeroplanes which never succeeded in flying. The explanation of the Wrights’ success in this matter is, I think, to be found in the fact that they had learnt to fly before they attempted to build an aeroplane rather than in any remarkable qualities possessed by the aeroplane which they produced.