As long ago as 1884 a machine weighing 8,000 pounds
             demonstrated its power both to lift itself from the ground
             and to maintain a speed of from 30 to 40 miles per hour,
             but failed of success owing to the inability to balance and steer
             Engineers have, until recent years, fought shy of anything
             relating to aerial navigation. Those who ventured, in studying
             was satified knowing the greatest obstacle in the way was the
             lack of a motor sufficiently light to sustain its weight and that of
             an aeroplane upon the air. Fifteen years later the lightest steam
             motor was the marine engine, weighing 60 pounds to the
             horsepower. During the past fifteen years a great change has
             taken place. Steam motors have been produced weighing only
             10 pounds per horsepower, and gas engines have been lightened
             down to 12 1/2 to 15 pounds per horsepower. By that time their
             was an idea that man could someday fly through the air,
             although before they were able to figure out how they had to
             figure out safety & stablility, which was a very important
             The difficulties which obstruct the pathway to success in
             flying-machine construction are of three general classes:
             (1) Those which relate to the construction of the sustaining
             (2) Those which relate to the generation and application of
             the power required to drive the machine through the air;
             (3) Those relating to the balancing and steering of the
             machine after it is actually in flight.
             Herr Otto Lilienthal seems to have been the first man who
             really comprehended that balancing was the first instead of the
             last of the great problems in connection with human flight. He
             built a pair of wings of a size suitable to sustain his own weight,
             and made use of gravity as his motor. It had one serious
             drawback, however, in that it always insisted on fixing the
             conditions under which it would work. These were, ...