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Besnier placed the rods on his shoulders, and worked the flaps by cords attached to his hands and feet the flaps opened as they fell, and closed as they rose, so the device as a whole must be regarded as a sort of flapping glider.
These he vigorously moved up and down with his hands and feet, the planes opening like covers of a book as they came down, and closing as they came up. Besnier made no attempt to raise himself from the ground, but believed that once launched in the air from an elevation he could maintain himself, and glide gradually to earth at a considerable distance.
Four years after Lana suggested his airship with balls and oars, Besnier, a French locksmith, made a flying machine of four collapsible planes like book covers suspended on rods. With a rod over each shoulder, and moving the two front planes with his arms and the two back ones by his feet, Besnier gave exhibitions of gliding from a height to the earth. But his machine could not soar.
Probably the most successful attempt at propulsion by this method was that of a French locksmith named Besnier. Over two hundred years ago he made for himself a pair of light wooden paddles, with blades at either end, somewhat similar in shape to the double paddle of a canoe. These he placed over his shoulders, his feet being attached by ropes to the hindmost paddles.
Like Lilienthal, Besnier projected himself into space from some height, and then, according to the contemporary records, he was able to cross a river of considerable size before coming to earth.
Baldwin, a name which, curiously enough, twice over in modern times comes into the records of bold aerial exploits. This individual, it appears, purchased a flying outfit of Besnier himself, and surpassed his master in achievement. A little later one Dante contrived some modification of the same apparatus, with which he pursued the new mode of progress till he met with a fractured thigh.
Other versions of the story give a different date, and assign the pretended ascent to 1709. The above engraving, extracted from the "Bibliotheque de la Rue de Richelieu," is an exact copy of Guzman's supposed balloon. In 1678 a mechanician of Salle, in Maine, named Besnier invented a flying-machine.
We have now to return to the "tame goose" method, which found its best and boldest exponent in a humble craftsman, by name Besnier, living at Sable, about the year 1678. This mechanical genius was by trade a locksmith, and must have been possessed of sufficient skill to construct an efficient apparatus out of such materials as came to his hand, of the simplest possible design.
Both Oudry and his partner in business matters, Besnier, had died. And we are well on toward the time when kingly support was a feeble and uncertain quantity. The factory lacked the inspiration and patronage to continue its importance. In a few years more fell the blight of the Revolution. The factory was closed. It re-opened again under new conditions, but its brilliant period was past.
Jumping off from some high place in the face of a stiff breeze, he violently worked his arms and legs, so that the paddles beat the air and gave him support. It is said that Besnier became so expert in the management of his simple apparatus that he was able to raise himself from the ground, and skim lightly over fields and rivers for a considerable distance.
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