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This form of kite, consisting of two superposed surfaces connected at each end by a vertical panel or curtain of fabric, had proved extremely successful for man-carrying purposes, and, therefore, it was little wonder that several minds conceived the idea of attempting to fly by fitting a series of box-kites with an engine.
In these trials he astonished everyone by obtaining a speed of over 70 miles an hour in his biplane, which weighed 2600 pounds. In the opening years of the present century Cody spent much time in demonstrations with huge box-kites, and for a time this form of kite was highly popular with boys of North London.
It was the writer's pleasure to come into close contact with Cody during the early years of his experimental work with man-lifting box-kites at the Alexandra Park, London, and never will his genial smile and twinkling eye be forgotten. Cody always seemed ready to crack a joke with anyone, and possibly there was no more optimistic man in the whole of Britain.
The crew and motors were carried in cars slung fore and aft. The ship was propelled by three engines, each of 170 horse-power. One engine was placed in the forward car, and the two others in the after car. To steer her to right or left, she had six vertical planes somewhat resembling box-kites, while eight horizontal planes enabled her to ascend or descend.
The Voisins, like the Wrights, based their designs largely on the experimental work of Lilienthal, Langley, Chanute, and others, though they also carried out tests on the lifting properties of aerofoils in a wind tunnel of their own. Their first machines, like those of Santos-Dumont, showed the effects of experimenting with box-kites, some of which they had built for M. Ernest Archdeacon in 1904.
Santos-Dumont's machine consisted essentially of two box-kites, forming the main wings, one on each side of the body, in which the pilot stood, and at the front extremity of which was another movable box-kite to act as elevator and rudder.
Stolen hours he gave to the building of box-kites with cambered wings, after rapturously learning, in the autumn of 1908, that in August a lanky American mechanic named Wilbur Wright had startled the world by flying an aeroplane many miles publicly in France; that before this, on July 4, 1908, another Yankee mechanic, Glenn Curtiss, had covered nearly a mile, for the Scientific American trophy, after a series of trials made in company with Alexander Graham Bell, J. A. D. McCurdy, "Casey" Baldwin, and Augustus Post.
They looked, like big box-kites of an exaggerated form, soaring at the ends of invisible cords. They had long, square heads and flattened tails, with lateral propellers. "Much skill is required for those! much skill!" "Rather!" Pause. "Your machine is different from that, Mr. Butteridge?" "Quite different," said Bert. "More like an insect, and less like a bird.
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