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The first of these was that which sought to imitate nature by means of the ornithopter or flapping-wing machines directly imitative of bird flight; the second school was that which believed in the helicopter or lifting screw; the third and eventually successful school is that which followed up the principle enunciated by Cayley, that of opposing a plane surface to the resistance of the air by supplying suitable motive power to drive it at the requisite angle for support.
Hargrave, to diverge for a brief while from the machine to the man, was one who, although he achieved nothing worthy of special remark, contributed a great deal of painstaking work to the science of flight. He made a series of experiments with man-lifting kites in addition to making a study of flapping-wing flight.
The total weight of the plane in flying order was about 700 lbs. As great a figure in the early days as either Ferber or Santos-Dumont was Louis Bleriot, who, as early as 1900 built a flapping-wing model, this before ever he came to experimenting with the Voisin biplane type of glider on the Seine.
Robert Hooke is less conspicuous than either Borelli or Lana; his work, which came into the middle of the seventeenth century, consisted of various experiments with regard to flight, from which emerged 'a Module, which by the help of Springs and Wings, raised and sustained itself in the air. This must be reckoned as the first model flying machine which actually flew, except for da Vinci's helicopters; Hooke's model appears to have been of the flapping-wing type he attempted to copy the motion of birds, but found from study and experiment that human muscles were not sufficient to the task of lifting the human body.
It may, however, be noted first that as far back as 1860, when Montgomery was only a boy, he was attracted to the study of aeronautical problems, and in 1883 he built his first machine, which was of the flapping-wing ornithopter type, and which showed its designer, with only one experiment, that he must design some other form of machine if he wished to attain to a successful flight.
This experiment remains as the greatest success yet achieved by any machine constructed on the ornithopter principle. It may be that, as forecasted by the prophet Wells, the flapping-wing machine will yet come to its own and compete with the aeroplane in efficiency.
In a way, Louis Bleriot ranks before Farman in point of time; his first flapping-wing model was built as early as 1900, and Voisin flew a biplane glider of his on the Seine in the very early experimental days. Bleriot's first four machines were biplanes, and his fifth, a monoplane, was wrecked almost immediately after its construction.
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