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M. Hubert Latham, Bleriot's competitor in the cross-Channel flight, had that peculiar outlook on life, with its blend of positive and negative puzzling often to its owner as well as to the onlooker that is called, for the sake of calling it something, the artistic temperament.
These items of damage broken propellers, planes, or landing gear were all entered up very carefully on special bills, and presented from time to time to the dismayed novice; and a man who was clumsy or impetuous found learning to fly an expensive affair. There was a pupil who joined a school soon after Bleriot's crossing of the Channel by air.
Glenn Curtis tried to beat Bleriot's time for a lap of the course, but failed. In the evening, Farman and Latham went out and up in great circles, Farman cleaving his way upward in what at the time counted for a huge machine, on circles of about a mile diameter.
In that period of the first days of conquest of the air, so much was done by so many whose names are now half-forgotten that it is possible only to pick out the great figures and make brief reference to their achievements and the machines with which they accomplished so much, pausing to note such epoch-making events as the London-Manchester flight, Bleriot's Channel crossing, and the Rheims meeting itself, and then passing on beyond the days of individual records to the time when the machine began to dominate the man.
There is little to choose between the two aviators for courage in attempting what would have been considered a foolhardy feat a year or two before. Bleriot's state, with an abscess in the burnt foot which had to control the elevator of his machine, renders his success all the more remarkable.
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.
The total weight of Bleriot's machine in Cross Channel trim was 660 lbs., including the pilot and sufficient petrol for a three hours' run; at a speed of 37 miles an hour, it was capable of carrying about 5 lbs. per square foot of lifting surface. It was the three-cylinder 25 horse-power Anzani motor which drove the machine for the flight.
We are displayed a soft, rather backward people. Either we are a people essentially and incurably inferior, or there is something wrong in our training, something benumbing in our atmosphere and circumstances. That is the first and gravest intimation in M. Blériot's feat. The second is that, in spite of our fleet, this is no longer, from the military point of view, an inaccessible island.
Bleriot's early monoplanes had certain new features, such as the location of the pilot, and in some cases the engine, below the wing; but in general his monoplanes, particularly the famous No.
It was too late that day to begin any trials, so I and a friend who was with me arranged with M. Bleriot's mechanics that we would be at Issy-les-Moulineaux early next morning, and there put the craft through its preliminary tests. I can remember we went to bed early, but sleep was impossible; we were both too excited at the prospect that lay before us.
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