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Show RAPID DEVELOPMENT. " Few of us realize the rapid development that has taken place in the heavier-than-air flying machine since the first successful flights were made. Ask anybody who does not know to guess when the first flight was made, and he will probably guess ten years ago. But we believe it was on November 12, 1906, that M. Santos-Dumont made two . flihts oi between five and six seconds, covering between fifty and sixty meters at each flight, and we believe the;- ' flights, made only four years ago, were the first really successful flights of the aeroplane. In tho afternoon of the same day, M. Santos-Dumont, to quote a press report of the performance, "skunmed along at a height of fifteen feet and at a speed of thirty miles an hour for a distance of 315 meters, when fear that his whirling propeller would strike the cheering crowd forced him to descend." The opinion of witnesses of the performance were given in the press report, and it is said "the more enthusiastic en-thusiastic were certain that the aeroplane would soon fly for miles." How well this belief entertained four years ago has been realized is common knowledge today. From flights of a few seconds, the aeroplane has been developed so that it can remain in the air for hours, and from a distance of fifty to sixty meters, hundreds of miles have been covered. Before the flights of Santos-Dumont, of course, many experiments had been made, notably by Professor Pro-fessor Langley at Washington and the Wright brothers at Dayton, and it may be that one of these made successful flights before November 12, 1906, bue the newspaper clipping of that date is, we believe, be-lieve, the first publicly recorded. |