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The world seemed content to have achieved the balloon, but there were a few men who realized that the air had not been conquered, and who believed that success could only be attained by the scientific study and practice of gliding. Prominent among these, Sir George Cayley, in 1809, published a paper on the Navigation of the Air, and forecasted the modern aeroplane, and the action of the air on wings. In 1848 Henson and Stringfellow, the latter being the inventive genius, designed and produced a small model aeroplane—the first power-driven machine which actually flew. It is now in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. Of greater practical value were the gliding experiments by Otto Lilienthal, of Berlin, and Percy Pilcher, an Englishman, at the end of the last century. Both these men met their death in the cause of aviation. Another step forward was made by Laurence Hargrave, an Australian, who invented the box and soaring kite and eighteen machines which flew.

From the theoretical point of view, Professor Langley, an American, reached in his Experiments in Aerodynamics the important conclusion that weight could best be countered by speed. From theory Langley turned to practice and in 1896 designed a steam-driven machine which flew three-quarters of a mile without an operator. Seven years later, at the end of 1903, he produced a new machine fitted with a 52 horse-power engine weighing less than 5 lb. per horse-power; but this machine was severely damaged ten days before Wilbur Wright made his first flight in a controlled power-driven aeroplane.