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Dawn of Aerial Navigation 249 apparatus with which experiments were carried out a month after Lilienthal’s untimely end. These trials served to prove how the German worker’s fatal accident occurred, and although about one hundred successful glides therewith were made, it was discarded as being far too dangerous and fickle. Mr. Octave Chanute was deeply interested in the problem of human flight, and expended considerable time and money in a series of beautiful experiments, the information gleaned from which has played an important part in the contemporary flying era. He built several machines with which to test his theories. The first practical appliance had twelve wings, and the outstanding feature, which served to differentiate it from any which had gone before, was the incorpora- tion of facilities whereby the wings might be moved in accordance with the desires of the operator, who stood upright within the machine. Hitherto the equilibrium of gliding apparatuses had depended upon the movement of the man in relation to the machine. That is to say, the man moved his body. Chanute reversed this practice. He caused the man to be rigid, and the wings to be movable. As events subsequently proved, this was the correct line of experiment. The multiple-winged machine completed three hundred highly successful flights. Then Chanute decided to reduce the number of wings and built a double-decker, or, as we should term it to-day, a biplane, thereby virtually reverting to Pilcher s apparatus. This machine made some seven hundred flights, or rather glides, and without a single accident. This machine was remarkable for the introduction