In 1884 came the first patents of Horatio Phillips, whose work lay mainly in the direction of investigation into the curvature of plane surfaces, with a view to obtaining the greatest amount of support. Phillips was one of the first to treat the problem of curvature of planes as a matter for scientific experiment, and, great as has been the development of the driven plane in the 36 years that have passed since he began, there is still room for investigation into the subject which he studied so persistently and with such valuable result.
At this point it may be noted that, with the solitary exception of Le Bris, practically every student of flight had so far set about constructing the means of launching humanity into the air without any attempt at ascertaining the nature and peculiarities of the sustaining medium. The attitude of experimenters in general might be compared to that of a man who from boyhood had grown up away from open water, and, at the first sight of an expanse of water, set to work to construct a boat with a vague idea that, since wood would float, only sufficient power was required to make him an efficient navigator. Accident, perhaps, in the shape of lack of means of procuring driving power, drove Le Bris to the form of experiment which he actually carried out; it remained for the later years of the nineteenth century to produce men who were content to ascertain the nature of the support the air would afford before attempting to drive themselves through it.
Of the age in which these men lived and worked, giving their all in many cases to the science they loved, even to life itself, it may be said with truth that ‘there were giants on the earth in those days,’ as far as aeronautics is in question. It was an age of giants who lived and dared and died, venturing into uncharted space, knowing nothing of its dangers, giving, as a man gives to his mistress, without stint and for the joy of the giving. The science of to-day, compared with the glimmerings that were in that age of the giants, is a fixed and certain thing; the problems of to-day are minor problems, for the great major problem vanished in solution when the Wright Brothers made their first ascent. In that age of the giants was evolved the flying man, the new type in human species which found full expression and came to full development in the days of the war, achieving feats of daring and endurance which leave the commonplace landsman staggered at thought of that of which his fellows prove themselves capable. He is a new type, this flying man, a being of self-forgetfulness; of such was Lilienthal, of such was Pilcher; of such in later days were Farman, Bleriot, Hamel, Rolls, and their fellows; great names that will live for as long as man flies, adventurers equally with those of the spacious days of Elizabeth. To each of these came the call, and he worked and dared and passed, having, perhaps, advanced one little step in the long march that has led toward the perfecting of flight.