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Of the doings of another of these brave but reckless men—a Saracen who tried to fly in the twelfth century—there is fuller information. He provided himself with wings which he stiffened with wooden rods, and held out upon either side of his body. Wearing these, he mounted to the top of a tower in Constantinople and stood waiting for a favourable gust of wind. When this came and caught his wings, he “rose into the air like a bird.” And then, of course, seeing that he had no idea of balancing himself when actually aloft, he fell pell-mell and “broke his bones.” People who had gathered to watch, seeing this inglorious ending to the flight, burst into laughter: ridicule rather than praise, indeed, was the fate of the pioneers, even to the days when the first real flights were made.

Author

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Aeroplane, by Claude Grahame-White and Harry Harper
Published 1914

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Thursday 7 May 2020

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297*396

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• Technology / Transport / Air

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