The main results of the day were that the Comte de Lambert flew 30
kilometres in 29 minutes 2 seconds; Lefebvre made the ten-kilometre
circle of the track in just a second under 9 minutes, while Tissandier
did it in 9 1/4 minutes, and Paulhan reached a height of 230 feet. Small
as these results seem to us now, and ridiculous as may seem enthusiasm
at the sight of a few machines in the air at the same time, the Rheims
Meeting remains a great event, since it proved definitely to the whole
world that the conquest of the air had been achieved.
Throughout the week record after record was made and broken. Thus on
the Monday, Lefebvre put up a record for rounding the course and Bleriot
beat it, to be beaten in turn by Glenn Curtiss on his Curtiss-Herring
biplane. On that day, too, Paulhan covered 34 3/4 miles in 1 hour 6
minutes. On the next day, Paulhan on his Voisin biplane took the air
with Latham, and Fournier followed, only to smash up his machine by
striking an eddy of wind which turned him over several times. On the
Thursday, one of the chief events was Latham's 43 miles accomplished in
1 hour 2 minutes in the morning and his 96.5 miles in 2 hours 13 minutes
in the afternoon, the latter flight only terminated by running out of
petrol. On the Friday, the Colonel Renard French airship, which had
flown over the ground under the pilotage of M. Kapfarer, paid Rheims a
second visit; Latham manoeuvred round the airship on his Antoinette and
finally left it far behind. Henry Farman won the Grand Prix de Champagne
on this day, covering 112 miles in 3 hours, 4 minutes, 56 seconds,
Latham being second with his 96.5 miles flight, and Paulhan third.
On the Saturday, Glenn Curtiss came to his own, winning the
Gordon-Bennett Cup by covering 20 kilometres in 15 minutes 50.6 seconds.
Bleriot made a good second with 15 minutes 56.2 seconds as his time,
and Latham and Lefebvre were third and fourth. Farman carried off the
passenger prize by carrying two passengers a distance of 6 miles in 10
minutes 39 seconds. On the last day Delagrange narrowly escaped serious
accident through the bursting of his propeller while in the air, Curtiss
made a new speed record by travelling at the rate of over 50 miles an
hour, and Latham, rising to 500 feet, won the altitude prize.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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