In the meantime another distinguished disciple of the birds was energetically at work in Germany. No less ardent than Le Bris, or Mouillard, Otto Lilienthal was far better equipped and circumstanced. He was a graduate of the Potsdam Technical School, and a student for three years in the Berlin Technical Academy. He was engaged in practical construction ten years in various machine shops at Berlin. After 1880 he operated a flourishing machine factory of his own. From boyhood he with his brother Gustavus had carefully studied the flight of birds, and had made numerous experiments in aviation. On moonlight nights in their little home place of Anclam, in Pomerania, the boys would run downhill, flapping their home-made wings, like Dædalus and Icarus, but with no other danger than discovery and teasing by their neighbors. At Potsdam and Berlin they continued to experiment and to construct wings of increasing size and power. Thus Otto Lilienthal reached early manhood thoroughly trained by his long courses in the technical schools and shops, brimming with well pondered ideas, strengthened by continuous observation and experiment, and in financial circumstances which permitted him to devote time and money to the unremunerative pursuit of aviation. To this may be added that his mature years were cast in a time when the allied sciences could aid him far more than they had aided his predecessors of the preceding generation. After careful research for the most efficient form of alar surface, Lilienthal resolved to imitate the birds. First he would build a pair of arched wings, and learn to coast down the atmosphere, balancing and steering like a stork in the gusty and treacherous current. He would thus acquire the pilot’s skill, and ascertain the towline power required to sustain a given weight. Then he would add a suitable propelling mechanism, test it cautiously, and acquire the mastery of dynamic flight. Incidentally, perhaps, he would learn to ride all over creation without motive power; for he was convinced that certain great birds soar without muscular effort, and that man could acquire this delightful art in favorable weather. To strengthen the plausibility of that doctrine, he announced his discovery that the general trend of the wind is three and a half degrees upward, a fact inexplicable and almost incredible to his illustrious confrère of the Smithsonian Institution.[26] Such was Lilienthal’s ample program; more, indeed, than he would live to accomplish, though possibly not beyond his power of achievement, if he could have lived to enjoy the hale long years of his illustrious countryman aëronaut, Count Von Zeppelin.