Clément Ader set out in life with the fixed determination to make a fortune, then to build a practical flying machine. Adopting the profession of electrical engineer, he quickly accumulated enough capital, as he thought, to realize his early ambition. He next visited Africa to study at close range the great soaring birds that Mouillard had described with so much admiration and vivacity. Going to Algeria he disguised himself as an Arab, and, with two Arab guides, journeyed to the interior where he watched the great soaring vultures, which he enticed with bits of meat to perform before him their marvelous maneuvers, wheeling in wide circles, and without wing beat, from earth to sky. After several years of study of the anatomy and flight of birds, Ader began, at the age of forty-two years, to construct an aëroplane. His first machine was a birdlike monoplane mounted on skids, or wheels, and driven by a 40-horse-power steam engine actuating a screw, placed forward. The total weight was 1,100 pounds, the spread 46 feet, the length 21 feet. The _Eole_, as he called it, received its first open-air test on the morning of October 9, 1890, in the grounds surrounding the Chateau d’Armainvilliers, near Gretz, a portion of the course being so prepared that the trace of the wheels would be visible. When everything was ready for the trial, Ader mounted the machine, in presence of a few friends, ran quickly over the ground, urged by the propeller thrust, then rose into the air and sailed 150 feet. Such is the report of the witnesses to what is claimed as the first flight of a human being in a power-driven flying machine. Subsequently this bold inventor built _Eole No. 2_, which, by special permission of the War Department, he tested on a prepared track, 2,400 feet long, on the Satory Camp. Over this course he ran his machine several times, and on one occasion flew 300 feet; but on alighting broke one of the wings. Ader, now having spent one and a half million francs on his experiments, placed the _Eole_ on exhibition in order to raise money for their continuation. In this venture also he was successful, being presently subventioned by the French War Department to build an aëroplane for its use. His subsequent labors are concisely set forth in _Automobilia and Flight_ for February, 1909, as follows: