To the rigid wings Lillienthal fastened a rigid tail and this constituted his glider. There were no control levers and the only way he could steer was by shifting the balance, by use of his legs, in one direction or another. By means of an artificial hill he had constructed he could coast downward for some distance without striking the ground. He was unfortunately killed in one of these experiments in 1896. Chanute’s experiments in gliding were similar to Lillienthal’s, but they were conducted on the sand-dunes along Lake Michigan, near Chicago. His apparatus was more strongly constructed, of trussed biplane type—a construction suggested to him by his experience in bridge building, and one which persists to-day as the basis of strength in our present military biplanes. In design it was similar to a box kite, and it was the kind which the Wrights adopted for their experiments. The leaders of the second school were: Clement Ader (1890-97), Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim (1890-94), and Samuel Pierpont Langley (1895-1903). Clement Ader, the famous French scientist, under the auspices of the French Government, conducted experiments from 1890 to 1897. In 1890 he filled his Arion, a boat-shaped machine with two propellers, with a steam-engine, but the apparatus never flew. He finished his next machine in 1897 after six years of hard work. It was large enough to carry a man, but, like its predecessor, it never left the ground, and the French Government refused to support his experiments further. While Ader was making his experiments in France, Sir Hiram S. Maxim was at work constructing a large multiplane for the English Government, which he fitted with two steam-engines of 175 horse-power. But like Ader’s experiments it toppled over at the first trial and was badly damaged, and the British Government refused further backing. The experience of Samuel Pierpont Langley in America is not unlike the experience of Ader in France and Maxim in England. He was employed by the Board of Ordnance and Fortification of the United States army to construct the “Aerodrome” of his own invention. Congress appropriated $50,000 for the purpose. Langley’s machine was a tandem monoplane, 48 feet from tip to tip, and 52 feet from bowsprit to the end of its tail. It was fitted with a 50 horse-power engine and weighed 830 pounds. The trials of this aerodrome, two attempts to launch it, were made on October 7 and December 8, 1903. On both occasions the aerodrome became entangled in the defective launching apparatus, and was thrown headlong into the Potomac River—on which the launching trials were made. Following the last failure, when the aerodrome was wrecked, the press ridiculed the whole enterprise, and Congress refused to appropriate money for further experiments. The Langley aerodrome, fitted with a Curtiss motor and Curtiss controls, flew in 1913-14.