"The rudder is of a shape very unlike that of a ship, for it is adapted both for vertical and horizontal steering. The width of the wings from tip to tip is between twelve and thirteen feet, and the length of the whole about sixteen feet. The weight is nearly thirty pounds, of which about one-fourth is contained in the machinery. The engine and boilers are constructed with an almost single eye to economy of weight, not of force, and are very wasteful of steam, of which they spend their own weight in five minutes. This steam might all be recondensed and the water re-used by proper condensing apparatus, but this cannot be easily introduced in so small a scale of construction. With it the time of flight might be hours instead of minutes, but without it the flight (of the present aerodrome) is limited to about five minutes, though in that time, as will be seen presently, it can go some miles; but owing to the danger of its leaving the surface of the water for that of the land, and wrecking itself on shore, the time of flight is limited designedly to less than two minutes." When this flying-machine was put to the actual test its performance justified the most sanguine expectations; it actually flew as no other machine had ever flown before. A number of men of science watched this remarkable performance, among others Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who reported it to the Institute of France. "Through the courtesy of Mr. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, I have had on various occasions the pleasure of witnessing his experiments with aerodromes," wrote Dr. Bell, "and especially the remarkable success attained by him in his experiments made on the Potomac River on Wednesday, May 6th [which led me to urge him to make public some of these results]. "On the occasion referred to, the aerodrome, at a given signal, started from a platform about twenty feet above the water, and rose at first directly in the face of the wind, moving at all times with remarkable steadiness, and subsequently swinging around in large curves of, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter, and continually ascending until its steam was exhausted, when at a lapse of about a minute and a half, and at a height which I judged to be between eighty and one hundred feet in the air, the wheels ceased turning, and the machine, deprived of the aid of propellers, to my surprise did not fall, but settled down so softly and gently that it touched the water without the least shock, and was in fact immediately ready for another trial."