The Fort Myer machine had sails of forty feet spread, six and one-half feet deep, with front elevating planes three by sixteen feet. It made about forty miles per hour with two passengers. The apparatus was specified to carry a passenger weight of 350 pounds, with fuel for a 125-mile flight. The main planes were six feet apart. The steering rudder (double) was of planes one foot deep and nearly six feet high. The four-cylinder-four-cycle, water-cooled motor developed twenty-five horse-power at 1400 revolutions. The two propellers, eight and one-half feet in diameter, made 400 revolutions. The flight by Mr. Wilbur Wright from the Statue of Liberty to the tomb of General Grant, in New York, 1909, and the exploits of his brother in the same year, when a new altitude record of 1600 feet was made and H.R.H. the Crown Prince of Germany was taken up as a passenger, are only specimens of the later work done by these pioneers in aerial navigation. Like the Wrights, the Voisin firm from the beginning adhered firmly to the biplane type of machine. The sketch gives dimensions of one of the early cellular forms built for H. Farman (see illustration, page 147). The metal screw makes about a thousand revolutions. The wings are of india rubber sheeting on an ash frame, the whole frame and car body being of wood, the latter covered with canvas and thirty inches wide by ten feet long. The engine weighed 175 pounds. The whole weight of this machine was nearly 1200 pounds; that built later for Delagrange was brought under a thousand pounds. The ratio of weight to main surface in the Farman aeroplane was about 2-3/4 to 1. A modified cellular biplane also built for Farman had a main wing area of 560 square feet, the planes being seventy-nine inches wide and only fifty-nine inches apart. The tail was an open box, seventy-nine inches wide and of about ten feet spread. The cellular partitions in this tail were pivoted along the vertical front edges so as to serve as steering rudders. The elevating rudder was in front. The total weight was about the same as that of the first machine and the usual speed twenty-eight miles per hour. [Illustration: VOISIN-FARMAN BIPLANE] Henry Farman has been flying publicly since 1907. He made the first circular flight of one kilometer, and attained a speed of about a mile a minute, in the year following. In 1909 he accomplished a trip of nearly 150 miles, remaining four hours in the air. Farman was probably the first man to ascend with two passengers. [Illustration: THE CHAMPAGNE GRAND PRIZE WON BY HENRY FARMAN 80 Kilometers in 3 hours] [Illustration: FARMAN'S FIRST BIPLANE AT ISSY-LES-MOULINEAUX Returning to the Hangar After a Flight]