In December, 1907, the Signal Corps of the United States army invited proposals for furnishing a “heavier than air flying machine.” The Wrights submitted a bid, proposing to deliver a machine that would meet the specifications for $25,000. Their offer, with those of two others, was accepted. By now their names and something of what they had accomplished were very generally known, and when they began the preliminary tests of their machines at their old grounds at Kitty Hawk, near Kill Devil Hills, a legion of reporters was on hand. The Wrights still tried to preserve as much secrecy as possible, and the newspaper men to furnish as much publicity. The flights could not be concealed and the trials were announced as thoroughly satisfactory. On May 10, 1908, ten ascensions in the government airship were made, the longest being over a mile and a half. On succeeding days longer flights were made, one of two miles at a speed of forty-six miles an hour. Orville Wright made a flight with a passenger on board, and a little later Wilbur flew eight miles, at a rate of forty-five miles an hour. The reporters assured the world that the Wrights had proved the success of the “heavier than air” machine. As one of them wrote, “Then, bedraggled and very sunburned they tramped up to the little weather bureau and informed the world, waiting on the other side of various sounds and continents and oceans, that it was all right, the rumors true, and there was no doubt that a man could fly.” Kitty Hawk, the place the Wrights had chosen because the Weather Bureau had told them the winds were strongest and steadiest there, now became one of the chief foci of the world’s attention. The Wrights, still quiet and unassuming, suddenly jumped into fame. The public could not understand how these two men, bicycle-makers of Dayton, had learned so much about airships. They did not appreciate that the brothers had mastered every detail of flight long before, that they had learned the fundamental principles of soaring and floating, diving and rising, circling and gliding, before they attached the first motor to their planes. They had been far more thorough and more resourceful than those Europeans who had for some time experimented with aviation. Henri Farman, who had caused a sensation in Europe by flying a kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) over a circular course on January 13, 1908, came to this country, and heard what the United States government was requiring in the tests. “I have done some flying,” said he, “but I do not try to do what your inventors must do at Fort Myer. I never fly in winds. Once I had a spill in France when I attempted it.”