While longer flights probably will be made with this machine none will attain greater importance, because this first flight with it was sufficient to establish for all time the fact that Dr. Langley built the first man-carrying machine equipped with a gasoline engine and able to fly and raise itself with its own power. This was considerably more than was accomplished by other machines for some time after Dr. Langley’s death. The Langley machine not only lifted the weight it was designed to fly with, but also carried pontoon and other fittings, added by Mr. Curtiss to make flight from the water possible, which added 340 pounds to the original weight of the machine. [Illustration: THE MACHINE WITH WHICH BLERIOT FLEW IN EUROPE Copy of early Langley model with which Bleriot made first circular flight in Europe.] The connection between Dr. Langley’s work and present machines is now very easy to trace, though not obvious until 1911, when the Smithsonian Institution published memoirs written by Dr. Langley in 1897, and some memoirs of Mr. Octave Chanute, a French engineer who resided in Chicago, and who forms one of the main connecting links. The chain is practically completed by notes left by the late Lieut. Thomas Selfridge, U. S. A., America’s first martyr to aviation. Dr. Langley’s knowledge is represented in modern aviation by three distinct lines. The central and most direct line is through Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, to the Aerial Experiment Association, and thence to Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss, and finds its expression in what is known as the Curtiss type of machines. Another line is that carried by a Mr. A. M. Herring to Mr. Chanute and by him transmitted to Mr. Wilbur Wright, finding expression in the Wright type of biplane. The third line is that leading to the modern monoplane school; M. Bleriot having first copied in toto the tandem monoplane form, generally known as the Langley type, and later, with the development of better gasoline engines, developing into the monoplane as known today. With the exception of M. Bleriot it is doubtful if the others fully realized the source of their inspiration,--not to call it information. Dr. Bell was interested in Dr. Langley’s work for more than ten years before Dr. Langley gave up. He observed many of the trials, and his reports of the first successful flights are incorporated in the official publications of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Bell began some independent experiments, but following Dr. Langley’s death he formed the Aerial Experiment Association, to carry on the work left by Dr. Langley. The members of this organization were, Mr. Curtiss, at that time the most successful builder of light motors; Lieut. Thomas H. Selfridge, U. S. A.; Mr. J. A. D. McCurdy and Mr. F. W. Baldwin, two young Canadian engineers. Mrs. Bell financed the project, furnishing the sum of $35,000 for the experiments. ~WHAT TWO BROTHERS ACCOMPLISHED FOR FLYING~