Several years before this the Voisin brothers had been taken by the general fever for aviation and in 1907 they finished a practical biplane in which Henri Farman, a former auto racer, and Leon Delagrange, an artist, astonished the world. This early machine is described by one authority as something like a cross between a box kite and a Chanute glider. Extending out behind the two main planes was a rudder like a huge box kite, which was used to steer the machine from right to left. This also helped to keep the biplane from tipping forward or backward. A single horizontal rudder in front steered it upward or downward. These rudders were manipulated by the operator, who sat between the two main planes in front of his engine, by either pushing his pilot wheel forward or backward or by turning it like the steering wheel of an automobile. There was no device for balancing the aeroplane, but the construction kept it on a fairly even keel--or, as the scientist said, it had inherent or automatic stability--i. e., stability automatically gained from the construction of the machine. Also the operator was supposed to swing his body from side to side to aid this. The aeroplane started from and alighted on four wheels set under the main plane and the tail. It had 559 square feet of surface and with the engine weighed 1,100 pounds. The motor was a 50-horsepower Antoinette, which drove a single aluminum propeller. After preliminary "bird hops" at Issy-les-Mollineaux, Farman on October 26 beat Santos-Dumont's record by flying 771 metres. On January 13, 1908, he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Cup of 50,000 francs for the first person to make a circular flight of 500 metres. Two months later Delagrange challenged Farman for his world championship, but lost, Farman twice circling the two pylons, or marking poles, that had been set up 500 metres apart, in 3 minutes 31 seconds. The distance covered with turns was 2004.8 metres. Delagrange flew the 500 metres in 2.5 minutes. Then for the first time in the world's history two men rode in an aeroplane, Delagrange taking his rival behind him and sailing over a part of the course. A month later Delagrange took the distance record from Farman with a flight of 5,575 metres in 9-1/4 minutes. While these pioneers were winning prizes and breaking records Louis Blériot was bringing his aeroplane to a successful stage. He had been working on the problem of aviation since 1900, but had failed with wing flappers and machines like box kites. Finally he had some success with a tandem monoplane like Professor Langley's. The first of his machines of this kind was smashed in a fall, but the second, Blériot's seventh flier, flew steadily and was the fastest aeroplane ever developed.