Cayley's ideas were developed in practice by John Stringfellow, a manufacturer of lace machinery at Chard, in Somersetshire, and by his friend W. S. Henson, a young engineer. They constructed a light steam-engine, and designed an aeroplane, of which they entertained such high hopes that they took out a patent, and applied to Parliament for an Act to incorporate an Aerial Steam Transit Company. The reaction of public opinion on their proposals took the form of drag rather than lift, and they were thrown back on their own resources. In 1847 they made a model aeroplane, twenty feet in span, driven by two four-bladed airscrews, three feet in diameter, and they experimented with it on Bala Down, near Chard. It did not fly. Henson, completely discouraged, married and went to America; Stringfellow persisted, and in 1848 made a smaller model, ten feet in span, with airscrews sixteen inches in diameter. This machine, which had wings slightly cambered, with a rigid leading edge and a flexible trailing edge, made several successful flights, first in a long covered room at Chard, and later, before a number of witnesses, at Cremorne Gardens. After this success Stringfellow did no more for many years, until the foundation of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain in 1866 roused him again to activity. At the society's exhibition of 1868, held in the Crystal Palace, he produced a model triplane, which ran along suspended from a wire, and, when its engine was in action, lifted itself as it ran. The foundation of the Aeronautical Society, with the Duke of Argyll as president and with a council of men of science, attracted fresh minds to the study of flight, and gave the subject a respectable standing. Mr. Wenham's paper, read to the society on the 27th of June 1866, proved that the effective sustaining area of a wing is limited to a narrow portion behind the leading edge; that, in order to increase this area, the planes of a flying machine might advantageously be placed one above another--an idea which was borrowed and put into practice by Mr. Stringfellow in his triplane--and that a heavy body, supported on planes, requires less power to drive it through the air at a high speed than to maintain it in flight at a low speed. For some years the society flourished; then its energies declined, and it fell into a state of suspended animation. At its second exhibition, in 1885, there were only sixteen exhibits as against seventy-eight at the exhibition of 1868. The prospects of practical success seemed remoter than ever. At last, thirty years after its foundation, it sprang into renewed activity, and, with Major B. F. S. Baden-Powell as secretary, did an immense work, from 1897 onwards, in directing and furthering the study of aviation. The _Aeronautical Journal_, which was published quarterly by the revived society, is a record of the years of progress and triumph.