In the spring of 1903, the Wrights’ Chicago friend, Octave Chanute, had gone to his native France in the interest of the St. Louis Exposition to be held the next year. One purpose of his visit was to arrange with Alberto Santos-Dumont, the Brazilian aeronaut, who lived in Paris, to make flights at St. Louis with his dirigible balloon. While in Paris, Chanute was invited by the Aéro Club to give a talk regarding aviation in the United States. In this talk, on April 2, he told of his own gliding experiments in 1896 and of those of the Wright Brothers in 1901 and 1902, illustrated by photographs. Then in the August, 1903, issue of _L’Aérophile_ Chanute published an article on the same subject, with photographic illustrations, scale drawings, and structural details of the Wright 1902 glider. In the _Revue des Sciences_ of November, 1903, he again published photographs and description of that machine. This 1902 glider far surpassed any that had ever been built before, and in it the problem of equilibrium had practically been solved. That glider was the basis of the specifications in the Wright patent. Chanute’s revelations therefore were sensational. And they did not fall on deaf ears. Until this time, about the only man in France who was showing any interest in aviation was Captain Louis Ferdinand Ferber of the French army, who himself had made gliding experiments as a hobby while serving in an Alpine artillery corps. As early as 1901 he had begun an exchange of letters with Chanute, after having read in the _Illustrierte Aeronautische Mitteilungen_, a German magazine devoted mainly to ballooning, a brief article, supplied by Wilbur Wright, about the 1900 experiments at Kitty Hawk. A little later he wrote for information to the Wrights themselves. But now after the Chanute speech, Ferber was no longer alone among Frenchmen in thinking the Wrights’ experiments might be significant. Though belief in the possibility of a successful flying machine had been at lowest ebb in France, the information now made available by Chanute caused a greatly revived interest. Heretofore the Aéro Club had devoted its attention almost entirely to balloons and dirigibles, but it considered the French as leaders in every line pertaining to aeronautics. Immediately following the Chanute address telling of the Wrights’ gliding experiments in America, several members of the Aéro Club, led by Ernest Archdeacon, decided to organize a special committee on aviation. Archdeacon also made a warm appeal in favor of organizing contests for gliders to show that the French did not intend to allow anyone to surpass them in any branch of aeronautics. He subscribed three thousand francs for the organization of such contests and for prizes. _L’Aérophile_, official organ of the Club, which up to this time had published little about aviation, now suddenly began to carry many articles and items of news concerning projected experiments in gliding.