C.Barnes Short Aircraft since 1900 (Putnam)

Short-Wright Biplanes

   Wilbur Wright’s demonstrations of flying the improved Wright Model A biplane at Hunaudieres and Camp d’Auvours, near Le Mans, in August 1908, created unprecedented enthusiasm, with spectators and would-be passengers flocking from all over Europe to see him. After taking up numerous passengers in September and October, including leading members of the Aero Club of the United Kingdom, Wilbur Wright was bombarded with requests for replicas of the Flyer; Charles S. Rolls was among the first to place an unconditional order for one. But the demonstration Flyer was only the fourth powered machine the Wrights had constructed, and their contract with Lazare Weiller, promoter of their European tour, provided for his ultimate retention of it, after completion of an agreed programme of demonstrations, including tuition for not more than three pupils. It was the first of its particular type, and the Wrights had not intended to put it into production, so they had never made any complete working drawings. However, they agreed to allow copies of the Flyer to be built under licence by approved constructors, and in France these were to be Chantiers de France at Dunkerque and the Societe Astra at Billancourt; during his first visit to France in 1907, Wilbur Wright had arranged for a firm of precision engineers, Bariquand & Marre of Paris, to build spare Wright engines, and in 1908 he was so cordially welcomed at Le Mans by Leon Bollee, who put a bay of his well-equipped automobile factory at Wilbur’s disposal, that Bollee also was awarded a licence to make Wright engines. All sales in France were handled by Weiller’s firm, Cie. Generale de Navigation Aerienne, but all the British Empire rights were held by Griffith Brewer, who managed the Wrights’ U.K. patents.
   Brewer was a well-known balloonist, and from his experience of the work of the Short brothers had no hesitation in recommending them as competent to manufacture the Flyer in England; by February 1909 Eustace Short had made a contract with Wilbur Wright to construct six aircraft at a total price of £8,400; all were already bespoken by members of the Aero Club, the first being reserved for Charles Rolls in accordance with his original order of the previous September. Rolls was impatient to begin learning to fly, and since Wilbur Wright declined to take on any more pupils in addition to the three (Comte Charles de Lambert, Paul Tissandier and Capt Lucas de Girardville) already nominated in France, he recommended Rolls to start practising with a glider of the type already described in the patent of 1906, and gave Short Brothers permission to construct one apart from the Flyer contract. On completion of his flights at Le Mans in December 1908, Wilbur Wright moved to Pau in the warmer south on 14 January, 1909, accompanied by Orville Wright and their sister Katharine, who had just arrived from the United States. Horace Short spent several days with Eustace at Pau in February measuring and sketching every aspect of the Flyer, and soon after his return to England he and his assistant, P. M. Jones, had produced the first complete set of working drawings ever made of any Wright biplane. Meanwhile, the Aero Club had established its new flying ground at Shellbeach on Sheppey, and half a mile away Short Brothers built a new factory in which to assemble the six Short-Wright Flyers; work on details began at Battersea, but the railway arches were too cramped for final erection of aeroplanes. The first building, a corrugated-iron shed 100 ft long by 45 ft wide, was put up by Harbrow of Bermondsey early in March 1909, and by May Horace was already lamenting its inadequacy and planning extensions; by August a second shed was in use and Short Brothers were employing 80 men. Horace Short designed and manufactured the Short-Wright glider at Battersea in four weeks during the spring of 1909, taking it to Shellbeach in June for fabric covering and final rigging; Rolls attempted his first launch, unsuccessfully, on 1 August and achieved his first glide the following day. Thereafter he practised regularly and with increasing proficiency till 10 October.
   The Short-Wright glider had plain rectangular warping wings, with a forward biplane elevator and twin aft rudders exactly similar to the Wright glider of 1902-3, except that the pilot sat upright with a control lever in each hand; the left-hand lever moved fore-and-aft to control the elevator, and the right-hand lever moved sideways for warping and fore-and-aft to control the rudder. It was hand-launched from a trolley on a rail laid downhill on a slight eminence near Leysdown, and Rolls achieved soaring flights of several hundred yards in suitable weather. Rolls did not dispose of his glider until March 1910, when he offered it for sale in good condition, together with its shed and rail and the lease of the site.
   The Wrights visited Battersea on 3 May and Shellbeach the next day, and were well pleased with the quality and progress of the six Flyers under construction. As at first built, they were exactly similar to Wilbur Wright’s demonstration Flyer, and only the last two ever incorporated later improvements. The two-spar wings had neither dihedral nor stagger and were wire-braced, with the two outer bays on each side arranged to warp. The main chassis comprised a pair of forward elevator outriggers combined with landing skids. An additional small feature, peculiar to Short-built Flyers, was a projecting wing-tip skid at each end of the lower leading edge, introduced by Horace Short because of frequent damage on the rough ground at Shellbeach. The biplane elevator incorporated an ingenious linkage for reversing the camber to match the angle of attack, so that when incidence was negative the camber was inverted. The parallel rudders were boxed together and pivoted on a central vertical axis carried by a single pair of upper and lower booms braced by wires to the rear spars. The pilot and passenger sat side-by-side on the left-hand half of the lower wing between the chassis frames, with the engine beside them on their right; they had separate seats with back-rests and a common fixed foot-rail. The pilot usually sat on the right, with a fore-and-aft elevator lever in his left hand and a universally pivoted lever in his right hand, which moved fore-and-aft to control the rudder and sideways to control the warp; thus the functions of ‘balancing’ and ‘steering’ were psychologically separated, while the use of rudder to counteract warping drag became instinctive with the right hand, leading naturally to the Wrights’ elegant banked turns, previously thought to be a highly dangerous manoeuvre in spite of its universal and age-old use by birds and bats!
   The 27 hp four-cylinder water-cooled vertical engine of the Wrights’ own design drove, through separate chains in guide tubes and sprockets giving a reduction ratio of 9 : 32, a pair of two-bladed propellers mounted outboard just behind the wings with their thrust-line at half-gap; their tips rotated outwards at the top, so creating a resultant upwash in the middle of the slipstream, the longer left-hand chain being crossed to produce counter-rotation. The standard method of take-off was from a trolley on a launching rail laid to face into wind, with assistance from a rope hooked to the trolley and pulled by a falling weight previously raised on a portable derrick located downwind of the rail. This was a nuisance in variable wind conditions and a source of trouble whenever the rope jammed in a pulley, which happened rather often. Occasionally, in a steady light breeze, the Flyer could take off without external assistance, and later in 1909 some of those built in France appeared with wheels attached to the skids.
   Although the first four Short-Wright Flyers were completed by July 1909, they were kept waiting for their engines, which had originally been ordered from Leon Bollee for all six; only two Bollee engines were finally delivered, and Bariquand & Marre were substituted in the others, but none was ready for Orville Wright to test personally in August as intended. As a temporary expedient, Frank McClean installed the engine out of his Nordenfelt car in his Short-Wright (No. 3) and was launched from the rail, but failed to sustain flight; two Bollee engines eventually arrived and early in October Charles Rolls made a few brief hops in his Short-Wright (No. 1), but came to grief; after repairs to the minor damage incurred, he began flying steadily on 1 November, and his proficiency was such that before the day was out he had covered 1 1/2 miles, thereby winning the first of four Aero Club prizes of £25 for a flight of 250 yards and the David Salomans Cup and £105 for a flight of half a mile out and half a mile back without landing. Three days later he won the first of three Aero Club prizes of £50 for flying one mile in a closed circuit at Shellbeach, which he accomplished at a height of 60 ft. Alec Ogilvie took delivery of Short-Wright No. 2 at his private flying ground at Camber Sands, near Rye, Sussex, on 3 November, 1909, when he flew for nine minutes. Next day he made two more flights of ten minutes each, but allowed enthusiasm to outrun caution; after attaining 50 mph (as shown by an air-speed indicator of his own design and later improved and patented by him) his Leon Bollee engine seized, but he made a safe forced landing. On 20 November Rolls flew from Shellbeach to the Aero Club’s new flying ground at Eastchurch, over an indirect course of 5 1/2 miles, but two days later he, too, suffered engine failure after covering seven miles. On the same day Frank McClean took delivery of the third Short-Wright, after installation of its Bariquand engine, making initial flights up to 400 yards in length, and continued to make steady if unspectacular progress whenever the weather permitted, attaining four miles by 17 December (the sixth anniversary of Orville Wright’s historic ‘first ever’ powered flight). McClean had not had as much prior experience as Rolls and Ogilvie, for the latter had purchased a Wright glider from T. W. K. Clarke of Willesden in August and had soared it for 350 yards after less than a fortnight’s practice. By 21 December Rolls had achieved a 15-mile cross-country flight over Sheppey and the fourth Short-Wright had been delivered to Maurice Egerton. On New Year’s Day 1910 Frank McClean flew from Eastchurch to Short Brothers’ works and back, and Rolls, after a solo flight of nearly an hour, took up Cecil Grace as his first passenger. During the next few weeks Rolls flew frequently with passengers, including Ogilvie, whose own machine was back at Shellbeach for repairs, and on 12 February Maurice Egerton flew over to Shellbeach to win both the third £25 and the second £50 Aero Club prizes.
   The last two Short-Wright Flyers, ordered originally by Percy Grace and Ernest Pitman, incorporated an improved four-boom tail outrigger with a single fixed tailplane behind the rudders. Both were flown for the first time on 14 February, the former by Cecil Grace, who covered 300 yards (after earlier practice on Moore-Brabazon’s Voisin Bird of Passage) and the latter by Charles Rolls, who had bought it from Ernest Pitman before completion; after a spectacular high flight in his new machine on 25 February, Rolls towed his old Flyer behind his Silver Ghost tourer to London for exhibition on the Royal Aero Club’s stand at Olympia, after which he presented it to the Balloon Company, Royal Engineers, at Aldershot; subsequently he gave ground instruction to Army officers on it at Farnborough, and later it was kept at Hounslow Barracks, but there is no record of its ever being flown again. On 24 March Rolls collected his new Flyer from the works at Shellbeach and flew it thence all round Sheppey for 26 miles, attaining 1,000 ft over Queenborough before landing at Eastchurch. On the same day Cecil Grace won the remaining £25 and £50 prizes at Shellbeach; he went on to make regular flights throughout April, culminating in a 46-minute flight over Sheerness at 1,500 ft, in the course of which he dropped a packet of letters, all of which were posted by their finders and reached their destinations. Meanwhile Rolls had bought a new French-built Wright with a wheeled chassis, which he flew at the Nice International Meeting as one of the Royal Aero Club’s representatives; on his return he kept this machine for competition purposes, while his second Short-Wright was dismantled to donate its wings, elevators and empennage to his experimental Rolls Power Glider, or R.P.G., which also employed the wheeled chassis and 35 hp Green engine from the unsuccessful Short No. 3 biplane (q.v.). Consequently, he used his French Wright at the Wolverhampton meeting, having previously flown it on 2 June from Dover to Sangatte and back without landing, a feat which won him the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club and other awards. Ogilvie flew his Short-Wright (No. 2) at Wolverhampton, and a fortnight later he and Rolls both entered the same machines in the Bournemouth meeting, where Rolls met his death on 12 July while making a second attempt to win the alighting competition. Horace Short, who examined the wreckage, concluded that the tail-boom was not stiff enough to carry the controllable aft elevator which Rolls had fitted only five days earlier, and had deflected far enough to touch the tip of one propeller, with catastrophic results.
   After Rolls’ death Short Brothers bought back Short-Wright No. 6 from his executors, reassembled it and sold it, less engine, to Alec Ogilvie, who had already fitted wheels to his first Flyer with some success. This encouraged him to make a series of modifications to No. 6, with a view to competing in all British events, including the de Forest prize and the British Michelin Cup, for which Bollee and Bariquand & Marre engines were ineligible. He first considered fitting a 50 hp E.N.V., but the British-built model of this engine was not yet available, so he chose a new 50 hp V-4 two-stroke supercharged N.E.C., which he installed in September 1910; then he went to New York as the Royal Aero Club’s entry in the Gordon Bennett Race at Belmont Park in October. His mount was a Wright C-type racer, with wheels but no front elevators, whose performance so impressed him that on his return to England in December he tried hard to persuade Horace Short to accept the Wrights’ offer to extend Shorts’ manufacturing licence to include the later models; Horace refused to do so, and Ogilvie thereupon went off, apparently in rather a huff, to Camber, where he proceeded to convert the sixth Short-Wright to the latest Dayton standard, with the tailplane turned into an aft elevator, the front elevators deleted, the skids shortened and the ‘blinkers’ placed low on them. He also incorporated Orville Wright’s improved steering control, comprising a fore-and-aft lever for the right hand, operating rudder and warp together, with a sideways-hinged handle at the top, whereby a limited amount of differential movement could be interposed between rudder and warp controls. The N.E.C. engine rotated the opposite way to the Wright, and with a rear elevator this was found to be an advantage because it gave pitch-up with engine on and pitch-down with engine off, so improving longitudinal stability and making the machine less tiring to fly.
   With these modifications, Ogilvie flew 142 miles in just under four hours on 28 December, 1910, in an attempt to win the British Michelin Cup, terminated prematurely by a radiator leak. In May his lease of the Camber ground expired and he flew back to Eastchurch on 2 May, 1911, and remained there; in later months he modified his machine even more, bringing the engine forward and placing the pilot’s and passenger’s seats behind it, the whole being enclosed in a nacelle. This improved performance as well as comfort, and on 29 June, 1912, he took off at Eastchurch with three passengers in addition to his own not inconsiderable weight; still later he tried it on floats at Leysdown, but found it unseaworthy. Ogilvie’s modified Short-Wright was still being regularly flown right up to the outbreak of war in August 1914, and its N.E.C. engine survives in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London, together with the Wright-Bollee engine and one propeller from Short-Wright No. 2. One of the Bariquand & Marre engines, almost certainly that first installed in Short-Wright No. 6, was stored successively at Eastchurch and Rochester and was later restored and placed on permanent exhibition at Queen’s Island, Belfast; incidentally, Bariquand & Marre’s London agency, Barimar Ltd, became world-famous as exponents of machinery repairs by welding and now, based at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, occupies a leading place in shipbuilding and heavy steel fabrication.


Glider - Span 32 ft 10 in (10 m); length 18 ft (5-5 m); area 325 sq ft (30 m2).
Flyer - Span 41 ft (12-5 m); length 29 ft (8-8 m); area 515 sq ft (47-8 m2); empty weight 885 lb (401 kg); loaded weight 1,200 lb (545 kg); speed 50 mph (80 km/h).

M.Goodall, A.Tagg British Aircraft before the Great War (Schiffer)

P.Lewis British Aircraft 1809-1914 (Putnam)

Short-Wright Biplane

   In 1909 Short Brothers started to build the Short No. 1, their first powered aeroplane, at Battersea. However, while it was under construction, an order was received for six Wright Biplanes to be produced under licence at a cost of ?8,400. Their No. 1 was put aside for the time being, and work proceeded on the Wright machines, enabling the firm to claim to be "The First Manufacturers of Aircraft in the World". The contract called for a French-built Wright engine, the 30 h.p. Leon Bollee, to be fitted. This engine was not forthcoming, and its place was taken alternatively by the 40 h.p. E.N.V. "D", 60 h.p. Green and 40 h.p. N.E.C.
   The Short-Wright proved very successful, the first going to the Hon. C. S. Rolls, with others being sold to F. K. McClean, the Hon. Maurice Egerton, Cecil Grace and Alec Ogilvie. Early in November, 1910, Rolls covered 1.5 miles in his machine, and on another occasion flew 15 miles across-country to Eastchurch after repairs had been made at Short Brothers' Leysdown works. On 2nd June, 1910, Rolls flew his Short Wright across the English Channel from England to France and returned without landing, thereby becoming the first to do so in each case and also the first British pilot to make the crossing. On 12th July, 1910, he was killed at Bournemouth while flying the same aeroplane, and his second machine of the same type, fitted with an N.E.C. engine, was bought by Alec Ogilvie, who flew it from Camber Sands at Rye in Sussex, making many good flights, including one of 139-75 miles in 3 hrs. 55 mins., in 1910. Span, 41 ft. Length, 29 ft. Wing area, 515 sq. ft. Weight empty, 885 lb. Maximum speed, 50 m.p.h.

Журнал Flight

Flight, March 12, 1910

THE SECOND OLYMPIA AERO SHOW.
AEROPLANES.

Short-Wright Machine.

   BRITISH-BUILT biplanes, after the design which has been evolved by the Wright Brothers. The machine on view is that with which the Hon. C. S. Rolls has been flying at Eastchurch.


Flight, June 4, 1910

HON.C.S. ROLLS AT DOVER.

   As we mentioned in our last issue, the Hon. C. S. Rolls, although forestalled in the winning of the Ruinart Prize, decided to stay on at Dover with the object of flying across to France at the first opportunity.
   Unfortunately, up to the time of going to press on Wednesday, the weather was against flying, and Mr. Rolls therefore deemed it prudent to postpone the attempt.
   On the 26th ult., everything was in readiness, and a trial trip was decided on.
   The machine .rose from the rail in a meadow on the East Cliff with perfect ease, and rising to a height of about 200 ft., flew out towards the Channel. Turning at the edge of the cliff, Mr. Rolls continued flying in a series of circles for about 20 minutes.
   On the following afternoon, Friday, the conditions were again right, and Mr. Rolls decided to make another trial, and if everything was working perfectly, to start on the cross-Channel trip. Unfortunately, motor trouble supervened, and in a sudden descent from a height of 120 ft., the runners were damaged, and so caused another postponement.


Flight, June 11, 1910

THE HON. C. S. ROLLS' HISTORICAL FLIGHT.

   AN important page in the history of the development of flight has once more been turned down by the splendid achievement of the Hon. C. S. Rolls on his Short-Wright type biplane with horizontal tail, in flying over the Channel and returning to his starting point without alighting on French soil. Abroad most of the noteworthy feats have been accomplished by professional aviators. In Britain it is otherwise, as in all sports and science. The man who outstands in progress is almost without exception the amateur. In this respect the art of flying is proving no exception. We doubt if any foreigner, without the smallest monetary inducement, would, like Mr. Rolls, have started on this flight across the Channel. And in that lies the difference in sport as understood in Great Britain and as understood abroad.
   In making this flight Mr. Rolls has placed to his credit several records of which he may well be proud. It.is the first time the Channel has been flown by a Britisher, the first time the double journey has been accomplished, the first time it has been done on a biplane, and, moreover, it is the first time the landing after the event has been made at the exact pre-arranged spot and without damage. Incidentally another record also attaches to the flight, viz., the occasion of the most elaborated journalistic account, "a la Munchausen," as supplied by an enterprising reporter to the general Press. Practically all the "details" which have appeared in morning papers have been pure fabrications. Mr. Rolls never disclosed the contents of the congratulatory telegram received from the King, this being of a purely private character. Yet what purports to be the exact text has duly appeared. All the wonderful tales of the doings at Dover, of Mr. Rolls' parents. Lord and Lady Llangattock, and his sister after the event, although quite picturesque, are hardly accurate, inasmuch as none of them were there! It is true they had visited the scene of preparation some days previously, but this hardly justifies romancing upon such a very elaborate scale. However, as present-day journalistic methods in certain quarters demand this sort of sensationalism, we presume there will always be those who will be ready to supply it.
   Now, as to facts, first and foremost the exact times of the flight as recorded by Capt. Moore, R.E., are perhaps the most important. Mr. Rolls on his Wright machine left the starting rail by his shed at Broadlees, Dover, at 6.30 1/2 p.m. by the clock; he crossed the British coast line at 6.34 1/2 p.m., the French coast line about 1 1/2 miles east of Sangatte upon his return journey at 7.15 p.m. (English time) re-crossed the British coast line at 8.2 p.m., and, after circling Dover Castle, finally landed at his starting place by the rail at his shed at Broadlees at 8.6 p.m. Before turning for his homeward journey flew for a third of a mile inland over French soil, and "posted," by dropping a letter of greeting to the Aero Club of France.
   Probably no man's name was more prominent in the Press of the World, especially the British, following this record flight than Mr. Rolls'. Yet the man himself had little to say in praise of his own remarkable achievement. It was the machine, not the man. Credit should go to the designers, the Wright Brothers. He was merely the user of their work. All he had to do was to sit quietly and let the machine take him across and back again, or words to that effect.
   Whilst acknowledging the justice of this apportioning of credit up to a point, it is only with such men as Mr. Rolls to back up their creations that continued progress can be hoped for by the originators of the machines themselves.
   Asked what his feelings and sensations were, Mr. Rolls, as ever modest, could not say there was anything unusual to talk about. He had just flown over the water and back, and that was all. There was no trouble, no worry or sensations to speak about. That had ceased from the moment the machine left the starting rail. Any anxiety that there might be was rather in the preliminaries - waiting for suitable weather, tuning up the engine, seeing to wires and spars, and all such other matters. These constituted the only worries of the undertaking. The public, however, know how to value such services in a great cause as those performed by Mr. Rolls, and in spite of his belittlement of his own work, we think the receptions which are likely to be accorded to this pioneer upon every occasion when he shall appear in public, whether as aviator or otherwise, will give very audible voice to the appreciation in which he is held. It might be a fitting and graceful act if a memorial stone were to be erected upon the spot of departure and return, in like manner to that marking the point of alighting by M. Bleriot. That there is a strong feeling abroad in this connection there may be instanced a donation towards this object received by the Mayor of Dover from a working man, who takes for granted that such a movement will be the natural corollary to Mr. Rolls' flight.
   It will be seen from the official notices that the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club has been conferred upon Mr. Rolls for his Channel flight.


Flight, June 25, 1910

Teaching British Army Officers to Fly.

   AT last an official start has been made with the instruction of British Army officers in the art of flying. On Monday evening the Hon. C. S. Rolls visited the balloon factory at Farnborough, and explained to a number of officers of the balloon companies of the Royal Engineers the working of his Short-Wright machine, which has been at the balloon factory for some time. The instruction was continued early on Tuesday morning, and although no attempt at flight was made the motors were started up and the method of handling the machine was demonstrated. A starting-rail has been laid down on Jersey Brow, and it was anticipated that practical flying would be commenced at the end of this week.


Flight, January 7, 1911

THE BRITISH MICHELIN CUP.

   IN our last issue we were able to give brief particulars of Mr. Alec Ogilvie's splendid try for the British Michelin Cup, and it seemed then not improbable that his fine record would not be beaten. Both Mr. Sopwith and Mr. Cody were not to be so easily deterred, however, and on Saturday, the closing day of the competition, Mr. Cody secured the leading position, giving him the right to hold the trophy for 1911, as well as the cash prize of L500. Just as in France, the competition on the last day proved an exciting one, for the three British flyers we have mentioned were making simultaneous attempts to seem e the coveted trophy.

Mr. Alec Ogilvie's Second Try.

   MR. OGILVIE was the victim of very hard luck, because although his flight of 140 miles on the previous Wednesday gave him the leading position for the time being, he could have continued for very much longer but for the fact that a serious leak developed in the water system, while on Saturday last at Camber Sands he was compelled to come down owing to faulty ignition after covering 55 miles in about an hour and a half. Mr. Ogilvie's two flights are particularly interesting for those watching the all-British side, for the British built Short-Wright biplane used was fitted with the first of the new type two-stroke N. E.C. engines described in our issue of the 24th ult.


Flight, January 28, 1911

MR. OGILVIE'S WRIGHT BIPLANE.

   THROUGH the courtesy of Mr. G. F. Mort, of the New Engine Co. (N.E.C.), we are able to publish this week a few very interesting photographs of Mr. Alec Ogilvie's Wright biplane, taken on the Camber sands near Rye, after his recent experiments with the new two-stroke engine that Mr. Mort designed. These trials, as our readers know, very nearly resulted in his winning the British Michelin Cup, for at one time he headed the list of competitors. The photographs in question were taken after the removal of the engine and happen to be the more interesting on that account, because they show, more clearlv than would otherwise be possible, the new features that have been introduced into the machine since Mr. Ogilvie's return from America, where he took part in the Gordon-Bennett Race on behalf of Great Britain.
   It will be observed, first and foremost, that the machine has been essentialy changed in type by the substitution of a tail for the front elevator. There still remain in front, however, a pair of "blinkers," which take the place of the half-moon panels formerly fitted between the panels of the elevator. These blinkers are situated at the front ends of the skids and fill the corners made between the skids and the oblique struts that truss them to the upper front spar. Their purpose is, of course, to make the machine sensitive to the rudder.
   The tail plane that substitutes the front elevator is a monoplane and is rigid for the forward portion of its chord. Through the action of the elevator lever its effective angle can be varied in order to control the machine in a vertical plane.
   One very interesting circumstance associated with this tail plane occurred when the new two-stroke engine was fitted. It is not generally recognised that the Wright motors run in the reverse sense to most engines, and the N.E.C. motor, following orthodox practice, consequently reversed the direction of rotation of the propellers on the Wright biplane. This caused a reversal in the trend of the spiral slip stream and upset the adjustment of the attitude of the tail plane to such an extent as to eventually necessitate a very material alteration before the effect was compensated. The new tail is far less sensitive in its action than was the old front elevator and Mr. Ogilvie tells how, when receiving instruction in the new control during his visit to America, the elevator lever was put hard over in each direction in order that he might be assured on this point. The machine stood on its head and then on its tail, as he described the effect of this manoeuvre, but remained under control; which certainly would not have happened with the old system. The elevator is still operated by a lever at the pilot's left hand, which lever is moved to and fro and is held in any desired position automatically by the action of a friction-brake embracing a drum on the shaft to which it is attached. The purpose of this constructive detail is to enable the elevator to be adjusted to a certain angle, say, for instance, for steady climbing, and to leave it there for any desired duration without attention.
   Another most important innovation on the machine is the Orville Wright type of control-lever for the rudder and warping movements. The operation of this lever is essentially different from that used in the Wilbur Wright system and we have even heard it said that Wilbur Wright himself can no longer fly since all the Wright machines are now being fitted with his brother's device. But we have heard stranger things than this of Wilbur Wright, and whilst telling a story of this sort it is perhaps even more appropriate to tell another that is touching on the same point, although it gees back to the beginning of time when Wilbur Wright was learning to fly at Le Mans. Most people never knew that he was learning to fly there, but it is the truth nevertheless, and the reason why is precisely the reason for which he is said to be unable to fly now. He was unacquainted with the control of his own machine. When the Wrights were developing their aeroplane they developed the details of control by degrees, and the two brothers, having different tastes in this matter, suited their own convenience in design. Wilbur Wright was not altogether satisfied with his own apparatus and just before going to France evolved the universal lever with its diagonal and elliptic motions as a scheme that seemed to him best suited to his requirements. He never had a proper opportunity of practising with this control before he started flying at Le Mans, and a great deal of the one step at a time procedure, which characterized his method at that date, was doubtless due to this circumstance.
   The Orville Wright system is simpler than the Wilbur Wright control, but necessarily confusing at first to those who have learned to use Wilbur's lever. On the other hand, Mr. Ogilvie very quickly accustomed himself to its peculiarities under ordinary flight conditions and now feels quite confident of doing the right thing unconsciously in an emergency.
   The lever in question is characterised by a hinged handle that is moved sideways by twisting the wrist when it is desired to operate the rudder independently of the wing warping. Normally the stem of the lever is moved to and fro with the handle vertical. This action balances the machine without causing it to swerve from its straight path, for the rudder and warping mechanism are connected so as to operate simultaneously and in the correct relative degree.
   For special manoeuvres that require a greater or less degree of rudder action for a given amount of warp, the handle s merely moved over to one side or the other, which may be done without disturbing the position of the lever itself. A glance at our illustrations shows how these interconnections are carried out.
   The handle carries a small bell-crank-lever that is connected to a free disc on the operating rock-shaft, by a rod. When the handle is moved independently of the lever, this disc is rotated independently of another similar disc alongside it and the rudder to which it is connected moves independently of the wing tips that are connected to the other disc.
   The other disc itself is attached rigidly to the stem of the lever and when the lever is moved to and fro both discs rotate in unison, for the connecting-rod already mentioned then locks the rudder disc to the warping disc, as may be understood by a glance at the accompanying sketch, which shows why it is obviously impossible for the warping disc to move without the rudder disc unless the handle is thrown over simultaneously and to an extent sufficient to exactly neutralise the lock.
   Speaking of warping, one of the most interesting photographs ever published of the Wright biplane is that among those herewith, which shows the maximum extent of warp possible. The position illustrated corresponds to the lever being pushed right forward with the handle vertical and it will be noticed that the rudder has been turned to an extent sufficient to show the number 20 on the face of one of its planes.
   Whilst on the subject of control, it is interesting to point out that the arrangement of the levers on the Wright biplane is such that the pilot may be either right or left-handed. Suppose, for the sake of example, that he sits in such a position as to use the warp and rudder lever with his right hand, then his pupil will be trained to use the same lever with his left hand, because there is only one such lever on any Wright machine, although the elevator levers are in duplicate. The reason for this is that the duplication of the warp and rudder lever would involve serious complication in the various connections, whereas the elevator connections are not altered in the least by the presence of another lever at the opposite end of the operating rock-shaft.