A History of Aeronautics. Evelyn Charles Vivian

to all the world and to every civilisation, however primitive. The two exceptions are the Aztec and the Chinese; regarding the first of these, the Spanish conquistadores destroyed such civilisation as existed in Tenochtitlan so thoroughly that, if legend of flight was among the Aztec records, it went with the rest; as to the Chinese, it is more than passing strange that they, who claim to have known and done everything while the first of history was shaping, even to antedating the discovery of gunpowder that was not made by Roger Bacon, have not yet set up a claim to successful handling of a monoplane some four thousand years ago, or at least to the patrol of the Gulf of Korea and the Mongolian frontier by a forerunner of the ‘blimp.’

      The Inca civilisation of Peru yields up a myth akin to that of Icarus, which tells how the chieftain Ayar Utso grew wings and visited the sun—it was from the sun, too, that the founders of the Peruvian Inca dynasty, Manco Capac and his wife Mama Huella Capac, flew to earth near Lake Titicaca, to make the only successful experiment in pure tyranny that the world has ever witnessed. Teutonic legend gives forth Wieland the Smith, who made himself a dress with wings and, clad in it, rose and descended against the wind and in spite of it. Indian mythology, in addition to the story of the demons and their rigid dirigible, already quoted, gives the story of Hanouam, who fitted himself with wings by means of which he sailed in the air and, according to his desire, landed in the sacred Lauka. Bladud, the ninth king of Britain, is said to have crowned his feats of wizardry by making himself wings and attempting to fly—but the effort cost him a broken neck. Bladud may have been as mythic as Uther, and again he may have been a very early pioneer. The Finnish epic, ‘Kalevala,’ tells how Ilmarinen the Smith ‘forged an eagle of fire,’ with ‘boat’s walls between the wings,’ after which he ‘sat down on the bird’s back and bones,’ and flew.

      Pure myths, these, telling how the desire to fly was characteristic of every age and every people, and how, from time to time, there arose an experimenter bolder than his fellows, who made some attempt to translate desire into achievement. And the spirit that animated these pioneers, in a time when things new were accounted things accursed, for the most part, has found expression in this present century in the utter daring and disregard of both danger and pain that stamps the flying man, a type of humanity differing in spirit from his earth-bound fellows as fully as the soldier differs from the priest.

      Throughout mediæval times, records attest that here and there some man believed in and attempted flight, and at the same time it is clear that such were regarded as in league with the powers of evil. There is the half-legend, half-history of Simon the Magician, who, in the third year of the reign of Nero announced that he would raise himself in the air, in order to assert his superiority over St. Paul. The legend states that by the aid of certain demons whom he had prevailed on to assist him, he actually lifted himself in the air—but St. Paul prayed him down again. He slipped through the claws of the demons and fell headlong on the Forum at Rome, breaking his neck. The ‘demons’ may have been some primitive form of hot-air balloon, or a glider with which the magician attempted to rise into the wind; more probably, however, Simon threatened to ascend and made the attempt with apparatus as unsuitable as Bladud’s wings, paying the inevitable penalty. Another version of the story gives St. Peter instead of St. Paul as the one whose prayers foiled Simon—apart from the identity of the apostle, the two accounts are similar, and both define the attitude of the age toward investigation and experiment in things untried.

      Another and later circumstantial story, with similar evidence of some fact behind it, is that of the Saracen of Constantinople, who, in the reign of the Emperor Comnenus—some little time before Norman William made Saxon Harold swear away his crown on the bones of the saints at Rouen—attempted to fly round the hippodrome at Constantinople, having Comnenus among the great throng who gathered to witness the feat. The Saracen chose for his starting-point a tower in the midst of the hippodrome, and on the top of the tower he stood, clad in a long white robe which was stiffened with rods so as to spread and catch the breeze, waiting for a favourable wind to strike on him. The wind was so long in coming that the spectators grew impatient. ‘Fly, O Saracen!’ they called to him. ‘Do not keep us waiting so long while you try the wind!’ Comnenus, who had present with him the Sultan of the Turks, gave it as his opinion that the experiment was both dangerous and vain, and, possibly in an attempt to controvert such statement, the Saracen leaned into the wind and ‘rose like a bird’ at the outset. But the record of Cousin, who tells the story in his Histoire de Constantinople, states that ‘the weight of his body having more power to drag him down than his artificial wings had to sustain him, he broke his bones, and his evil plight was such that he did not long survive.’

      Obviously, the Saracen was anticipating Lilienthal and his gliders by some centuries; like Simon, a genuine experimenter—both legends bear the impress of fact supporting them. Contemporary with him, and belonging to the history rather than the legends of flight, was Oliver, the monk of Malmesbury, who in the year 1065 made himself wings after the pattern of those supposed to have been used by Dædalus, attaching them to his hands and feet and attempting to fly with them. Twysden, in his Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores X, sets forth the story of Oliver, who chose a high tower as his starting-point, and launched himself in the air. As a matter of course, he fell, permanently injuring himself, and died some time later.

      After these, a gap of centuries, filled in by impossible stories of magical flight by witches, wizards, and the like—imagination was fertile in the dark ages, but the ban of the church was on all attempt at scientific development, especially in such a matter as the conquest of the air. Yet there were observers of nature who argued that since birds could raise themselves by flapping their wings, man had only to make suitable wings, flap them, and he too would fly. As early as the thirteenth century Roger Bacon, the scientific friar of unbounded inquisitiveness and not a little real genius, announced that there could be made ‘some flying instrument, so that a man sitting in the middle and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying.’ But being a cautious man, with a natural dislike for being burnt at the stake as a necromancer through having put forward such a dangerous theory, Roger added, ‘not that I ever knew a man who had such an instrument, but I am particularly acquainted with the man who contrived one.’ This might have been a lame defence if Roger had been brought to trial as addicted to black arts; he seems to have trusted to the inadmissibility of hearsay evidence.

      Some four centuries later there was published a book entitled Perugia Augusta, written by one C. Crispolti of Perugia—the date of the work in question is 1648. In it is recorded that ‘one day, towards the close of the fifteenth century, whilst many of the principal gentry had come to Perugia to honour the wedding of Giovanni Paolo Baglioni, and some lancers were riding down the street by his palace, Giovanni Baptisti Danti unexpectedly and by means of a contrivance of wings that he had constructed proportionate to the size of his body took off from the top of a tower near by, and with a horrible hissing sound flew successfully across the great Piazza, which was densely crowded. But (oh, horror of an unexpected accident!) he had scarcely flown three hundred paces on his way to a certain point when the mainstay of the left wing gave way, and, being unable to support himself with the right alone, he fell on a roof and was injured in consequence. Those who saw not only this flight, but also the wonderful construction of the framework of the wings, said—and tradition bears them out—that he several times flew over the waters of Lake Thrasimene to learn how he might gradually come to earth. But, notwithstanding his great genius, he never succeeded.’

      This reads circumstantially enough, but it may be borne in mind that the date of writing is more than half a century later than the time of the alleged achievement—the story had had time to round itself out. Danti, however, is mentioned by a number of writers, one of whom states that the failure of his experiment was due to the prayers of some individual of a conservative turn of mind, who prayed so vigorously that Danti fell appropriately enough on a church and injured himself to such an extent as to put an end to his flying career. That Danti experimented, there is little doubt, in view of the volume of evidence on the point, but the darkness of the Middle Ages hides the real truth as to the results of his experiments. If he had actually flown over Thrasimene, as alleged, then in all probability both Napoleon and Wellington would have had air scouts at Waterloo.

      Danti’s story may be taken as fact or left as fable, and with it the