Firsts in Flight

摘要

Thirteen years before the Wright brothers' pioneering flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., a French inventor named Clement Ader climbed into a bat-like contraption at an isolated French estate and made aviation history of his own. On Oct. 9,1890, Ader opened the throttle on his steam-powered aircraft Eole and roared down a level 700-foot runway. As he recalled later, "I advanced at high speed, the jolting of the wheels on the ground stopped almost at once, and for a few seconds I was suspended in a state of indefinable joy."