Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1907-11-23
Ignorant Of Aeronautics, He
Astonishes France by
Becoming an Expert
in Short Order.
Special Correspondence Of The Star.

Speclal correspondence OF The Star
PARIS, November 8. 1907.
LYING is now an open secret.
Any one will fly within a
few months
So speaks Henry Farman
to his brothers and intimates
of the Palais de IAutomobile. He is the
Paris sport who has flown oftenest, swift
est and longest both in time and dis
lance: he is the second to have made
a curve while flying; he flies daily. al
ways beating his own records and all
others; and. before these lines are printed
he may easily have done the closed
kilometer" of the Observation-Disclosures
prize. conditioned to proclaim the scien-
tific success of a true flying machine.
Henry Farman is also the Paris sport
who. knowing nothing of these motor
aeroplanes ordered one ready made and
simply began learning how to fly in it.
He Is no flying machine inventor. He
has made none of the disheartenng ex-
periments with forms of planes, with
eearings, propellers, motors. rudders, CEN
tiers of pressure. centers of gravity and
all the rest that have kept Santos Du-
mont, Ernest Archdeacon. Louis Blerot,
Gabriel Voisin, Capt Ferber, Henry Kap-
ferer. Louis Vuia and Robert Esnault-
Pelterie busy on the ground.
Henry Farman is different from an IN
venting gilded youth like Santos; diff
ferent even from those strangely modern
Paris business men who find both taste
and time to be hard sports. Born of
English parentage in Paris he. with his
two brothers, Maurice and Richard, grew
up in the automobile trade from the be-
ginning. became road racers of renown
and entered the rich retail trade at the
right moment. Business has not pre-
vented him from giving much time, not
only to spherical ballooning, but to
tronomy-which is a hobby with him;
and at once utterly practical and COM
Lletely dreamer, man of commerce and
Gisinterested teChnician. he also saw
the right moment to begin to fy-and
lost no time in useless preliminaries
1t was al the moment when the Della
grange motOr-aeToplane, built by the first
flying machine factory in the world had
flown with man 200 feet in straight
line.
Delagrange, the Paris sculptor, had or
dered 1t from Bleriot & Voisin, building
for the general public at the Surcouf
plant, near Billancourt. outside Paris.
Delagrange may have had his ideas about
its form and disposition; but the Voisin
brothers had enjoyed immense experience
with motorless aeroplanes lowed over
Lake Geneva by Ernest Archdeacan's 100
horsepower motor boat and later on in
motor-aeroplanes that scarcely worked
with Louis Bleriot. a studious gilded
youth. possessing u big block of motor
stock.
Learning the Birds Trade.
For Delagrange they built a motor
aeroplane that actually flew in a straight
line. on March 80. 1907, over the famous
grounds of Bagatelle in the Paris Bots.
1t was not so long a flight as Santos
Dumont had accomplished in November
previous, but It was the flight of
machine that could be duplicated for
cash, on an order, in straightforward
business manner, without asking favors
That same day, therefore. Henry Farman
made contract with Bleriot & Voisin.
The contract stipulated they deliver him
a motor-aeroplane within a year. Be-
lS..