Page:My Airships.djvu/168

 Should more than one accomplish the task in the same year the 100,000 francs were to be divided in proportion to the respective times. The Aéro Club's Scientific Commission had been named expressly for the purpose of formulating these and such other conditions of the foundation as it might deem proper, and by reason of certain of them I had made no attempt to win the prize with my "Santos-Dumont, No. 4." The course from the Aéro Club's Pare d'Aerostation to the Eiffel Tower and return was 11 kilometres (nearly 7 miles), and this distance, plus the turning round the Tower, must be accomplished in thirty minutes. This meant in a perfect calm a necessary speed of 25 kilometres (15$\tfrac{1}{2}$ miles) per hour for the straight stretches—a speed I could not be sure to maintain all the way in my "No. 4." Another condition formulated by the Scientific Commission was that its members, who were to be the judges of all trials, must be notified twenty-four hours in advance of each attempt. Naturally, the operation of such a condition would be to nullify as much as possible all minute time calculations based either on a given rate of speed through perfect calm or such air current as might be prevailing twenty-four hours previous to the