Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 79.djvu/415

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gasoline engine for which he had contracted; no European builder thought it possible to supply a twelve-horse power engine weighing as little as 200 pounds. Mr. Manly at the end of the year 1901 had succeeded in constructing an engine of fifty-horse power, weighing about 200 pounds.

After long-continued experiments in adjusting the engine, the aerodrome was made ready for trial. The houseboat and launching gear caused innumerable difficulties but on October 7, 1903, at 12.20 the aerodrome, with Mr. Manly in control, was launched. The trial ended disastrously, owing to an accident by which a guy-post caught in the launching gear. Mr. Manly narrowly escaped drowning through entanglement in the wrecked machine. He showed great courage in again repeating the experiment under unfavorable conditions on December 8, when 1 again the launching gear was at fault, j and the aerodrome had no opportunity I to demonstrate its power of flight. Owing mainly to ridicule in the newspapers and the fear of its effect on