Claims of Maxim and Ader
While others had made flying models, Sir Hiram Maxim in England constructed a multiplane, driven by a powerful steam engine over a track and rising at one time, as he declares, a few inches from the ground. He claims that his was the first machine to “lift man off the ground by its own power.” This test was made in 1889.
Clement Ader, a Frenchman, also claims this honor, saying that he was the first to make a machine that would rise and lift a passenger. On October 9, 1890, his friends say he made a short forward flight of 150 feet in a monoplane propelled by a forty horse power steam engine. In 1897 he claims to have made a number of secret flights, but a little later, in a test before officers of the French army who had become interested in the invention, the machine turned over and was wrecked. The support of the army for further experiments was withdrawn and Ader in despair abandoned the problem of aerial navigation which had claimed long years of study and unremitting effort. He stopped just short of the goal “with success almost within his grasp.”