A manufacturer of small steam engines and a mining engineer by training, Lilienthal had started gliding as early as 1869, and from the start he had been joined in his aviation experiments by a younger brother, which could only have given Wilbur and Orville a feeling of something in common. He took his lessons from the birds, Lilienthal said, and he saw, as many “prominent investigators” had not, that the secret of “the art of flight” was to be found in the arched or vaulted wings of birds, by which they could ride the wind. He had no use for gas balloons as a means of flight, as they had
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