A statement to this effect, at
least, is found in several historians. We have, however, no
direct proof of the fact.
The Abbe Deforges, of Etampes, announced in the journals in 1772
that he would perform the great feat. On the appointed day
multitudes of the curious flocked to Etampes. The abbe's machine
was a sort of gondola, seven feet long and about two feet deep.
Gondola conductor, and baggage weighed in all 213 pounds. The
pious man believed that he had provided against everything.
Neither tempest nor rain should mar his flight, and there was no
chance of his being upset; whilst the machine, he had decided,
was to go at the rate of thirty leagues an hour.
The great day came, and the abbe, entering his air-boat amidst
the applause of the spectators, began to work the wings with
which it was provided with great rapidity. "But," says one who
witnessed the feat, "the more he worked, the more his machine
cleaved to the earth, as if it were part and parcel of it."
Retif de la Bretonne, in his work upon this subject, gives the
accompanying picture of a flying man, furnished with very
artistically designed wings, fitting exactly to the shoulders,
and carrying a basket of provisions, suspended from his waist;
and the frontispiece of the "Philosophic sans Pretention" is a
view of a flying-machine.
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