Summary: A year before their famous flight, the Wright Brothers’ seminal paper explaining their work with gliders awoke Europeans from the self-confessed torpor and set them experimenting; efforts which were reinvigorated by the Wrights’ flying demonstrations during their 1908 European tour. In this paper, Philip Jarrett takes his audience through the work of Europeans, most notably the French, during the first decade of the twentieth century. The lecture concludes with a question and answer session. The lecture was part of a seminar, “The beginnings of powered flight: The Wright Brothers contribution to aviation”, which was organised by the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Historical Group on 10 May 2003. The podcasts were edited by Mike Stanberry FRAeS and they were digitised thanks to a grant from the Royal Aeronautical Society Foundation.
