to have invented a flying machine capable of actual flight. The
order stated that 'In order to encourage the suppliant to apply
himself with zeal toward the improvement of the new machine,
which is capable of producing the effects mentioned by him, I
grant unto him the first vacant place in my College of Barcelos
or Santarem, and the first professorship of mathematics in my
University of Coimbra, with the annual pension of 600,000 reis
during his life.--Lisbon, 17th of March, 1709.'

What happened to Guzman when the non-existence of the machine
was discovered is one of the things that is well outside the
province of aeronautics. He was charlatan pure and simple, as
far as actual flight was concerned, though he had some ideas
respecting the design of hot-air balloons, according to
Tissandier. (La Navigation Aerienne.) His flying machine was to
contain, among other devices, bellows to produce artificial wind
when the real article failed, and also magnets in globes to draw
the vessel in an upward direction and maintain its buoyancy.
Some draughtsman, apparently gifted with as vivid imagination as
Guzman himself, has given to the world an illustration of the
hypothetical vessel; it bears some resemblance to Lana's aerial
ship, from which fact one draws obvious conclusions.

A rather amusing claim to solving the problem of flight was
made in the middle of the eighteenth century by one Grimaldi, a
'famous and unique Engineer' who, as a matter of actual fact,
spent twenty years in missionary work in India, and employed the
spare time that missionary work left him in bringing his
invention to a workable state. The invention is described as a
'box which with the aid of clockwork rises in the air, and goes