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I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

I am a mechanical techie. I can build things with my hands.

Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird.

One has to look out for engineers - they begin with sewing machines and end up with the atomic bomb.

When you see a fly flitting around your hair or your potato salad, you might see an annoyance. But in my lab, you really see a marvelous machine: arguably the most sophisticated flying device on the planet.

I've been an engineer, barman, skip lorry driver, coalman, boat window manufacturer, contract grass cutter and builder.

Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is, of course, air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainment. In the brief span of thirty-odd years, the world has seen an inventor's dream first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk become an everyday actuality.

My training and my inclination is to invent.

With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the last ten years, I would hardly think today of making my first flight on a strange machine in a twenty-seven mile wind, even if I knew that the machine had already been flown and was safe.