My Boyhood in the 1880's covered a period when there was not much general interest in the possibility of mechanical flight. It was looked upon as a rather fanciful idea best left to Jules Verne. There was, however, plenty of evidence that the obstacles to achieving it were not fundamental but mainly quantitative. Cayley, Stringfellow and Henson had produced results which need not have discouraged other seekers of progress. Hargreaves was producing elastic-driven models and one could buy Chinese elastic-driven toy helicopters which flew well for under 1s.