'I was foolish,' he told those who were with him there. 'I was flying too low. It was my own fault and it will be a severe lesson to me. I wanted to turn round, and was only five metres from the ground.' A little after this, he got up from the couch on which he had been placed, and almost immediately collapsed, dying five minutes later.

Ferber's chief contemporaries in France were Santos-Dumont, of airship fame, Henri and Maurice Farman, Hubert Latham, Ernest Archdeacon, and Delagrange. These are names that come at once to mind, as does that of Bleriot, who accomplished the second great feat of power-driven flight, but as a matter of fact the years 1903-10 are filled with a little host of investigators and experimenters, many of whom, although their names do not survive to any extent, are but a very little way behind those mentioned here in enthusiasm and devotion. Archdeacon and Gabriel Voisin, the former of whom took to heart the success achieved by the Wright Brothers, co-operated in experiments in gliding. Archdeacon constructed a glider in box-kite fashion, and Voisin experimented with it on the Seine, the glider being towed by a motorboat to attain the necessary speed. It was Archdeacon who offered a cup for the first straight flight of 200 metres, which was won by Santos-Dumont, and he also combined with Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe in giving the prize for the first circular flight of a mile, which was won by Henry Farman on January 13th, 1908.