LIFTING DEVICE • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Lifting device

... with the aspiring souls who sought to fly with wings—the forerunners of the airplane devotees of to-day—were those who tried to find some direct lifting device for a car which should contain the aviators. Some of their ideas were curiously logical and at the same time comic. There was, for example, a priest, Le Pere Galien of Avignon. He observed that the rarified air at the summit of the Alps was vastly lighter than that in the valleys below. What ...

— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot