 The patent's importance lay in its claim of a new and useful method of "controlling" an airplane.The patent application included the claim for the lateral control of aircraft flight that was not limited to wing warping, but through any manipulation of the "...angular relations of the lateral margins of the airplanes [wings]... varied in opposite directions".Thus the patent explicitly stated that other methods besides wing-warping could be used for adjusting the outer portions of an airplane's wings to different angles on its right and left sides to achieve lateral roll control.