- The Evening Bee Friday, November 20, 1896
-
- Aerial Investigators Trying To Solve The Problem Of How
Men Will Fly Soon
-
- The fascination of the Art Outweighs the Dangers-Recent
Experiments of Profs. Langley and Maxim.
-
- With the death of Lilienthal, the mantle of the foremost
aeronautical experimenter falls almost without dissent on Professor Samuel
P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who is so reticent
in regard to his achievements in this line that the general public knows
little of them. It is over ten years ago that Professor Langley first interested
himself in perfecting a flying machine, by which man could navigate the
air. His work on his flying machine, or "bird," as the officials
at the Smithsonian Institution call it, has been but an offshoot from his
customary scientific experiments. It has been his hobby, but so much secrecy
has attended the flights of this machine that but four or five scientists
and several workmen are the only persons who have been allowed to see the
strange object.
-
- Professor Langley studied with great care the movements
of turkey buzzards and sea gulls. From boyhood he had noticed turkey buzzards
high in the air, floating with outspread wings, of which not a feather
moved, going neither up nor down, upheld as if by some invisible force.
And so when it came to devising a practical machine, his ruling principle
was borrowed from the element itself. It was borrowed from the element
itself. It was, however, impossible to imitate mechanically the construction
of the wings of a bird, it was only the principle of the bird-soaring which
was adopted.
-
- He had industriously studied the problem until now he
had constructed an aerodrome which, without the use of any gas, has made
several flights of over a half a mile. Longer flights have been made except
for the motive power, which at present is steam and has a limited power
supply. Professor Langley thinks, however, that this is an obstacle which
will be speedily overcome, and to this end has been experimenting with
gas, gasoline and other motors for the purpose of getting an engine light
enough and at the same time strong enough to do the work required of it,
if necessary during a long period of time. Professor Langley's machine
weighs complete about twenty-four pounds, and measures from tip to tip
of one plane to the other fourteen feet. It is very simple in construction,
there being no complicated machinery or anything like balloon or parachute
attachments. Professor Langley's machine is only built for experimental
purposes, and is not large enough to carry any weight beyond that of its
motive power.
-
- Professor Hiram Maxim is another American inventor who
has gone seriously into the question of upper-air navigation. His experiments
are being conducted in England, and he has succeeded in demonstrating on
several occasions that his machine will rise and fly. He has spent a small
fortune on his preparations for his experiments, which include an enormous
house on his grounds for housing his machine and a railroad track for speeding
it in its start for an aerial flight. The total weight of this machine
ia about 7000 pounds, and he calculates that he can drive through the air
at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour. Some time ago Mr. Maxim finished
a machine in which he took a start of five or six hundred feet along his
railroad track, put his propeller into operation, and succeeded in getting
well up off the another machine constructed of strongering its construction
broke and machine and hopes to the ground. Undismayed, he immediately commenced
another machine constructed of a stronger material, and he confidently
expects, in his next attempt to see a successful flight by a machine which
will carry a man.
-
- Senator Lodge of Massachusetts, in the last Congress,
introduced a bill authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to pay $100,000
to anybody who at anytime prior to 1901, should construct an apparatus
within or near the city of Washington which would demonstrate to a committee
appointed by the Secretary of War the practicability of safely navigating
the air at not less than thirty miles an hour and capable of carrying passengers
and freight weighing 400 pounds. The bill is still in committee, and, whether
or not it will be withdrawn from that oblivion is a matter of conjecture.
It is enough to say that should it be passed, an impetus would be given
to aerial experiment which would most likely bring practical results.
|
|
 |
