LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
THE BOY'S BOOK OF NEW INVENTIONS
CHAPTER I
THE AEROPLANE
HOW A SCIENTIST WHO LIKED BOYS AND A BOY WHO LIKED SCIENCE FOLLOWED THE FASCINATING STORY OF THE INVENTION OF THE AEROPLANE.
WHEN, with engine throbbing, propellers whirling, and every wire vibrating, the first successful aeroplane shot forward into the teeth of a biting December gale and sailed steadily over the bleak North Carolina sand dunes for twelve seconds, the third great epoch in the age of invention finally was ushered in. First, man conquered the land with locomotive, electricity, steam plow, telegraph, telephone, wireless and a thousand other inventions. Almost at the same time he conquered the ocean with steamship, cable, and wireless. Now, through the invention of the aeroplane, he is making a universal highway of the air.
Such was the way the real beginning of aviation was summarized one day to a bright young man who spent all his spare time out of school at the laboratory of his good friend the scientist. Always in good humour, and with a world of knowledge of things that delight a boy's heart, the man was never too deep in experiments to answer any questions about the great inventions that have made this world of ours such a very interesting place
The laboratory was filled with models of machines, queer devices for scientific experiment, a litter of delicate tools, shelves of test tubes, bottles filled with strange smelling fluids, and rows upon rows of books that looked dull enough, but which the scientist explained to the boy contained some of the most fascinating stories ever told by man.
Coming back to aeroplanes the boy said, "But my father says that aviation is so new it is still very imperfect."
"That is true," answered the scientist, taking a crucible out of the flame of his Bunsen burner and hanging it in the rack to cool, "but it has seen a marvellous development in the last few years.
"It was less than ten years ago—the end of 1903, to be exact—that Orville and Wilbur Wright first sailed their power-driven aeroplane," he continued, "but so rapid has been the progress of aviation that nowadays we are not surprised when a flight from the Atlantic to the Pacific is accomplished. It seems a tragic thing that Wilbur Wright should have been called by death, as he was in May, 1912, by typhoid fever, for he was at the very zenith of his success and probably would have carried on his work to a far, far greater development."
THE FIRST WRIGHT AEROPLANE
This was the machine that made the first successful flight in the history of the world, of a power-driven, man-carrying aeroplane
THE FIRST WRIGHT GLIDER
This device was first flown as a kite without a pilot, and the levers worked by ropes from the ground, to test the principles
THE SECOND WRIGHT GLIDER
The machine was launched into the air from the top of a sand dune against a high wind, and proved a great success
A LONG GLIDE
Wright glider in full flight over Kill Devil Hill, N. C.
After a little pause the scientist continued, saying that, at the time the Wright brothers made their first flight they were experimenting with what we now know as a biplane, or Chanute type glider, at Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, N. C. It is a desolate wind-swept spot on the coast where only a little rank marsh grass grows on the sheltered sides of the great sand dunes. The brothers chose this barren place for their experiments because here the winds were the most favourable for their purpose.
They were not ready for their first attempt to fly in a motor-propelled machine until December 17th, and though they sent out a general invitation to the few people living in that section, only five braved the cold wind. Three of these were life savers from the Kill Devil Hill station near by. Doubtless the other people had heard of the numerous failures of flying machines and expected the promised exhibition of the silent young men who had spent the autumn in their neighbourhood, to be just another such. They were sadly mistaken, for they missed a spectacle that never before had been seen in all the history of the world. Nowadays we are familiar with the sight of an aeroplane skimming over the ground and then soaring into the sky, but to the five people who, besides the inventors, were present it undoubtedly was almost beyond belief.
The brothers had installed a specially constructed gasoline engine in their glider, and after thoroughly testing it they carried the machine out on to a level stretch of sand, turned it so that it would face the wind, and while the life savers held it in place the brothers went over every wire and stay. They felt perfectly confident that the machine would fly, but they made no predictions, and in fact spoke but few words between themselves or to the five men gathered about the aeroplane. The machine was not the smoothly finished one we know to-day as the Wright biplane. The operator lay flat on his face on the lower plane, the elevating rudder composed of two smaller planes stuck out in front, instead of behind, and there were several other important differences in design, but in principle it was the same machine that has carried the fame of the American inventors around the world.
Finally the operator took his place, the engine was started, the signal was given, the men holding the machine dropped back and it started out along the rail from which it was launched. It ran along the track to the end, directly against the wind, and rose into the air.
It meant that the air had been turned into a highway, but the Wright brothers were very modest in setting down an account of their achievement.
"The first flight," they wrote, "lasted only twelve seconds," a flight very modest compared with that of birds, but it was, nevertheless, the first in the history of the world in which a machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the air in free flight, had sailed forward on a level course without reduction of speed, and had finally landed without being wrecked. The second and third flights (the same day) were a little longer, and the fourth lasted fifty-nine seconds, covering a distance of 853 feet over the ground against a twenty-mile wind.
"After the last flight the machine was carried back to camp and set down in what was thought to be a safe place. But a few minutes later, when engaged in conversation about the flights, a sudden gust of wind struck the machine and started to turn it over. All made a rush to stop it, but we were too late. Mr. Daniels, a giant in stature and strength, was lifted off his feet, and, falling inside between the surfaces, was shaken about like a rattle in a box as the machine rolled over and over. He finally fell out upon the sand with nothing worse than painful bruises, but the damage to the machine caused a discontinuance of experiments."
"Thus," said the scientist, we see the record aeroplane flight for 1903 was 853 feet while in 1911 a Wright biplane flew more than 3,000 miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In ten years more we may look back to our monoplanes and biplanes of to-day in the same way we do now on the first cumbersome 'horseless carriages' that were replaced by the high-powered automobiles we know now. Some experts in aeronautics say that we may even see the complete passing of the monoplane and biplane types in favour of some now unknown kind of aeroplane."
Who knows but that the man to invent the perfect aeroplane will be one of the boy readers of this! Everywhere the making and flying of model aeroplanes by boys is looked upon, not only as play, but as a valuable and instructive sport for boys and young men of any age. One of the indications of this may be seen in the public interest taken in the tournaments of boys' model aeroplane clubs. Not only do crowds of grown people with no technical knowledge of aeroplanes attend the tournaments, but also older students of aviation who realize that among the young model fliers there may be another Orville or Wilbur Wright, a Blériot, or a Farman.
So important is this knowledge of aviation considered that the principles and the practical construction of model aeroplanes are taught in many of the public schools. Instead of spending all their school hours in the study of books, the boys now spend a part of their time in the carpenter shop making the model aeroplanes which they enter in the tournaments. Of course, dozens of types of models are turned out, some good and some bad, but in the latter part of Chapter III is given a brief outline for the construction of one of the simplest and most practicable model aeroplanes.
Not only the schools but the colleges also have taken up aviation, and nearly every college has its glider club, and the students work many hours making the gliders with which they contest for distance records with other clubs. As a consequence aviation has become a regular department of college athletics, and intercollegiate glider meets are a common thing.
The epochs of invention go hand in hand with the history of civilization, for it has been largely through invention that man has been able to progress to better methods of living. In the olden days, when there were few towns and every one lived in a castle, or on the land owned by the lord of the castle, war was the chief occupation, and the little communities made practically everything they used by hand. When they went abroad they either walked or rode horses, or went in clumsy ships. Pretty soon men began to invent better ways of doing things; one a better way of making shoes, another a better way of making armour, and the people for miles around would take to going to these men for their shoes and armour. Towns sprang up around these expert workmen, and more inventions came, bringing more industries to the towns. Inventions made industry bigger, and war more disastrous because of the improvement invention made in weapons. Then came inventions that changed the manner of living for all men—the machines for making cloth, which did away with the spinning-wheels of our great-grandmothers, and created the great industry of the cotton and woollen mills; the inventions for making steel that brought about the great steel mills, and enabled the armies of the world to use the great guns we know to-day, and the battleships to carry such heavy armour plate; the steam locomotive that enabled man to travel swiftly from one city to another; the steamship that brought all the nations close together; the telegraph, cable, telephone, and wireless, that made communication over any distance easy; the submarine that made war still more dangerous; and finally the aeroplane that makes a highway of the air in which our earth revolves.
But even from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans man had tried to fly. Every nation had its list of martyrs who gave their lives to the cause of aviation. In modern times, too, many attempts had been made to discover the secret of flight. Otto Lilienthal, a German, called the "Flying Man," had made important discoveries about air currents while gliding through the air from hills and walls by means of contrivances like wings fitted to his person. Others had made fairly successful gliders, and Prof. Samuel Pierepont Langley of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington actually had made a model aeroplane that flew for a short distance. Also, Clement Ader, a Frenchman, had sailed a short way in a power flier, and Sir Hiram Maxim, the English inventor, had built a gigantic steam-driven aeroplane that gave some evidences of being able to fly. But these men were laughed at as cranks, while the Wrights kept their secret until they were sure of the success of their biplane. However, the question as to who first rode in a power-driven flier under the control of the operator still is the subject of a world-wide controversy.
It was as boys that the Wright brothers first began experiments with flying, and though they have received the highest praises from the whole world, Orville still is, and until his death Wilbur was, the same quiet, modest man who made bicycles in Dayton, and the surviving brother of the pair is working harder than ever. In telling the story of their own early play, that later proved to be one of the most important things they ever did, the Wright brothers wrote for the Century Magazine: "We devoted so much of our attention to kite-flying that we were regarded as experts. But as we became older we had to give up the sport as unbecoming to boys of our age." As every boy knows, kite-flying was one of the early methods of experimenting with air currents and greatly aided the scientists in their exploration of the ocean of air that surrounds the world, eddying and swirling up and down, running smoothly and swiftly here, coming to a dead stop there—but always different from the minute before.
But before the Wright brothers gave up flying kites they had played with miniature flying machines. They were known then as "helicopteres," but the Wright brothers called them "bats," as the toys came nearer resembling bats than anything else the boys had seen about their home in Dayton, Ohio. Most boys probably have played with something of the kind themselves, and maybe have made some. They were made of a light framework of bamboo formed into two screws driven in opposite directions by twisted rubber bands something like the motors on boys' model aeroplanes of to-day. When the rubber bands unwound the "bats" flew upward.
"A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in our hands," continues the story of the Wright brothers, "but its memory was abiding. We began building them ourselves, making each one larger than that preceding. But the larger the 'bat' the less it flew. We did not know that a machine having only twice the size of another would require eight times the power. We finally became discouraged."
This was away back in 1878, and it was not until 1896 that the Wright brothers actually began the experiments that led to their world-famous success.
Strangely enough it all started when Orville, the younger of the two, was sick with typhoid fever, the same disease that caused Wilbur Wright's death. According to all accounts, the elder brother, having remained away from their bicycle factory in order to nurse Orville, was reading aloud. Among other things he read to Orville the account of the tragic death of Otto Lilienthal, the German "Flying Man" who was killed while making a glide.
MOTOR OF THE WRIGHT BIPLANE
A 16-CYLINDER 100-HORSEPOWER ANTOINETTE MOTOR
A frequent prize winner
AN 8-CYLINDER 5O-HORSEPOWER CURTISS MOTOR
THE GNOME MOTOR
Standard Gnome aeroplane motor, showing interior.
Photo by Philip W. Wilcox
Fourteen-cylinder 100-horsepower Gnome motor. Used on many racing aeroplanes.
Courtesy of the Scientific American
Testing a Gnome motor on a gun carriage. So great is the power of the engine that the tongue of the heavy carriage is buried in the ground to hold it in place
"Why can't we make a glider that would be a success?" the brothers asked each other. They were sure they could, and they got so excited in talking it over that it nearly brought back Orville's fever. When he got well they studied aeronautics with the greatest care, approaching the subject with all the thoroughness that later made their name a byword in aviation for care and deliberation.
Neither of these two young men was over demonstrative, and neither was lacking in the ability for years and years of the hardest kind of work, but together they made an ideal team for taking up the invention of something that all the scientists of the world hitherto had failed to develop. Wilbur was called by those who knew him one of the most silent men that ever lived, as he never uttered a word unless he had something to say, and then he said it in the most direct and the briefest possible manner. He had an unlimited capacity for hard work, nerves of steel and the kind of daring that makes the aviator face death with pleasure every minute of the time he is in the air.
No less daring is Orville, the younger of the two, who is a little bit more talkative and more full of enthusiasm than was Wilbur. He was the man the reporters always went to when they knew the elder brother would never say a word, and his geniality never failed them. He also is a true scientist and tireless in the work of developing the art of aviation.
First, the brothers read all the learned and scientific books of Professor Langley, and Octave Chanute, the two first great American pioneers in aviation, and the reports of Lilienthal, Maxim, and the brilliant French scientists.
They saw, as did Professor Langley, that it was out of the question to try to make a machine that would fly by moving its wings like a bird. Then they began with great kites, and next made gliders—that is, aeroplanes without engines—for the brothers knew that there was no use in trying to make a machine-driven, heavier-than-air flier before they had tested out practically all the theories of the earlier scientists.
They fashioned their gliders of two parallel main planes like those of Octave Chanute. The width, length, distance between planes, rudders, auxiliary planes and their placing were all problems for the most careful study. It was very discouraging work, for no big thing comes easily. As their experiments proceeded they said they found one rule after another incorrect, and they finally discarded most of the books the scientists had written. Then with characteristic patience they started in to work out the problem from first principles. "We had taken aeronautics merely as a sport," they wrote later. "We reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it. But we soon found the work so fascinating that we were drawn into it deeper and deeper."
The Wrights knew that an oblong plane—that is, a long narrow one—driven through the air broadside first is more evenly supported by the air than would be a plane of the same area but square in shape. The reason for this is that the air gives the greatest amount of support to a plane at the entering edge, as it is called in aviation—that is, the edge where it is advancing into the air. A little way from the edge the air begins to slip off at the back and sides and the support decreases. Thus, it will be seen that if the rear surface, which gives little support because the air slips away from under it, is put at the sides, giving the plane a greater spread from tip to tip and not so much depth from front to rear, the plane is more efficient—that is, more stable, less subject to drifting, and better able to meet the varying wind currents. Scientists call this proportion of the spread to the depth the aspect ratio of planes. For instance, if a plane has a spread of 30 feet and a depth of 6 feet it is said to have an aspect ratio of 5. This is a very important consideration in the designing of an aeroplane, because aspect ratio is a factor in the speed. In general, high speed machines have a smaller aspect ratio than slower ones. The aspect ratio also has an important bearing on the general efficiency of an aeroplane, but the lifting power of a plane is figured as proportionate to its total area. In order to hold the air, and keep its supporting influence, aviators have tried methods of enclosing their planes like box kites, and putting edges on the under sides. This latter was found a mistake because the edge tended to decrease the speed of the flier and did more harm than the good obtained through keeping the air.
In aviation, as we know it to-day, aeroplane builders believe in giving their planes a slight arch upward and backward from the entering edge, letting it reach its highest point about one third of the way back and then letting it slope down to the level of the rear edge gradually. This curve, which is called the camber, is mathematically figured out with the most painstaking care, and was one of the things the Wright brothers worked out very carefully in their early models. Also, planes are driven through the air at an angle—that is, with the entering edge higher than the rear edge—because the upward tilt gives the air current a chance to get under the plane and support it. This angle is called by the scientists the angle of incidence and is very important because of its relation to the lifting powers of the planes.
MODEL AEROPLANE FLIERS
Every fair Saturday the model makers and fliers spend in the parks either practising for or holding flight tournaments
A MODERN COLLEGE MAN'S GLIDER
OTTO LILIENTHAL MAKING A FLIGHT IN HIS GLIDER
Another one of the difficult problems the inventors had to struggle with was the balance of their fliers. Before the Wright brothers flew, it was thought that one of the best ways was to incline the planes upward from the centre—that is—make them in the shape of a gigantic and very broad V. This is known in science as a dihedral angle. The idea was that the centre of gravity, or the point of the machine which is heaviest and which seeks to fall to earth first through the attraction of gravitation, should be placed immediately under the apex of the V. The scientists thought that the V then would keep the machine balanced as the hull of a ship is balanced in the water by the heavy keel at the bottom. The Wrights decided that this might be true from a scientific point of view, but that the dihedral angle kept the machine wobbling, first to one side and then righting itself, and then to the other side and righting itself. This was a practical fault and they built their flier without any attempt to have it right itself, but rather arched the planes from tip to tip as well as from front to rear.
The winglike gliders of Lilienthal and Chanute had been balanced by the shifting of the operator's body, but the Wrights wanted a much bigger and safer machine than either of these pioneers had flown. In their own words, the Wrights "wished to employ some system whereby the operator could vary at will the inclination of different parts of the wings, and thus obtain from the wind forces to restore the balance which the wind itself had disturbed." This they later accomplished by a device for warping or bending their planes, but in their first glider there was no warping device and the horizontal front rudder was the only controlling device used. This latter device on the first glider was made of a smaller plane, oblong-shaped and set parallel to, and in front of, the main planes. It was adjustable through the system of levers fixed for the operator, who in those days lay flat on the front plane.
Thus the two main planes and the adjustable plane in front with stays, struts, etc., made up the first Wright glider.
The Wright brothers took their machine to Kitty Hawk, N. C., in October, 1900, presumably for their vacation. They went there because the Government Weather Bureau told them that the winds blew stronger and steadier there than at any other point in the United States. Also it was lonely enough to suit the Wrights' desire for privacy. It was their plan to fly the contrivance like a boy does a huge box kite, and it looked something like one. A man, however, was to be aboard and operate the levers. According to the Wright brothers' story the winds were not high enough to lift the heavy kite with a man aboard, but it was flown without the operator and the levers worked from the ground by ropes.
A new machine the next year showed little difference of design, but the surface of the planes was greater. Still the flier failed to lift an operator. At this time the Wright brothers were working with Octave Chanute, the Chicago inventor, engineer and scientist whom they had invited to Kitty Hawk to advise them. After many discussions with Chanute they decided that they would learn the laws of aviation by their own experience and lay aside for a time the scientific data on the subject.
They began coasting down the air from the tops of sand dunes, and after the first few glides were able to slide three hundred feet through the air against a wind blowing twenty-seven miles an hour. The reason their glider flights were made against the wind was because the wind passing swiftly under the planes had the same effect as if the machine was moving forward at a good clip, for the faster the machine moves, or the faster the air passes under it, the easier it remains aloft. In other words, no one part of the air was called upon to support the planes for any length of time, but each part supported the planes for a very short time. For instance, if you are skating on thin ice you run much less danger of breaking through if you skate very fast, because no one part of the ice is called upon to support you for long.
In 1902 the Wright brothers were approaching their goal. Slowly and with rare patience they were accumulating and tabulating all the different things different kinds of planes would do under different circumstances. In the fall of that year they made about one thousand gliding flights, several of which carried them six hundred feet or more. Others were made in high winds and showed the inventors that their control devices were all right.
The next year, 1903, which always will be remembered as the banner one in the history of aviation, the brothers, confident that they were about to succeed in their long search for the secret of the birds, continued their soaring or gliding. Several times they remained aloft more than a minute, above one spot, supported by a high, steady wind passing under their planes.
"Little wonder," wrote the Wright brothers a few years, later, "that our unscientific assistant should think the only thing needed to keep it indefinitely in the air would be a coat of feathers to make it light."
What the inventors did to keep their biplane glider in the air indefinitely, however, was to add several hundred pounds to the weight in the shape of a sixteen-horsepower gasoline motor. The total weight of the machine when ready to fly was 750 pounds. Every phase of the problem had been worked out in detail—all the calculations gone over and proved both by figures and by actual test. The planes, rudders, and propellers had been designed by mathematical calculations and practical tests.
The main planes of this first machine had a spread from tip to tip of 40 feet, and measured 6 feet 6 inches from the entering edge to the rear edge, a total area of 540 square feet. This will show how great is the spread of the main planes as compared to their length from front to rear. The two surfaces were set six feet apart, one directly above the other, while the elevating rudder was placed about ten feet in front of the machine on a flexible framework. This elevating rudder was composed of two parallel horizontal planes which together had an area of eighty square feet. The elevating planes could be moved up or down by the operator just as he desired to fly upward or downward. The machine was steered from right to left or left to right by two vertical vanes set at the rear of the machine about a foot apart. They were a little more than six feet long, extending from the upper supporting plane to a few inches below the lower supporting plane. These also were turned in unison by the operator, according to the direction toward which he wished to fly.
The most intricate device of their machine, however, was not perfected on their first biplane. This is the one for maintaining a side to side balance, or lateral equilibrium, as the scientists say. In watching the flights of gulls, hawks, eagles, and other soaring birds, the brothers had observed that the creatures, while keeping the main part of their wings rigid, frequently would bend the extreme tips of their wings ever so slightly, which would seem to straighten their bodies in the air. The inventor decided that they needed some such device as nature had given to these birds.
The system was called by the scientists the torsional wing system, which means that the tip ends of the wings were flexible and could be warped or bent or curled up or down at will by the operator. Only the rear part of the tips of the wings on the Wright machines could be bent, but this was enough to keep the machine on an even keel when properly manipulated. How the Wright modern machines are operated is fully described on page ([99]). The whole machine was mounted on a pair of strong light wooden skids like skiis or sled-runners.
To start the early Wright biplanes, the machines were placed on a monorail, along which they were towed by a cable. The force for towing them at sufficient speed was obtained by dropping from the top of a derrick built at the rear of the rail a ton of iron which was connected with the cable. The later Wright biplanes were equipped with rubber-tired wheels mounted on the framework, which still retained the skids. Heavy rubber springs were provided to absorb the shock. With the wheels the machine could run over the ground of its own power and thus the cumbersome derrick and monorail were done away with.
The operator was supposed to lie on his face in the middle of the lower plane, but in the later machines a seat was provided for him alongside the engine, and in still later ones seats for one or two passengers.
The engine which was designed by the Wright brothers themselves for this purpose, was a water-cooled four-cylinder motor which developed sixteen horsepower from 1,020 revolutions per minute. The engine was connected with the propellers at the rear of the biplane by chains. The propellers were about eight feet in diameter and the blades were six to eight inches wide. The materials used in the biplane were mostly durable wood like spruce pine and ash, the metal in the engine and the canvas on the planes. There was not one superfluous wire. Everything had a use, and even the canvas was stretched diagonally that it might fit more tightly over the framework of the planes and offer less wind resistance, and also stretch more easily for the wing warping.
Finally on December 17, 1903, everything was in readiness for the first attempt of these two patient men—then unknown to the world—to fly in a power-driven machine. That first flight, made practically in secret amid the desolate sand dunes of the North Carolina coast, lasted only twelve seconds. However, it was the first time, but one, in the history of the world that a machine carrying a man had lifted itself from the ground and flown entirely by its own power.
The two succeeding flights were longer, and the fourth covered 853 feet, lasting fifty-nine seconds.
The inventors were not heralded as the greatest men of their time. There were no medals or speeches. The five men—fishermen and life savers—who saw the flights agreed that it was wonderful, but they kept the Wrights' secret and the brothers calmly continued their studies and experiments.
The spring of 1904 found them at work on Huffman Prairie about eight miles east of Dayton. The first trials there were not very successful and the brothers, who had worked seven long years in secret, had the unpleasant experience of failing to show satisfactory results to the few friends and reporters invited to see an aeroplane flight. Their new machine was larger, heavier, and stronger, but the engine failed to work properly.
Of course this was no great disappointment to those two silent, determined young men. "We are not circus performers," they said. "Our aim is to advance the science of aviation."
And advance it they did.
Their experiments continued, and in 1904 they made a record of three miles in 5 minutes 27 seconds. The next year, 1905, they made a record flight of 24.20 miles and remained in the air 38 minutes 13 seconds at heights of from 75 to 100 feet.
All this time the brothers were solving problems and correcting faults, but in 1904 and 1905 their chief endeavour was to keep their machines from tipping sidewise when they turned. Only the most technical study and the final development of their wing-warping device solved the problem.
Perhaps the strangest part was the lack of interest shown in their work by the world and even by their own townsmen, for, though there had been several newspaper accounts of their test flights, no great enthusiasm was aroused.
They were not wealthy and they had spent more on their experiments than they could afford, so all this time they had proceeded without attracting any more attention than necessary. They desired to perfect their patents before letting the world know the secret of their inventions, and spent the next two years in business negotiations. Meanwhile, the French inventors were making much progress and soon brought out several successful aeroplanes.
Why was this?
Why was it that the art of air navigation sought by man since the earliest times should have been discovered and mastered so quickly?
The answer lies in the putting together of two things by the Wright brothers—that is, their discovery of the kind of a plane that would stay aloft with the air passing under it at a swift enough clip to give it support, and their adaptation of the gasoline engine to the use of driving the plane forward with enough speed.
When they began work, the gasoline engine was just coming to its real development. It was light, developed a high power, and its fuel could be concentrated into a small space. These things were essential to the success of the aeroplane—light weight, high power, and concentrated fuel. And these were things that the early inventors lacked. Sir Hiram Maxim equipped his machine with a steam engine, while Langley used steam engines in most of his models. These were very heavy, cumbersome, gave slight power in comparison to their weight, and could carry only a little fuel with them.
Undoubtedly the adaptation of the gasoline engine to the use of the aeroplane marked the difference between mechanical flight and no flight, but it also is not to be doubted that those aviators, who are more mechanical than scientific, have overrated the importance of the engine in aeroplane construction. Before engines ever were used, the Chanute type of biplane had to be worked into a state of reliability, if not perfection. Now the scientific leaders in aviation are giving every bit as much attention to the perfection of their planes, their gliding possibilities, and the scientific rules governing their action as they are to their engines.
Most boys understand, at least generally, how an automobile or motor-boat engine works. Scientists call gasoline engines "internal combustion motors," and that means that the force is gathered from the explosion of the gasoline vapour in the cylinder. Enough gasoline to supply fuel to run an aeroplane motor for as much as eight or nine hours can be carried in the tank. From the tank a small pipe carries the gasoline to a device called the carbureter. The carbureter turns the gasoline into gas by spraying it and mixing it with air, for gasoline turns into a very inflammable and explosive gas when mixed with the oxygen in the air. So this gas, if lighted in a closed space, will explode. The explosion takes place in the motor-cylinder by the application of an electric spark, and the force pushes the piston, which turns the crank and drives the aeroplane propeller, automobile wheels, or motor-boat screw.
Thus we have the piston driven out and creating the first downward thrust, but the thrusts must be continuous. The piston must be drawn back to the starting place, the vapours of the exploded gas expelled, and the new gas admitted to the cylinder ready for the next explosion. On the ordinary four-cycle motor two complete revolutions of the flywheel are necessary to do all the work. First, we must have the explosion that causes the initial thrust; second, the return of the piston rod in the cylinder by the momentum of the flywheel as it revolves from the initial thrust, thus forcing out the burned gas of the first explosion; third, the next downward motion to suck in a fresh supply of gas; and, fourth, the next upward thrust to compress it for the second explosion. It sounds simple enough, but it isn't, as every one knows who has tried to run a gasoline motor for himself.
The carbureter must do its work automatically and convert the air and gasoline into gas in just the right proportions. A slight fault with the feed of gasoline or air would cause trouble. Also the electric-spark system that ignites the gas and causes the explosions must be in perfect running order. The explosions cause great heat, so some system of cooling the cylinders either by air or water must be used.
Only one cylinder has been explained here, but most engines have several, each working at a different stage, so that the power is exerted on the shaft continuously. For instance, take a four-cylinder engine; on the instant that the first cylinder is exploding and driving the shaft, the second cylinder is compressing gas for the next explosion, the third is getting a fresh supply of gas, and the fourth is cleaning out the waste gas of the explosion of a second before. Thus it will be seen why the explosions are almost constant.
Now think of the aeroplane motor that has fourteen cylinders and develops 140 horsepower! This is probably the most powerful aeroplane engine in the world, although there are many motor boats that have engines developing 1,000 horsepower.
In the early days when scientists were groping for the secret of air navigation the best that the clumsy steam engines they had at their disposal would do was to generate one horsepower of energy for every ten pounds of weight. These days the light powerful aeroplane engines we hear roaring over our heads are generating one horsepower of energy for every three or three and a half pounds of dead weight, and engines have been constructed weighing only one pound to every horsepower, though they are impractical for general use.
The first engines that were used in aeroplanes were simply automobile engines adapted to air navigation. The main question in those days was lightness and power. This was achieved by skimming down the best available automobile engines so that they were as light as safety would allow.
Although lightness is still an important factor in aeroplane engine construction, many authorities declare that it is growing less so as the science advances and aeroplanes are able to carry heavier loads.
There were many intricate and difficult problems, however, that attended taking a motor aloft to drive an aeroplane. The motor had to run at top speed every second, for it could not rest on a low gear as an automobile engine could. First one part and then another would give out and the motors were constantly overheating. Experience taught the makers how to make their machines light enough and yet strong enough to do the required work.
It was in cooling that the greatest difficulties were met, and it was this that brought about the great innovations in motor building. The system of cooling the engine with water required much heavy material, such as pipes, pumps, water, water jackets, and radiator.
On account of the general efficiency of a water-cooled engine many builders of aeroplanes stuck to it and developed it to a very high standard. At present many of the prize-winning engines are water cooled, as, for instance, the Wright and Curtiss.
All of these water-cooled engines and several standard air-cooled makes are of the reciprocating type that have stationary cylinders and crankcase while the crankshaft rotates like that of the motor boat.
The famous Curtiss, Anzani, Renault, and others are all engines of this type. They all differ, but all have a high capacity, as we know from the records they have broken. The Anzani and R. E. P. makers, whose motors are air cooled, have used to great advantage the plan of making their motors star-shaped—that is, with the cylinders arranged in a circle around the crankshaft.
This is the shape taken by the famous air-cooled rotary engines of which the much-discussed Gnome is the best known make. In this rotary motor the cylinders and crankcase revolve about the crankshaft which is stationary. Authorities are divided over the Gnome, which has many severe critics as well as many enthusiastic supporters. Its lightness is certainly an advantage. The ordinary Gnome has seven cylinders and develops fifty horsepower while the newest models have fourteen cylinders and develop 100 and 140 horsepower.
A brief description of the motor here will suffice to show the general principle of the rotary engine. The stationary crankshaft is hollow, and through it the gasoline vapour passes from the carbureter at the rear to the cylinders. Of course the inlet valves in the pistons are made to work automatically. The magneto is also placed behind the motor and the segments revolve on the crankcase. Wires extend from the segments to the spark plugs in the cylinders, and revolve with them. The cylinders are turned out of solid steel and the whole engine is conceded by experts to be one of the most wonderfully ingenious ever built. The cylinders and crankcase themselves serve as flywheel, thereby eliminating the dead weight of the usual heavy flywheel in the other types of motors, and the rotation serves to cool the engine perfectly. Again, the rotary motor is light and small, while it develops a tremendously high power. Aviators also claim for it other advantages too technical for consideration here.
Many authorities, in fact, declare that the rotary engine is the aeroplane motor of the future. It is very popular among the French aviators and at present holds a great many speed records. It was with one of these high-power Gnomes that Claude Grahame-White, the English flier, won the Gordon Bennett race at Belmont Park in the fall of 1910, and Weyman again in England in 1911.
While this high state of development in the aeroplane motor has been attained comparatively within a few years, the art of flying has occupied the mind of man since it was described in Greek mythology. The Chinese for thousands of years have used kites and balloons. The ancient Greeks watched the wonderful flights of the birds and invented myths about men who were able to fly. Then Achytes, his mind fired by these stories, invented a device in the form of a wooden dove which was propelled by heated air. Other inventors made devices that were intended to fly, and during the reign of Nero, "Simon the Magician" held the world's first aviation meet in Rome. According to the account, he "rose into the air through the assistance of demons." It further states that St. Peter stopped the action of the demons by a prayer, and that Simon was killed in the resultant fall. Simon made another record that way by being the first man to be killed in an aeronautical accident. Other records show that Baldud, one of the early tribal kings in what later was named England, tried to fly over a city, but fell and was killed. A little later, in the eleventh century, a Benedictine monk made himself a pair of wings, jumped from a high tower and broke his legs. These wings really were rude gliders and the principle remained in the minds of men, even in those days when their chief occupation was war. According to the legends, a man named Oliver of Malmesburg, who lived during the Middle Ages, built himself a glider and soared for 375 feet.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
THE CHANUTE TYPE GLIDER
Upon this machine was based the invention of the biplane.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
THE HERRING GLIDER
Based on the idea of the Lilienthal gliders.
AN EARLY HELICOPTER
An idea that was abandoned before the aeroplane became a reality.
THE THREE GREAT PIONEERS IN AVIATION
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley
Courtesy of the Scientific American
Sir Hiram Maxim
Courtesy of E. L. Jones, N. Y.
Octave Chanute
It was in the fifteenth century that men first began to make flying a scientific study by making records and, in part at least, tabulating the results of their experiments.
Among these early students of the science were Leonardo da Vinci, who is best known to the world as a painter and sculptor, but who was a great engineer and architect of his time, and Jean Baptiste Dante, a brother of the great poet. Although Da Vinci was the more scientific in his experiments, Dante made greater progress, and it is on record that he made many wonderful flights with a glider of his own construction over Lake Trasimene. He launched his glider from a cliff into the teeth of the wind, showing thereby his knowledge of the fact that a glider works best when flown against a high wind, because in that way the air is passing under it at greater speed. In one flight he made about 800 feet, which would be a fine record for any glider manipulated by an expert to-day. Finally Dante attempted an exhibition at Perugia, at the marriage festival of a celebrated general, fell on the roof of the Notre Dame Church and broke one of his legs.
Da Vinci had three different schemes for human flight. One was the old idea of bird flight, first dreamed of by the Greeks when Ovid wrote the poem of "Dædalus and Icarus." Scientists called the machine that Da Vinci proposed an orthopter and the operator was supposed by the movement of both arms and legs to fly by flapping the wings. Needless to say it did not work, and we know to-day that bird flight by wing flapping is probably impossible for man. Another of Da Vinci's ideas is still being worked upon by some inventors. This was a machine known as the helicopter, which was supposed to fly upward by the twisting of a great horizontal screw ninety-six feet in diameter. The idea was just the same as that of the toy that started the Wright brothers to thinking. The trouble with Da Vinci's machine was that he had no power to run it. Boys in playing with toy helicopters to-day can run them with rubber bands, but Da Vinci had to turn his screw by human power. Little was accomplished with this machine, although Da Vinci showed its practicability with models. The third scheme of this Italian scientist is one that many years later was perfected and demonstrated at every county fair—that is, the parachute. The first parachute was very crude, but it soon was developed to a fairly high stage of effectiveness and men came down from the tops of towers in them without much injury.
Again, in 1742, the Marquis de Bacqueville, then sixty-two years old, made a contrivance with which he flew about nine hundred feet before he fell into a boat in the Seine River and broke his leg. The Marquis had announced in advance that he would fly from his great house in Paris, across the Seine River and land in the famous Garden of the Tuileries. A crowd assembled and marvelled when the nobleman sailed into the teeth of the wind supported by what apparently were great wings. Something went wrong after a flight that would be considered remarkable by a scientific glider to-day, and his fall resulted in a broken leg for the experimenter. According to the authorities, all these experiments were not very valuable to science, because while the flights were accurately described the construction of the fliers (except in the case of Leonardo da Vinci) was not given, or only indicated in the most uncertain and unscientific language.
In 1781 a French scientist named Blanchard attempted to make a flying machine of which the man driving it was to be the power. He was still working with it when ballooning became known, and he took up that sport with avidity.
At that point came the true division between heavier-than-air and lighter-than-air machines. Before 1783 many scientists had hinted at the practicability of a hot air or gas balloon, but all successful flying experiments had been made with what we suppose to have been some form of gliders. However, in 1783 Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian scientist living in London, made a small hydrogen balloon, and was followed by the manufacture of fairly successful balloons by the Montgolfier brothers, two French inventors.
From that time ballooning, with which this chapter has no concern, made rapid strides, until to-day the balloon has reached the stage where great motor-driven balloons are used by the European armies, and also to carry passengers.
The next step in the heavier-than-air machine, known these days as the aeroplane, was taken in 1810, by Sir George Cayley, an Englishman and a true scientist, who constructed a glider and tabulated much valuable information. It was this scientist who made the first conclusive demonstrations looking toward the proof that man can never fly like a bird, but must proceed upon the principle of sustained planes. Sir George set down many laws of equilibrium governing the control of flying machines, estimated the power necessary to carry a man, and even hinted at the possibility of a gas engine more powerful and lighter than the then crude steam engine. He declared that a plane driven through the air, and inclined upward at a slight angle, would tend to rise and support a weight, and also that a tail with horizontal and vertical vanes would tend to steady the machine and enable the pilot to steer it up or down.
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
LANGLEY'S STEAM MODEL
This tandem monoplane made several successful trial flights.
THE MAXIM AEROPLANE
Maxim's great machine was claimed as the first successful aeroplane. In trials it rose a few inches off the ground.
MEDALS WON BY THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
Top, Langley medal bestowed by the Smithsonian Institution; bottom, medal authorized by Act of Congress.
This, it will be seen, was a very close approach to the idea of the aeroplane as we know it to-day. It remained for another British inventor, by the name of Henson, to carry these ideas to a further development, and with his colleague, F. Stringfellow, he worked out a model that embodied most of the principles of the present-day flier of the monoplane type. They decided the proper proportion for the width and length of the plane and steadied their machine with both horizontal and perpendicular rudders. In 1844 Henson and Stringfellow built a model of their aeroplane and equipped it with a small steam engine. A subsequently constructed steam-propelled model made a free flight of forty yards. This is claimed to be the first flight of a power-driven machine, although it was only a model. In 1866 F. H. Wenham, another Englishman, took out a patent on an aeroplane made up of two or more planes, or, as the scientists call it, two or more superposed surfaces. Immediately following this, Stringfellow constructed a steam-propelled model of triplane type, but it was no more successful than his monoplane. This latest model may be seen in the Smithsonian Institution at Washington to-day along with other models marking the progress of aeroplanes.
In the years following other inventors contributed much valuable information to the data concerning aviation. Among these was Warren Hargrave, the Australian, who had discovered the box kite, and who had seen in it the principle for the aeroplane. Hargrave even built a small monoplane weighing about three pounds and propelled by compressed air, which flew 128 feet in eight seconds.
Though the Wright brothers were the first to make a practical man-carrying, power-propelled aeroplane, they were not the first men to be carried off the ground by such a machine. The first man admitted by most authorities to have flown in a power-driven aeroplane was Clement Ader, a Frenchman, who had spent his life in the study of air navigation. His first machine was of monoplane type driven by a forty-horsepower steam engine. It was called the Eole and it had its first test before a few of the inventor's friends near the town of Gretz on October 9, 1890, making, according to witnesses, a free flight of 150 feet. Ader built two more machines in subsequent years and succeeded in interesting the French military authorities. In October of 1897 he made several secret official tests of his last machine, the Avion. It had a spread of 270 square feet, weighed 1,100 pounds, and was driven by a forty-horsepower steam engine. The day for the trial was squally but he persevered. The flier ran at high speed over the ground, several times lifted its wheels clear off its track and finally turned over, smashing the machine. The officials did not consider the exhibition successful, and the support of the army was withdrawn. Ader in disgust gave the Avion to a French museum and abandoned aviation, with success almost within his grasp.
Shortly before this time Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley of the Smithsonian Institution and Octave Chanute, the great American pioneers in aviation, were making their early experiments. Professor Langley experimented with numerous kinds of model fliers, and finally, on May 6, 1896, launched a steam-propelled model over the Potomac River. According to the scientist Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who was present, it flew between 80 and 100 feet and then "settled down so softly and gently that it touched the water without the least shock, and was in fact immediately ready for another trial." The second test was equally successful. The speed was between twenty and twenty-five miles an hour and the distance flown about 3,000 feet. Professor Langley's first aerodrome, as he called it (the word is now used to mean aviation field), was made in the form of a tandem monoplane about sixteen feet long from end to end and with wings measuring about thirteen feet from tip to tip. The steam engine and propellers were placed between the forward and aft planes. The whole machine weighed about thirty pounds and of course was too small to carry a pilot.
Langley next made a model which took the form of a tandem biplane, and which had some success in flights. When the Government appropriated $50,000 for him to build an aerodrome that would carry a man, Langley began to experiment with a gasoline engine. He used his tandem biplane and a motor that developed two and a half to three horsepower. The whole machine weighed fifty-eight pounds, and the planes, which were set at a dihedral angle, had sixty-six square feet of surface. A successful test without a pilot was made on the Potomac River below Washington on August 8, 1903, and while the spectators and reporters were lauding him the inventor merely remarked: "This is the first time in history, so far as I know, that a successful flight of a mechanically sustained flying machine has been seen in public."
The man-carrying machine was ready for its tests a few months later. Ever since having been financed by the Government, Langley had been at work, and the result was a tandem monoplane much like his early models. It was driven by a gasoline motor placed amidships which acted on twin screw propellers, which also were between the tandem planes. The whole machine with the pilot weighed 830 pounds, and had 1,040 square feet of wing surface. It was fifty-two feet long from front to rear and the wings measured forty-eight feet from tip to tip. The wings were arched, like those of modern aeroplanes, and the double rudder at the rear had both horizontal and vertical surfaces to steer the machine up or down, or from right to left. The aerodrome did not have any device for keeping it on an even keel, such as the ailerons we know to-day, or the wing-warping system of the Wright machine. This was a serious drawback, according to the present-day scientists, but Professor Langley had set his wings in a dihedral angle—that is, like a broad V, to give what is called automatic stability. This dihedral angle, it will be remembered, is one of the principles discarded by the Wright brothers early in their experiments as one that tended to keep the machine oscillating from side to side. Professor Langley realized this, it is said, and to offset it had already advanced several ideas along the line of wing warping, for keeping his machine on an even keel when buffeted by the wind.
The aerodrome also lacked the wheels now used on aeroplanes for starting and alighting, and even the skids that were used on the first Wright machines. His motor was remarkably well adapted to the work. It developed 50 horsepower with a minimum of vibration, and with its radiator, water, pump, tanks, carbureter, batteries, and coil weighed twenty pounds, or about five pounds per horsepower. The arrangement of the five cylinders around the shaft like the points of a star was one that has become very popular in modern aviation motors.
The first trial took place at Widewater, Va., on September 7, 1903. The machine was placed on a barge on the Potomac River; the pilot, Charles M. Manley, Professor Langley's able young assistant, took his seat in the little boat amidships, and a catapult arrangement, like the early Wright starting device, sent it into the air. To the bitter disappointment of Langley and his friends the machine dived into the water. It came up immediately, the daring Manley undaunted and uninjured. Investigation showed that in launching it the post that held the guys which steadied the front wings had been so bent that the forward planes were useless.
At the next trial, December 8, the rear guy post was injured in a similar accident and the machine fell over backward. This ended the experiments, as the Government appropriation had been spent, and the machine was repaired and stored in the Smithsonian Institution, where it is yet.
Professor Langley died a few years after this, feeling that his great work had never been appreciated or understood by the world. Many have declared that he died of a broken heart as a result of the frequent ridicule of the public and press. Although he never saw the triumph of aerial navigation, he died firm in the belief that it was only a matter of time and the working out of theories then laid down until man could fly. His last hours were cheered by the receipt of a copy of resolutions of appreciation passed by the Aero Club of America.
In the meantime, the Frenchman Ader had actually flown in a power-driven machine of his own construction, at private tests, while Captain Le Bris and L. P. Mouillard, Frenchmen, and Otto Lilienthal, a German, had been carrying on important glider flights. Also Sir Hiram Maxim, the American-born inventor who was knighted in England, made a great aeroplane that was tested with some success. The machine was built in 1889 and was mounted on a track. It was called a multiplane—that is, it had several planes, one above the other, and was driven by a powerful steam engine. The whole machine weighed three and a half tons and had a total surface of 5,500 square feet. During its tests on the track it lifted a few inches off the ground. Thus Maxim claimed that his was the first machine that had ever lifted a man off the ground by its own power.
It was Otto Lilienthal, however, the "flying man," who established a systematic study of one phase of aviation which became general enough to be called the Lilienthal School. This was the system of practising on gliders before attempting to go into the air with power-driven machines. As will be remembered, this was exactly the system the Wright brothers followed out.
Lilienthal's first experiments were made in 1891 with a pair of semicircular wings steadied by a horizontal rudder at the rear. The whole apparatus weighed forty pounds and had a total plane surface of 107 square feet. He would run along the ground and jump from the top of a hill. He made many good flights, and in 1893 with a new glider averaged 200 to 300 yards and steered up or down or to either side at will. Lilienthal found that the air flowing along the earth's surface had a slightly upward current, as science tells us it does, and that it would carry him upward if the wind was blowing strong enough. Hence he could go forward either up or down in about the same way that a yacht tacks against the wind. But Lilienthal had the same trouble in balancing that the Wright brothers had at first, so he kept an even keel as best he could by swinging his legs and body from side to side as he hung underneath the glider.
The "flying man" made about 2,000 flights and then constructed a still more successful biplane glider for which he built an engine. He was killed while making a glide on August 9, 1896, however, and the motor was never used. Several authorities who were in touch with Lilienthal declared that the machine had become wobbly and unreliable. This, they said, was the cause of its collapsing in midair under the heavy strain.
Lilienthal's death, though mourned by scientists all over the world, did not interfere with the great work he had started, for his system had many disciples both in Europe and America. Among these, besides the Wrights, were the Americans Octave Chanute and A. M. Herring, and Percy S. Pilcher of the University of Glasgow. Pilcher was killed three years after Lilienthal, September 30, 1899, while trying to make a glide in stormy weather.
THE FIRST SANTOS-DUMONT AEROPLANE
This was the first successful aeroplane to be flown in Europe, and was quickly followed by others.
THE CROSS-CHANNEL TYPE BLÉRIOT MONOPLANE
The Blériot monoplane was the first of the monoplane type to make a success in Europe.
A VOISIN BIPLANE
The Voisin brothers perfected the first permanent aeroplane used in Europe. Henri Farman made his first wonderful flights in a Voisin.
GLENN CURTISS ABOUT TO MAKE A FLIGHT
HENRI FARMAN STARTING ALOFT WITH TWO PASSENGERS
LOUIS BLÉRIOT SHORTLY AFTER COMPLETING HIS TRANS-CHANNEL FLIGHT
Great credit must be given to Chanute because it was in great part through his advice that the Wright brothers achieved final success, and all biplanes to-day are known to the technical side of the aviation world as Chanute type machines. Chanute and Herring started experiments with gliders among the sand dunes on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, and, after some indifferent success with the Lilienthal monoplane type of glider, made a flier of five surfaces one above the other. The rudder was in the rear and the pilot hung below the machine. One by one experiments pared down the number of planes to three and then to two. The planes were arched, as they are in modern aeroplanes. The rudder extended behind the contrivance and had both horizontal and vertical blades. The whole machine weighed 23 pounds and had 135 square feet of plane surface.
The biplane was eminently satisfactory and Herring decided to make an engine for it and sail in a power-driven flier—or a dynamic aeroplane, as the scientists call it. His motor was a compressed air machine and he proposed to go into the air as if for a glide and then start the engine. According to newspaper accounts, he accomplished this and his compressed air engine drove him forward seventy-three feet in eight or ten seconds against a strong breeze. The flight was not given very much consideration, however, for lack of authoritative witnesses.
This brings us around again to the activities of the Wright brothers, who started their work with the glider built along the lines laid down by Octave Chanute. They had the active support and aid of this inventor throughout their three or four years of experiments, although many other scientists were inclined to discredit their work.
While the brothers were going ahead with their practical flier the European scientists were developing with rapid strides and Prof. John J. Montgomery of Santa Clara College, Santa Clara, Cal., who was killed in a glider accident in 1911, was astonishing the far West with gliding experiments of great importance.
Montgomery's best glider was a tandem monoplane with a device by which the pilot could change at will the amount of curvature of any of the wings. This gave him the tremendous advantage of being able to vary the lifting power of the wings independently of each other and hence a means of maintaining side to side balance. Professor Montgomery made his own flights until injuring his leg in alighting, and then he hired trained aeronauts to glide from great heights. As it turned out it would have been better had he never resumed flying himself. He used balloons to carry up the gliders and when they reached the required altitude the operator cut the cable. Daniel Maloney, a daring parachute jumper, and two other aeronauts, named Wilkie and Defolco, carried on these hair-raising experiments.
Flights were made at Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San José, Oakland, and Sacramento, in 1905. The balloon would take up the aeroplane, and aviator, who sat on a saddle like a bicycle seat between the tandem planes and manipulated the wing control and rear rudder with hand levers and a pair of stirrups for his feet. In April of that year a forty-five-pound glider, such as the one described, with Maloney in the seat, was taken up four thousand feet. When the aviator cut loose he glided to earth, making evolutions never before made by man in the air, and finally landed as lightly as a feather on a designated spot.
Shortly afterward Maloney while making a sensational glide was killed. As the balloon was rising with the aeroplane, a guy rope switched around the right wing and broke the post that braced the two rear wings and which also gave control over the tail. Those below shouted to Maloney that the machine was broken, but he probably did not hear, and when he cut loose the machine turned turtle.
One of the saddest of all the many aeroplane fatalities was the accident early in the fall of 1911, in which Professor Montgomery was killed while experimenting with his glider.
Thus we see that the pioneers whose work has counted for the most in the early history of aviation were Americans—that the science can almost be claimed as a development of American genius. True, Ader was the first man to fly in a power-propelled machine, and Lilienthal led the way in the science of gliding, but it remained for Chanute, Langley, Montgomery, and the Wright brothers to gather all this scientific data together and put it to practical use so that the motor could be installed and power flight, or dynamic flight, as the scientists call it, begun.
CHAPTER II
AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENT
HOW THE INVENTORS CARRIED ON THE ART OF AVIATION UNTIL IT BECAME THE GREATEST OF ALL SPORTS AND THEN A GREAT INDUSTRY
SO INTERESTED in aviation had our young friend become that he forgot all other inventions in his enthusiasm for flying. He never missed a chance to go to the aviation field, and sometimes his scientist friend would go with him. These days were rare treats indeed, for the boy always learned some new and important points from their conversations.
With them we have seen how the science of aeronautics has been divided into two great departments: balloons, or lighter-than-air fliers, and all other machines that are not maintained in the air by hot air or gas. We have seen also the three great divisions of heavier-than-air aviation—that is, orthopters or wing-flapping machines; helicopters or machines that fly upward through the operation of horizontal screws; and aeroplanes. Lastly we see the three divisions of aeroplanes: gliders; dynamic aeroplanes, or the machines we know to-day; and true bird soaring, the art of flying without artificial power and without the flapping of wings.
But on every side the boy heard people talking of great feats of flying that he knew nothing about.
"Who was Santos-Dumont? What was that first trans-Channel flight? Why do they always talk about the first Rheims meet?" he asked one afternoon as he was returning home from the field with the scientist.
The man could not answer the questions all in one breath, but we will follow his explanation, which extended over many pleasant hours, and see how aviation developed into a mighty sport and industry.
For several years following 1905 the world of aviation was led by Europeans—mostly Frenchmen who readily grasped the principles of the science and made the best and lightest motors that the world has ever seen. The United States, however, was the first nation to experiment with aeroplanes for military purposes, although at present the country is far behind France, England, and Germany in the development of aeroplanes for use in war.
Alberto Santos-Dumont, a daring young Brazilian who a few years earlier had astounded the world with his achievements with dirigible balloons, was the first of the aviators working in Europe to construct a practical man-carrying power flier. Scores of brilliant foreigners were working on the principles for gliders laid down by Lilienthal, but Santos-Dumont, working along the ideas of the scientists who had built power-propelled models, made himself a clumsy biplane equipped with a 50-horsepower motor and actually inaugurated public flights, considering that all done by the Wrights up to that time was experimental and practically in secret.
On August 22, 1906, he made his first flight near Paris. It was brief, but authorities agree that it was the first time in Europe that a power-propelled flier had risen in free flight with a man at the steering wheel since Ader's secret flight in 1892. Two months later he made a public flight of 221 metres in 21 seconds, winning the world's first regularly offered aviation prize. This was the Archdeacon Cup of 2,000 francs authorized by the Aero Club of France for a flight of 100 metres.
Scientists gave these flights more attention than they did the flights of the Wright brothers the year before because they were viewed by many thousands of people and also by men who had studied the science of aviation for years. Besides this, Santos-Dumont made no secret of the construction or workings of his machine as the Wright brothers did. He was already a popular idol through his work with dirigible balloons, and being very rich—the son of a millionaire plantation owner in Brazil—he did not have the same financial incentive for keeping his plans secret.
His flights gave the aviators of France tremendous encouragement and it was but a short time until half a dozen aeroplanes, the makes of which are all well known now, were making successful flights and breaking records.
Santos-Dumont called his biplane an aeromobile. The two main planes had perpendicular surfaces enclosing them so that the wings of each side looked like two box kites hitched together side by side, as shown in the picture. The rudder extended to the front and it also looked like a box kite. The pilot sat just in front of the wings and could manipulate his rudder from side to side or up and down. Thus he could steer his machine from right to left, upward or downward. The Brazilian had not solved the problem of keeping his aeromobile from tipping sideways, so he arranged its wings in a dihedral angle, which balanced it fairly well. The starting and alighting device was a set of wheels which we know so well to-day. The biplane contained 65 square feet of plane surface and the total weight was 645 pounds.
Perhaps the most important factor in this machine was an eight-cylinder 50-horsepower Antoinette gasoline motor. This was the first time that this now famous motor was used in an aeroplane and it gave promise at that time of the prize-winning capabilities it later developed. The propeller, which was made of aluminum, was about six feet in diameter, or about two feet less than the diameter of the twin screws in the early Wright biplanes.
Copyright H. M. Benner, Hammondsport, N. Y.
THE JUNE BUG
Glenn Curtiss making a flight in one of his first aeroplanes.
ORVILLE WRIGHT MAKING A FLIGHT AT FORT MYER
The aeroplane first became well known in this country when the Wright brothers carried on their Fort Myer tests.
Courtesy of the Scientific American
THE FIRST LETTER EVER WRITTEN ABOARD AN AEROPLANE IN FLIGHT
This was written at the time Ovington was carrying aeroplane mail from Garden City to Mineola, by aeroplane.
Several years before this the Voisin brothers had been taken by the general fever for aviation and in 1907 they finished a practical biplane in which Henri Farman, a former auto racer, and Leon Delagrange, an artist, astonished the world. This early machine is described by one authority as something like a cross between a box kite and a Chanute glider. Extending out behind the two main planes was a rudder like a huge box kite, which was used to steer the machine from right to left. This also helped to keep the biplane from tipping forward or backward. A single horizontal rudder in front steered it upward or downward. These rudders were manipulated by the operator, who sat between the two main planes in front of his engine, by either pushing his pilot wheel forward or backward or by turning it like the steering wheel of an automobile. There was no device for balancing the aeroplane, but the construction kept it on a fairly even keel—or, as the scientist said, it had inherent or automatic stability—i. e., stability automatically gained from the construction of the machine. Also the operator was supposed to swing his body from side to side to aid this. The aeroplane started from and alighted on four wheels set under the main plane and the tail. It had 559 square feet of surface and with the engine weighed 1,100 pounds. The motor was a 50-horsepower Antoinette, which drove a single aluminum propeller.
After preliminary "bird hops" at Issy-les-Mollineaux, Farman on October 26 beat Santos-Dumont's record by flying 771 metres. On January 13, 1908, he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Cup of 50,000 francs for the first person to make a circular flight of 500 metres. Two months later Delagrange challenged Farman for his world championship, but lost, Farman twice circling the two pylons, or marking poles, that had been set up 500 metres apart, in 3 minutes 31 seconds. The distance covered with turns was 2004.8 metres. Delagrange flew the 500 metres in 2.5 minutes.
Then for the first time in the world's history two men rode in an aeroplane, Delagrange taking his rival behind him and sailing over a part of the course. A month later Delagrange took the distance record from Farman with a flight of 5,575 metres in 9-1/4 minutes.
While these pioneers were winning prizes and breaking records Louis Blériot was bringing his aeroplane to a successful stage. He had been working on the problem of aviation since 1900, but had failed with wing flappers and machines like box kites. Finally he had some success with a tandem monoplane like Professor Langley's. The first of his machines of this kind was smashed in a fall, but the second, Blériot's seventh flier, flew steadily and was the fastest aeroplane ever developed.
Thus Blériot at the opening of 1908 had developed his monoplane idea far past the stage Professor Langley ever had developed it. He had increased the size of the forward plane and decreased the size of the rear plane until the great forward wings did all the work of sustaining the machine in the air, while the chief uses of the tail were steering and steadying the machine. Moreover, Blériot's was the first machine among the practical European fliers to have a system of wing warping such as the Wright brothers had developed in their wonderful biplane, and such as Glenn Curtiss, another American inventor, was at the same time developing for his machines.
This gave Blériot what is called three-rudder control—that is, the vertical rudder at the rear to steer it from right to left, the horizontal rudder, also on the tail, to steer it up or down, and the flexible wing tips to keep it from tipping sidewise. The aspect ratio of the early Blériots was low, which gave them greater speed. In other words, the main plane did not have so great a spread as most aeroplanes do, while it was much deeper, and, having less of an entering edge, it could go faster. There were three wheels—two under the main plane and the third under the tail for starting and alighting. The engine was just under and at the front of the main plane, driving a single propeller. This propeller—which is the type most used on monoplanes—is called a tractor propeller because, instead of pushing the aeroplane forward from the rear, it pulls it from the front. The operator sat just to the rear and above the engine so he could look out and over the top of the main plane.
The last day of October, 1908, Blériot jumped into international fame with this machine by making a cross-country flight from Toury to Artenay, a total distance of about 17 miles. This was the second cross-country flight ever attempted. The day previous Farman had flown his biplane from Châlons to Rheims, nearly 17 miles.
Meanwhile the Wright brothers had been making great progress, as will be seen shortly, and Wilbur Wright had brought a biplane to France to make demonstrations for a French syndicate. He took up quarters at Le Mans in August, 1908. His notable flights broke the world's records for distance and duration. Early in the month he flew 52 miles and was in the air 1 hour and 31 minutes. A few days later he broke the French records for altitude by going up 380 feet, and on the last day of the year won the Michelin prize of 20,000 francs for the longest flight of the year.
In January Wilbur Wright went to Pau, where he opened a school and was joined by his brother Orville, who had just recovered from a historical accident in the United States which will be described shortly. At Pau they made a great many flights and exhibited their aeroplane to thousands and thousands of people from all over the world, including great scientists, military men, statesmen, and many members of the European nobility. Among these was young King Alfonso of Spain, who took such a delight in the machine that he would have made an ascension were it not for the objections of his ministers. King Edward of England also visited the famous brothers, talked with them about their achievements, and witnessed several fine flights. Then Wilbur took his machine to Italy, where King Emanuel attended his exhibitions in Rome. Later in London the two brothers were entertained by the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain and received its gold medal. During this time they won the respect of the whole world of aviation.
"Now to return to the progress made by the intrepid American inventors in our own country, led by the Wright brothers, Glenn Curtiss, A. M. Herring, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, and his associates, F. W. Baldwin and J. A. D. McCurdy," continued the boy's friend.
"You remember that toward the close of 1905 the Wright brothers suspended their flights near Dayton because it had become necessary for them to spend all their time in business negotiations. In the spring of 1908, after increasing the motor power of their flier, they began tests again because the brothers had agreed to furnish a machine to the United States Signal Corps and another to a French syndicate."
The machine that was to be furnished to the Signal Corps, he explained, had to be able to carry two men and to be able to fly for one hour without stopping, at an average speed of 40 miles an hour. Furthermore, this flight had to be made across country dotted with hills, valleys, and forests. Another of the requirements was that the machine should be able to fly 125 miles without stopping. The Wright brothers agreed to furnish such an aeroplane for $25,000, and Orville Wright went to Fort Myer, Va., near Washington, for the tests.
His preliminary flights were very successful and thousands of Americans flocked to the drill ground to see what was practically the first public exhibition in the United States. About the time that the French aviators were making flights of 1 hour or so Orville Wright flew his machine for one hour and 3 minutes. Repeatedly he took Lieut. Frank P. Lahm or Lieutenant Selfridge for short flights.
On the 17th of September the tragic accident that put a stop to the flights occurred. Orville Wright was flying about 75 feet high with Lieutenant Selfridge as a passenger when one of the propellers hit a stay wire which coiled about the blade, breaking it and making the machine unmanageable. The aeroplane plunged to the ground, throwing the occupants forward. Lieutenant Selfridge suffered injuries from which he died within three hours, while Wright suffered several broken bones. This occurred while Wilbur Wright was at Le Mans, France.
The year before Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the American inventor, had invited Glenn Curtiss, a bicycle and motor manufacturer, to aid him in equipping with power the fliers that he was constructing with the help of Lieutenant Selfridge, F. W. Baldwin, and J. A. D. McCurdy. They formed the Aerial Experiment Association, which later became famous, and early in March, 1908, began the test of their first aeroplane, which they called the Red Wing. The machine was tried over the ice of Lake Keuka, near Hammondsport, N. Y., and before its makers were ready to fly it went into the air and sailed 300 feet. The Red Wing was of biplane type and mounted on skids, with the propeller and vertical direction rudder at the rear. The horizontal elevating rudder was at the front. The notable feature was the curve of the planes. The upper plane curved from the centre downward, while the lower plane curved from the centre upward, so that the two planes, if they had been a little bit longer, would have met. This curvature was expected to give automatic stability, but the machine was never a great success.
The next machine made by these experimenters was called the White Wing, and made some fair flights. The next was the famous June Bug which was designed by Curtiss and entered by him to contest for the Scientific American Cup for a flight of one kilometre. The test, which was held on the 4th of July, 1908, near Hammondsport, was the first official flight for a prize in America, and was successful in every way, winning the cup with a flight of 200 yards. This biplane had the three-rudder control—that is, a tail at the rear shaped like a box kite to steer it from right to left, two small parallel planes in front to steer it up or down, and a system of flexible wing tips which enabled the operator to maintain a side to side balance.
In 1909 Curtiss made some important improvements over his machine of previous years by replacing the flexible wing tips with ailerons. This was the first time these devices were used in this country, but they had already been introduced in Europe on several machines. There are many kinds of ailerons, but on Curtiss's biplane they were two small horizontal planes fixed between the outer tips of the upper and lower planes. They could be turned so as to keep the aeroplane balanced when making a sharp turn or when struck by a gust of wind.
Curtiss and his partner, A. M. Herring, took the machine to the plains near Mineola, L. I., that summer, and began preliminary flights. They won several rich prizes, including that year's Scientific American Cup for the longest flight of the season. In this Curtiss made an official distance of 24-1/2 miles.
Photograph by the American Press
THE GODDESS OF LIBERTY
Photographed from an aeroplane
FIRST ACTUAL WAR EXPEDITION OF AN AEROPLANE
This picture shows Rene Simon returning from his scouting trip over the camp of the Mexican insurrectos, February 11, 1911.
WAR MANŒUVRES
American army aeroplane manœuvring over the troops mobilized at San Antonio, Texas, during the 1911 Mexican revolution.
We will leave Mr. Curtiss and his associates for the time being and take up again the work of the Wright brothers, who in the spring of 1909 returned to the United States after their European triumphs. Their laurels were further added to by a medal from the Aero Club of America, presented by President Taft at the White House, and medals from the Federal Government, the state of Ohio, and their home town of Dayton. All this time they were busy making the aeroplane with which they were to resume the final tests for the Government that had been interrupted the previous fall by the death of Lieutenant Selfridge. They arrived at Fort Myer in June, but spent most of that month and a large part of July in preparations and short practice flights. The great crowds, among which were scores of statesmen and politicians, gathered in Washington, became impatient at the delays, but the brothers had waited for a good many years to perfect their biplane and would not risk failure by attempting the official tests in bad weather, with their plane out of tune, or their engine in bad working order.
Finally ten thousand cheering spectators were rewarded by seeing Orville Wright ascend with Lieutenant Lahm as a passenger, and sail for 1 hour and 40 seconds, fulfilling the endurance requirements. The next few days the weather prevented the distance test, but one calm evening just before sunset Orville carried Lieut. B. D. Foulois across hills and valleys to Alexandria and return at an average speed of 42.6 miles per hour. This won the brothers a bonus of $5,000 on the price of the machine because they were to receive $2,500 extra for each mile per hour more than the 40 miles per hour called for in the contract. It was the greatest feat of aviation ever seen in the United States at the time and the ovation tendered the brothers was equal to the occasion. Not once, however, did they lose their heads in the slightest or show any undue enthusiasm over their achievement. Statesmen, army officers, and newspaper men crowded around with congratulations and praises, but the great victory was only what the brothers had expected and they soon were planning improvements on their biplane.
The real meaning of this feat by the Wright biplane, however, was that the United States was the first nation officially to adopt an aeroplane for military purposes. To Americans it seems peculiarly fitting that it was the Wright machine that was adopted because it was the Wright aeroplane, strictly an American product, that was the first practical flier.
Later on Wilbur returned to Fort Myer to finish off his contract by teaching two Signal Corps officers to handle the machine. During this time the aviator changed his biplane by transferring one of the forward elevating planes to the rear, where it was used as a fixed tail to give greater stability from front to rear. This was such a success that it was used in subsequent models, and the present-day Wright biplanes have no forward lifting plane at all—the horizontal plane at the rear serving as the elevator and also as the fore and aft balancer.
In the fall of 1909, after the Fort Myer tests, the brothers again separated, Orville going to Europe, where he achieved more distinction, and Wilbur remaining at home to astonish his countrymen with his exhibitions at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. He made the first trip around the Statue of Liberty on September 9, starting from and returning to Governor's Island in New York Bay.
In the meantime the European aviators were making even greater strides, and 1909 saw many new aeroplanes take the air to break records of different kinds. Throughout the season there was hardly a day that some record was not broken, or that some previously unknown man did not achieve undying fame for his daring feats.
Aeroplane schools were established and aviation passed from the stage of experimenting into the stage of record making and breaking.
The European governments, particularly France and Germany, were carefully watching progress, and dozens of the pupils in the aviation schools were young officers detailed to learn the art of flying and report on its usefulness in warfare. Also the building of aeroplanes became a great industry and in France thousands of scientists, designers, mechanics, motor experts, and wood-working experts were engaged in turning out machines as fast as they could.
It would be impossible in this brief space to describe all of the important flights of the last few busy years in aviation, which were talked of by the boy and his scientist friend, but a very brief outline of the feats accomplished will show the wonderful progress that has been made. The first great international meet, which was held at Rheims, France, in 1909, did more than anything else up to that time to show the world how far the science had gone and how many good machines there were. So great was the public interest in this meet that before the end of the year meets were arranged and held at Blackpool and Donchester, England; Berlin, Juvisy, France, and Brescia, Italy. The most notable achievements of the year in Europe were the flight across the English Channel by Blériot in his graceful monoplane, by which he won the prize of 1,000 pounds offered by the London Daily Mail, the winning of the James Gordon Bennett Cup by Curtiss, the only American to contest for the great honour, and the winning of the Grand Prix by Farman in his biplane. Blériot, while practising, before his famous flight across the English Channel, broke many records with his monoplanes, No. XI and No. XII. He was the first man to take two passengers in such a craft, those in the machine besides himself being Santos-Dumont and A. Fournier. The total weight of machine and three men was 1,232 pounds. He also made several cross-country records and received medals from the Aero Club of Great Britain and the Aero Club of France.
HARRY N. ATWOOD
Arriving at Chicago on his flight from St. Louis to New York
THE FINISH OF ATWOOD'S ST. LOUIS TO NEW YORK FLIGHT
The aviator is here seen arriving at Governor's Island in New York Bay
POSTMASTER-GENERAL HITCHCOCK AND CAPTAIN BECK STARTING WITH THE AERO-MAIL
This is the first time regular United States mail ever was carried by aeroplane. Throughout the meet at Garden City in 1911, Earle L. Ovington and Beck carried mail over a regular route
Blériot's flight over the English Channel was one of the most dramatic that ever has been made by an aviator, as he encountered perils that no birdman ever before had faced. He had as a contestant one of the daring young aviators who has made the history of aviation read like a novel. This was Hubert Latham, who used the Antoinette monoplane, one of the most beautiful machines ever designed, and which is described fully later on. Young Latham had become a popular hero because of his daring feats. The aviators said that he was carrying on an endless battle with the wind, for he seemed to prefer flying high in the air when the wind was so gusty that other aviators were afraid to leave their hangars. He had made several monoplane records for endurance and altitude, and after a notable cross-country flight announced his intention of sailing across the English Channel to collect the 1,000 pounds from the Daily Mail. So he took his graceful monoplane to Calais, and after impatiently waiting for fair weather, soared from the towering cliffs and out over the stormy waters of the English Channel. Thousands cheered his daring and wished him success, but before he had gone more than six miles his motor failed him and he glided to the water. In a few minutes the boat that was sailing below him came up and found him calmly sitting on the upper framework of his machine, which was buoyed up by the great wings. He was looking as unconcerned as if he had been sitting in a motor boat on a lake, and declared he would try again the next day. His machine was wrecked in getting it ashore, however, and Blériot made his famous flight before the young man could get it repaired.
The older man had been injured in an accident and was still walking on crutches, with a badly burned foot, when a favourable opportunity for the trans-channel flight came. He was awakened before dawn on the morning of July 25th, and, throwing away his crutches as he got into his machine for a practise spin, he said: "I will show the world that I can fly even if I cannot walk."
At 4:35, just as the sun was rising, he sailed out over the precipice, and Latham, watching him, wept with disappointment at not being able to enter the contest. A torpedo boat destroyer was following him, but soon she dropped behind and he was over the trackless channel without any landmark to guide him. Finally the coast of France dropped out of sight and the intrepid aviator was alone, with nothing but his carefully planned monoplane between him and death in the tossing waters hundreds of feet below.
After ten minutes of this the cliffs of the English coast loomed up ahead, bathed in the early morning sunlight. He saw several boats far below him and followed their course, which brought him to the town of Deal, near which he landed. The first man to greet him was his good friend M. Montaine, but soon after a crowd of Englishmen were crowding about congratulating him on his wonderful achievement. Not to be outdone, young Latham cabled his congratulations.
August saw the beginning of the first great international meet at Rheims. Most of the leading aviators of the world gathered there to contest for the prizes and for fame. Curtiss, Blériot, Farman, Latham, Lefabre, Count de Lambert, Paul Tissandier, Louis Paulhan, Le Blanc, Roger Sommer, and Rougier all distinguished themselves and made their names as familiar in this country as they were in France.
Latham, with his apparently fearless disregard of danger, and his great, soaring Antoinette monoplane that looked more like a dragon-fly when up in the air than anything else, was one of the popular idols. Not only did he fly in rough winds but also in heavy rainfall, as did his rival, Blériot. Of course there were several bad accidents, but none to compare with the later fatalities.
The winning of the $10,000 Grand Prix de la Champagne for the longest flight was not so spectacular as the next day's great race. Latham had made a record of 96 miles that it was thought would stand. On the day of the finals, Friday, August 27th, Latham again took the air, making a spectacular flight several hundred feet high. At the same time several others were performing evolutions in the air, some high and some low. Farman was flying close to the ground and making but poor time in his slower craft. Finally, after all the others had come to earth, the longest flight having been made by Latham, with 68 miles to his credit, the crowd realized that Farman was making a record. Time after time he passed the grand stand, marking off the miles. It became dark, but the crowd still lingered, and was rewarded finally by seeing him bring his machine softly to the ground in front of the judges' stand, winner of the $10,000, with a record of 190 kilometres. His friends, wild with joy, pulled the exhausted aviator from his seat and carried him off the field on their shoulders.
The next day Curtiss, the only American taking part in the meet (although several Wright biplanes were flown by Frenchmen), brought out his 60-horsepower biplane to try for the speed prize of $5,000 offered by James Gordon Bennett. He made two rounds of the field at a speed of 47.04 miles an hour. Blériot then brought out his great 80-horsepower monoplane, but the test flights were discouraging. Finally, after working over his machine all afternoon and trying several propellers, he started at five o'clock and made his first round in much better time than Curtiss had done. He slackened up on the second round, however, and came to earth to find that he had lost to the gallant American. By winning the prize Curtiss was allowed to take the next year's contest to his own country.
There were many other records broken at the other meets held in 1909, but none of them stood long after the 1910 season had got well under way. Altitude, endurance, distance and speed records all were shattered by the ever-increasing army of aviators and the constantly improving machines.
Undoubtedly the most spectacular and daring feat of 1910 was the flight across the Alps by George Chavez, who was born in Paris of Peruvian parents only twenty-three years before his tragic death. In September of that year he set out to win the prize of 70,000 francs offered by the Italian Aviation Society to the first aviator who would fly the 75 miles from Brig to Milan, across the towering peaks and yawning chasms of the Alps. Of the five who entered the contest Chavez was the only one to make a real start. After waiting for several days, during which wind, rain and fog kept him chained to the ground, he finally rose in the air.
In a few minutes he was 7,000 feet above sea level, crossing the famous Simplon Pass, braving the fierce eddies of wind that swirled around the cruel, jagged crags and precipices. Finally he crossed the mountains and glided down the Italian slope to Domodossola. Thousands had gathered to greet his arrival, but as he was sinking gradually to the earth, only thirty feet above the ground, a gust of wind caught the machine, the wings collapsed and the brave young man fell to earth underneath the machinery. He received injuries from which he died four days later. The committee granted him one third of the prize on the basis that he had completed the difficult part of the journey.
No less dangerous was Glenn Curtiss's trip from Albany to New York in his biplane, by which he won the $10,000 prize offered by the New York World. Most of his route lay over wooded hills, the waters of the Hudson River, or the cliffs along its banks, which territory, as any one who has travelled from New York to Albany knows, offers few landing places. Starting with a letter from the Mayor of Albany to the Mayor of New York and followed by a special train on the New York Central he made Camelot, 41 miles from Albany, in about an hour. The next jump was clear to Spuyten Duyvil, the northern boundary of Manhattan, which completed the required 128 miles in a total elapsed time of 2 hours and 32 minutes. His average speed was 50-1/2 miles an hour.
This stage of the journey nearly brought serious disaster to the aviator, for, while passing the famous old mountain Storm King, he was caught by a terrific gust of wind and his machine was twisted sideways so that it dropped suddenly toward the river. By skilful manipulation he righted his biplane and continued.
After a brief pause at Spuyten Duyvil he sailed down the Hudson River and the upper New York Bay to Governor's Island. Every whistle in the harbour, a few million people and the reporters representing the newspaper readers of the whole civilized world, proclaimed his victory over the wind gusts eddying around the palisades and the New York skyscrapers.
In the United States there were many aviators besides Curtiss who were making an effort to win long distance prizes. The New York Times and the Philadelphia Ledger had offered a large purse, supposed to be $10,000, for the first flight from New York to Philadelphia, and on June 13th, a few days after Glenn Curtiss's flight from Albany to New York, Charles K. Hamilton, another young man new to aviation, sailed in his Curtiss biplane the 86 miles from Governor's Island to Philadelphia in 1 hour and 43 minutes, and returned the same day. His average speed was 50-1/2 miles an hour, the same maintained by Curtiss in his Albany-New York trip. These two flights added tremendously to the fame of the Curtiss machines.
The great International Aviation Tournament of 1910, held at Belmont Park in October, was the climax of the season in this country. Of course interest centred around the race for the James Gordon Bennett Cup and prize of $5,000, which had been won the year before at Rheims by Curtiss. The total prizes amounted to $60,000 and practically every standard make of aeroplane was represented. The American aviators came into prominence at this meet, as will be remembered by the feats of Walter Brookins, Arch. Hoxsey, Ralph Johnstone, J. A. Drexel and a dozen others. The English contingent was led by Claude Grahame-White, who had been making himself famous at the Harvard-Boston meet. Of the Frenchmen, Alfred LeBlanc, Hubert Latham, Emiel Aubrun and Count de Lesseps were among the leaders.
Nearly every one nowadays is familiar with the story of how Grahame-White brought out his 100-horsepower Blériot monoplane for its first trial and made 100 kilometres at an average speed of 61 miles an hour. Soon after that LeBlanc came out with another 100-horsepower Blériot, acknowledged to be one of the swiftest machines ever made at that time, and started on a race around the course at a speed such as the world had never seen before. In the last lap his gasoline gave out, the aeroplane shot downward and was smashed against a telephone pole. LeBlanc was more angry than injured, because he had lost the race, although his speed had been 67 miles an hour, or six miles better than Grahame-White's. Brookins, with the Wright biplane racing machine, started out with high speed, but the engine soon began to miss fire and he too came to earth. Consequently Grahame-White carried off the prize.
The next day the aviators were out to contest for the $10,000 offered by Thomas F. Ryan for the quickest flight from the aviation field to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, 16 miles away, and return. Never before was there such a dramatic race. Together Count de Lesseps and Claude Grahame-White, both in Blériot machines, started for the Statue. John Moisant, the American aviator, who only that summer had made the first flight from Paris to London, suddenly determined to win the prize. It took him about five minutes to buy LeBlanc's 50-horsepower Blériot monoplane for $10,000, and just as Grahame-White and de Lesseps were returning from their flight Moisant started out. Instead of taking the safer roundabout course, where there were many landing places, this dauntless birdman sailed directly over the church steeples of Brooklyn, cutting through the treacherous air currents at terrific speed, circling the Statue at great altitude and returning by the same route. His time was 43 seconds better than that of Grahame-White, who flew a machine of double the power. The Americans were wild with delight, thinking Moisant had won the prize, but the committee finally gave the award to Count de Lesseps, who made the slowest time, because Grahame-White had fouled the starting post, or pylon, as it is called by aviators, and because Moisant in his desperation to get started had failed to qualify.
But there were other records broken. Ralph Johnstone, flying the small Wright biplane racer, which was equipped with particularly large propellers, broke the altitude record of 9,104 feet which had been set in France by climbing to an altitude of 9,714 feet. The round trip to and from the clouds took him 1 hour and 43 minutes. In connection with the altitude trials, the daring of Johnstone and Hoxsey was particularly notable. Both of these aviators took up their Wright biplanes when the wind was blowing so fiercely that they could hardly turn the pylons. When they got to a great altitude, one time the gale was so terrific that they were carried backward at a speed of nearly 40 miles an hour, and both of them had to land in open country; Johnstone at Holtsville, L. I., 55 miles away, and Hoxsey at Brentwood, half that distance. During these flights both of them had reached altitudes of more than a mile in the air. But these records were not destined to stand long, as will be shown by the table on page [75].
But world's distance and altitude records were being broken in Europe, too, and during the summer of 1910 the record keepers were busy putting new names at the heads of their lists, as will be shown by the table on page [76]. The long distance speed race, called the "Circuit de l'Est," which took in a course 488 miles long, of six towns around Paris, aroused as much enthusiasm as any. The prize which was offered by the newspaper Le Matin of Paris was for 100,000 francs. The race started on August 7, with eight contestants, and ended on August 17 with Alfred LeBlanc, in his Blériot monoplane, the winner. He had made the distance in six stages at an average speed of 40 miles an hour, flying through rain, fog and wind. Next came Aubrun in a Blériot and Weyman in a Farman. Not only was this race one of the severest tests that the aeroplane had ever had, but also it was a trial to the aviators that did a great deal to prove the practicability of the aeroplanes for more serious work than pleasant day sport.
ALTITUDE FLIGHTS IN 1910[A]
| AVIATOR | ALTITUDE | AEROPLANE | PLACE | DATE |
| Paulhan | 4,164 feet | Farman biplane | Los Angeles | Jan. 12, 1910 |
| Olieslaegers | 4,490 " | Blériot monoplane | Brussels | July 30, " |
| Brookins | 4,503 " | Wright biplane | Indianapolis | July 16, " |
| Latham | 4,658 " | Antoinette monoplane | Rheims | July 7, " |
| Chavez | 5,850 " | Blériot monoplane | Blackpool | Aug. 3, " |
| Morane | 6,691 " | Blériot monoplane | Havre | Aug. 29, " |
| Morane | 8,469 " | Blériot monoplane | Havre | Sept. 2, " |
| Chavez | 8,790 " | Blériot monoplane | Issy, Paris | Sept. 8, " |
| Drexel, A. | 9,450 " | Blériot monoplane | Philadelphia | Oct. 31, " |
| Johnstone | 9,714 " | Wright biplane | Belmont Park | Nov. 23, " |
| Legagneux | 10,746 " | Blériot monoplane | Pau | Dec. 9, " |
| Hoxsey, A. | 11,476 " | Wright biplane | Los Angeles | Dec. 26, " |
DISTANCE AND ENDURANCE FLIGHTS
Then, too, there was the great London to Manchester race for the $50,000 offered by Lord Northcliffe, owner of the London Daily Mail. This was one of the most exciting contests of the year, not only because of the difficulties of the trip, but also because of the nip and tuck finish between the two contestants.
Claude Grahame-White had just purchased a Farman biplane, and hearing that Paulhan was hurrying across the Atlantic from the United States to try for the prize himself, the Englishman announced that he would start as soon as his machine could be set up. He had had but little experience with the biplane, as always before that time he had used a Blériot, but nevertheless, in spite of the advice of his friends to wait, Grahame-White started on the 183-mile flight on the morning of April 23d in the teeth of a high wind. According to Grahame-White's own account of the flight he was buffeted about so unmercifully by the wind that several times he thought he would have to descend. At the same time the cold was so intense that he suffered agonies. He reached his first stop at Rugby in safety, though so cold he had to be lifted from his seat, but soon after taking the air again the gale rose to such a pitch that he was forced to land. He went to a hotel to rest and wait for the wind to abate, but while there the gale tipped over his biplane, smashing it so badly that the aviator had to give up and take his machine back to London practically to be rebuilt.
Meanwhile Paulhan had reached England and was rushing his workmen night and day to get his aeroplane set up before Grahame-White could complete his repairs and make a fresh start.
Finally, with the wind still blowing a gale, Paulhan started for Manchester. Grahame-White heard of this at 6:30 in the evening, but manfully started after his competitor and flew 60 miles, when he was finally forced to land in the dark. Determined to remain in the race, he started again about three o'clock in the morning with the intention of trying to catch up with the daring Frenchman. Besides the bitter cold, it was so dark that the Englishman could not see whether he was flying high or low or even toward Manchester. The danger of this kind of flying he knew was very great, because if his engine failed him he would have had to come to earth anywhere he happened to light, as likely on a church steeple or in a lake as on a level spot. Of this famous flight Grahame-White wrote in his book, "The Story of the Aeroplane":
"My start was really something in the nature of a confused jumble. Faint lights swept away on either side as my machine moved across the ground. I could not judge my ascent at all, on account of the darkness. But I elevated as quickly as possible, and got away from the ground smartly.
"Directly I was at a respectable height, I could see the lights of the railway station very distinctly. I headed toward them. Looking directly down, I found that I could distinguish nothing on the ground below me. It was all a black smudge. I flew right over the lights of the railway station—and as I was doing so my engine began to miss fire. It was certainly a very uncomfortable moment—one of the most uncomfortable I have ever experienced.
"But, very fortunately for me, after a momentary spluttering, the engine picked up again, and fired properly. I had begun to sink toward the ground, upon which I knew I could have picked out no landing place in the darkness. As soon as my engine began to do its work again, however, I rose and continued my flight smoothly."
With the dawn came a terrific wind which forced the aviator to land near Polesworth. While waiting for the wind to abate the Englishman and his friends heard Paulhan had reached Manchester and won the prize.
Of Paulhan's famous flight, one of the men who was aboard the special train following Paulhan, according to Mr. Grahame-White, said:
"I do not think I have ever seen a machine roll about in the air as his did. He was, we could see, incessantly at work. One wind gust after another struck the machine and it literally reeled under the shock.
"Up and down it went, and from side to side. Paulhan's pluck and determination were remarkable. I do not think that any other man could have kept on with such determination as he displayed. It was a strange thing to see how the wind got worse and worse as the airman flew on."
But these feats that startled the world in 1910 would not cause a ripple of enthusiasm now, since the North American Continent has been crossed by aeroplane; since the trip from Boston to Washington and from St. Louis to New York has been made; since a machine has stayed in the air a whole day, or more than eight and a half hours, since a dozen passengers have been carried half a dozen miles and since the development of the hydro-aeroplane.
Copyright, by Brown Brothers, N. Y.
CHAVEZ ON HIS FATAL FLIGHT ACROSS THE ALPS
THE LATE CALBRAITH P. RODGERS, TRANS-CONTINENTAL FLIER
This picture was taken just after Rodgers had picked himself up after one of the many smash-ups of his aeroplane during his ocean to ocean flight.
Of course it hasn't all been the winning of prizes and the cheering of crowds, for, as we all know, there has been a tragic side to aviation. Up to the summer of 1912 more than 150 persons had met death in aeroplane accidents. To analyze all these accidents would require a whole book, but experts agree that in a great many cases they were the result of carelessness on the part of the pilot. Of course there were other causes, such as the collapse of the wings, the breaking of stays, the overturning by wind gusts, "holes in the air," the explosion of the motor, the failure of the motor at a critical time, or the collapse of the aviator, but authorities declare that many of these can be prevented by the use of proper care by the designers, manufacturers, and pilots of the air vehicles.
Two of the most tragic of the recent air fatalities were the deaths of Arch. Hoxsey and Rodgers at Los Angeles, the former in December, 1910, and the latter in April, 1912. Hoxsey had just set a world's record for altitude in his Wright biplane, while Rodgers only a few months before his death had completed a transcontinental flight and made a world's record.
Several women aviators also were killed in 1912, including Miss Harriet Quimby, one of the first American women to take up flying. Miss Quimby's machine fell with her in Boston while she was making an exhibition flight.
The 1911 death roll of American aviators included: Lieutenant Kelly, U. S. A.; A. Hartle, Los Angeles; Kreamer, Badger and Johnstone, Chicago; Frisbie, Norton, Kan.; Castellana, Mansfield, Pa.; Miller, Troy, Ohio; Clarke, Garden City, N. Y.; Dixon, Spokane, Wash.; Ely, Macon, Ga.; and Professor Montgomery, Santa Clara, Cal., whose early experiments are held in such high esteem by scientists.
Just as 1910 was the year for record-breaking aeroplane contests, 1911 was the year that proved the aeroplane a machine with a greater and more important use than that of a very exciting and a very expensive sport. Probably the most astounding developments in the world of aviation in 1911 were the experiments of the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, which showed that man has come very near to solving the problem of true soaring flight. We will look more closely at the experiments in a later chapter.
Of much greater practical use was the development of the hydro-aeroplane by Glenn Curtiss. His lead in this was quickly followed by the Wrights and most of the European makers.
The year 1911 saw the aeroplane employed for the first time in the world's history in actual warfare. When the revolution was raging in Mexico in February, 1911, the Diaz Army sent Rene Simon in a Blériot monoplane to make a scouting trip over the camp of the insurrectos. A little later on Lieutenant Foulois of the American Signal Service, whose name will be remembered in connection with the Fort Myer experiments, sailed over and about the camp of the mobilized American Army at San Antonio, Texas, while the Mexican revolution was in progress just across the American boundary line.
Next came the use of the aeroplane for scouting by the Italian Army in its invasion of Tripoli. All of these expeditions showed that the aeroplane can be used more successfully in war for scouting than as a means for dropping explosives. Of course there have been many experiments conducted by aviators in dropping paper bombs, but army officers both in the United States and abroad are not agreed as to the success of such projects.
Another of the important military experiments has been the equipping of aeroplanes with wireless apparatus so that a wireless operator in the machine with the aviator could send and receive brief messages such as would describe the position and strength of an enemy in war time. Also many aviators have taken up with them photographers who have taken accurate photographs of both the still and motion variety of the country over which they were passing. Of course the armies of the world are building guns which will carry to a great altitude as a defence from aerial attack.
Although the first country to adopt aeroplanes for use by its army, the United States is now far behind other nations in its aviation squads. The United States Signal Corps owns only a few Wright and Curtiss biplanes, with only a small number of officers who know how to fly them. France has an extensive fleet of several hundred aeroplanes and a small army of aviators, while Germany has established a school for aviation where sixty or seventy officers are always being instructed in flying the various types of machines. The German Army has now more than one hundred aeroplanes, besides many dirigible balloons. The British Government has not gone so far, but has conducted some interesting experiments in which Claude Grahame-White was one of the leaders.
The latest things in the aeroplane, however, are always expected to be brought out at the French Army tests, and several machines that were first exhibited in this way will be described a little later on.
But not only in war is the aeroplane being developed, but also in the greater work of peace, because the aeroplane enthusiasts expect that in the near future the art will be developed to such a degree of safety that regular systems of passenger traffic can be installed. Besides this, the aeroplane is the fastest mode of travelling now known, and it may be used for the carrying of mail. It was only in the summer of 1911 that the first aeroplane mail route of the United States was established between the aviation field in Garden City, L. I., and the United States post-office at Mineola, several miles away. Daily throughout the meet at Garden City Captain Beck and Earle L. Ovington carried a sack of officially stamped and sealed mail from the post-office on the field to the postal station at Mineola. The first sack was handed to Beck by Postmaster-General Hitchcock. Before this, mail had been carried by aeroplane in England, but not on a regularly established route.
Also the aeroplane has been pressed into service by deputy sheriffs seeking criminals and by searching parties hunting for lost persons. The former was done in Los Angeles when a gang of desperadoes escaped into the California desert and an aeroplane soared over the sagebrush in an effort to locate them, while the latter was done near New York after duck hunters had got lost in a storm on great South Bay, and near New Orleans when an aviation student skimmed over Lake Pontchartrain and located the body of a man drowned there.
These are some of the useful developments of the aeroplane. Of course there have been many spectacular achievements such as the trip of Calbraith P. Rodgers, a comparatively inexperienced aviator, from Sheepshead Bay, N. Y., to Long Beach, Cal., across the whole American continent; the trips of Harry N. Atwood from Boston to Washington and from St. Louis to New York via Chicago, Buffalo and Albany; the trip of Vedrines from Paris to Madrid, across the Pyrenees Mountains, and the terrific speed of about 155 miles an hour, or more than two and a half miles a minute, maintained by Vedrines for eighty miles. Just to think of such a speed would take the ordinary person's breath away, but the aviators speak of it calmly and say it won't be long before it will be a common thing for aeroplanes to make a speed of 200 miles an hour, about twice as fast as the fastest automobile has ever burned up the road. Then, too, there was the winning of the James Gordon Bennett Cup and prize in England by C. F. Weyman, an American who flew a Nieuport monoplane equipped with a 100-horsepower Gnome motor. It would be impossible in our space to give a list of the contests, races, circuit races and endurance tests of the year. Not only were aeroplanes seen in the United States, but they were flown in South America, Africa, Australia, Japan, India and China. The Sphinx in the Great Sahara Desert, the Panama Canal, Niagara Falls, the Chinese Wall, the Far Eastern temples to Buddha, and the Islands of the Antipodes all have been circled by the dauntless birdmen, as well as the Goddess of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
Young Atwood started from Boston without much ado on June 30, 1911, sailed 93 miles to New London, Conn., and the day following reeled off the 112 miles to New York as easily as he would walk across the street. The Fourth of July he went to Atlantic City; July 10th he sailed from there to Baltimore, a distance of 122 miles, which was made in four hours and a half; and the day after that finished up by sailing into Washington, D. C.
This young aviator still was not satisfied and shipped his aeroplane to St. Louis, from where on August 14th he started for New York. His longest single flight was made from St. Louis to Chicago, 283 miles in 6 hours and 32 minutes. Flying an average distance of 105-1/2 miles a day for the remaining eleven days, he completed the 1,266 miles on August 25th. His total flying time was 28 hours and 53 minutes, and his average speed 43.9 miles per hour.
Far more exciting was the record-breaking flight of the ill-fated Rodgers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He had a number of severe falls, but his determination carried him through in spite of everything. His machine was a specially constructed Wright biplane model Ex, something of a mixture between the regular racing and passenger carrying types. Starting from Sheepshead Bay, N. Y., on September 17th, the young giant, who had only learned to fly that summer, was off on the longest trip ever attempted by a birdman. After being on the go for forty-nine days, he sailed over the coast towns to Long Beach on the Pacific Ocean. He was actually in the air the equivalent of 3 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes; made an average speed of 51 miles an hour, and his longest single flight was from Sanderson to Sierra Blanca, Texas, on October 28th, a distance of 231 miles. He crossed three ranges of mountains, two deserts and the continental plain; he wrecked and rebuilt his machine four times and replaced some parts of it eight times; he rode through darkness and wind and rain and lightning, at the heart of a thunder cloud. Once his engine blew up while he was 4,000 feet high and he had to glide to earth. A special train with duplicate parts, a complete repair-shop, and mechanics followed as he winged his way up the Hudson across New York State, across the plains of the Middle West, down through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, across the Arizona and California deserts, over the Pacific range, and finally to the western ocean. His worst accident came at Compton, Cal., on the last stage of his journey, when he was so badly injured that he was laid up twenty-eight days. This occurred on November 12th, but, persevering to the end, Rodgers arose as soon as he was able and sailed to the ocean on December 10th.
Rodgers remained in California the rest of the winter, giving many exhibitions of his daring and skill, only to meet his death while holding the world's record. On April 3, 1912, while 7,000 persons at Long Beach, near Los Angeles, watched his evolutions, his machine tipped forward. The crowd cheered, thinking it a daring dive, but became silent when they saw the aviator had lost control. From a height of 200 feet the biplane plunged into the surf where the water was only two feet deep. When the people reached the broken machine Rodgers was dead—his neck broken. There was nothing to show the cause of the biplane's dive. The spot where Rodgers was killed is only a few yards from the one where he completed his transcontinental flight, and where the citizens of Los Angeles planned to erect a monument to his achievement.
Most boys are perfectly familiar with the important events of 1912 in aviation, which the scientist and his young friend talked over so eagerly, for, of course, the papers are full of them, and aviation meets are a common thing now in nearly every city of the country.
The development of the hydro-aeroplane was probably the chief work of the inventors for the year, but with it came many devices designed to prevent the appalling loss of life while the art of flying is being perfected. One of them is a parachute fixed to the top of the plane, which the aviator is supposed to open in case his machine gets beyond control. In tests aviators have descended to earth in these parachutes without injury. Also a number of automatic balancing and stabilizing devices have been brought out.
Frank Coffyn's feats in and about New York Bay during the winter of 1912 with his Wright hydro-aeroplane gave that city the best idea of the success of the aeroplane in and over water it had ever had. He flew from and alighted on the water and great ice floes in the bay as easily as aviators would fly from a clear landing ground on a calm day. It was from Coffyn's machine that the picture of the Statue of Liberty was taken.
The world saw the first hydro-aeroplane meet in March of 1911 off the coast of the little European principality of Monaco. Seven aviators competed for the rich prizes, and, although the Maurice Farman machine won the greatest number of points, the Curtiss hydros showed the greatest speed, and alighted with perfect ease in breakers four feet high.
Far more important than the winning of prize contests is the latest achievement of Glen Curtiss in perfecting his "flying boat," pictures of which are shown opposite page [23]. Curtiss describes this aeroplane as a combination between a speed motor boat, a yacht and a flying machine. Speaking of the new plane, he said recently: "With this craft the dangers common to land aeroplanes are eliminated and safe flying is here. It will develop a new and popular sport which will be known as aerial yachting." The most important factor in this machine is its safety, but it also is speedy, for in its official tests at Hammondsport it developed 50 miles an hour as a motor boat and 60 miles an hour as an aeroplane. The boat is 26 feet long and 3 feet wide. The planes are 30 feet wide and 5-1/2 feet deep. The rudders are attached to the rear; the propeller, driven by an 80-horsepower motor, is at the front.
Before we go on to other inventions let us look closely at a few of the aeroplanes so well known to-day, so that when we see them at the meets we can distinguish the different makes.
CHAPTER III
AEROPLANES TO-DAY
OUR BOY FRIEND AND THE SCIENTIST LOOK OVER MODERN AEROPLANES AND FIND GREAT IMPROVEMENTS OVER THOSE OF A FEW YEARS AGO—A MODEL AEROPLANE.
EVERY effort of the aeroplane inventors these days is bent toward making the power flier useful—a faithful servant to man in his day-to-day life—and to this end greater carrying capacity is one of the chief objects," said the scientist one day in answer to a question from his young friend as to what the future of aviation would be.
"No one can tell what the future will bring forth," he continued. "You or one of your friends might invent the ideal aeroplane. There is one way of telling how the wind blows, though, and that is by watching the new developments of aeroplanes very carefully. Let's look at some of them."
Of course it was impossible for the boy to study every improvement or every make of aeroplane, but the scientist pointed out a few examples that served to show how science is trying to improve on aviation as we know it to-day.
The boy's friend said that probably the most wonderful accomplishment in the art of air navigation since power fliers became an accomplished fact was the work of Orville Wright in the fall of 1911 with his new glider, which he tested at the Wright brothers' old experiment station at Kitty Hawk, N. C.
"Never before in the history of aviation, so far as is known," said the scientist, "has man come so near to the true soaring flight which we have seen is the third stage of aeroplaning."
Not only did this wonderful glider sail into the wind and reach an altitude of 200 feet, but, under the control of the pilot, it stayed in the air 10 minutes and 1 second, most of the time hovering over one spot, without the use of any propelling device.
On the day of the great test the glider was taken to the top of Kill Devil Hill, which is 110 feet high, and while the wind was roaring through the canvas at 42 miles an hour the machine was launched. To those unaccustomed to the actions of gliders it would have seemed that the engineless biplane would be blown backward over the edge of the hill. Instead, it shot forward and upward into the teeth of the hurricane. The force of the wind on the planes, which were presented diagonally to it, caused the flier to rise and go ahead by just about the same principle that a ship can sail almost into the teeth of the wind by having her sails set at the proper angle.
When it had reached the altitude of 200 feet it stopped motionless and to those below who saw Orville Wright sitting calmly in the pilot's seat it seemed that some unseen hand was holding him aloft. Suddenly the pilot pressed a lever and the glider darted 250 feet to the left, returned to her original position, sank to within a few feet of the hillside and hovered there for two minutes.
The Wrights had been working on the principles involved for a long time and at the testing grounds were Orville Wright, his brother Loren, who up to that time had not been known to the world of aviation, and Alexander Ogilvy, an English aviator.
After the remarkable test Orville Wright was asked, "Have you solved real bird flight?"
"No," he replied, "but we have learned something about it."
The aviator went on to explain that had he been up 3,000 feet or so, where the wind currents are always strong, he probably could have stayed up there all night, or as long as he cared to.
This greatest of all feats of soaring was accomplished in a glider that looked to the ordinary person very much like the modern Wright biplane without the engine. There were skids but they were very low. In general outline the machine was composed of two main planes, a vertical vane set out in front, two vertical planes at the rear of the tail, and behind these the horizontal plane. The details of the construction of the glider were not made public and only a few persons saw it, but from all accounts the curve of the main planes was much greater than is usual, thus gaining the glider a greater degree of support from the air, and the planes were capable of being warped much more than in the ordinary Wright biplane. The vertical vane in front, which does not appear on any of the Wright power fliers, was a foot wide and five feet tall. It acted as a keel and gave the machine greater side-to-side stability because the wind passing at a high speed to each side of it tended to keep it vertical.
In working out a biplane that could rise from or alight on the water, Glenn Curtiss practically doubled the usefulness of aeroplanes. The experiments, conducted under the auspices of the United States Navy so impressed the officers that several have been added to its equipment. Curtiss has been experimenting with hydro-aeroplanes for several years, but before actually completing one he conducted a number of experiments with ordinary biplanes in the vicinity of Hampton Roads, Va., in 1911, to prove them available for use on battleships. Finally, Lieutenant Ely flew from the deck of the cruiser Birmingham over the water and to a convenient landing spot on land.
Later on Curtiss went to California to perfect his hydro-aeroplane, and while conducting the work Lieutenant Ely made a flight from shore to the deck of the battleship Pennsylvania which was lying in San Francisco Harbour. These two incidents were more in the nature of "stunts" than developments, but they showed what an aeroplane could do if attached to a battleship fleet as a scout.
Even more convincing was the proof when Curtiss finally worked out a form of wooden float which was put between the mounting wheels. The float was flat-bottomed with an upward inclination at the prow so that when skimming over the water the tendency was to rise from the surface rather than to cut through it. Small floats at the outer tips of the lower main plane helped to keep the machine on an even balance while floating at rest upon the water. The wheels served their regular purpose if the machine started from or alighted upon land.
The experiments were conducted on San Diego Bay, and it was only after long and patient labour that the work of Mr. Curtiss and his military associates was rewarded with success. In the course of the experiments he tried a triplane, which had great lifting power, but this later was abandoned in favour of the regular biplane fitted with a float. After the machine had been perfected, Curtiss flew his hydro-aeroplane out into the bay to the cruiser Pennsylvania, upon which Ely had landed a month before, and after landing on the water at the cruiser's side was pulled up to her deck and later was put back into the water from where he sailed to camp. The machine was named the Triad because it had conquered air, land, and water.
Of the machine Curtiss says: "I believe the hydro-aeroplane represents one of the longest and most important strides in aviation. It robs the aeroplane of many of its dangers, and as an engine of warfare widens its scope of utility beyond the bounds of the most vivid imagination. The hydro-aeroplane can fly 60 miles an hour, skim the water at 50 miles and run over the earth at 35 miles."
It was not long after the Curtiss hydro-aeroplane had been successfully demonstrated, before all the other leading makers brought out air craft that could sail from and alight on water as well as on land. The Wright hydro-aeroplane, which is equipped with two long air-tight metal floats instead of one, has achieved great success in the United States. In Europe all the leading biplane types are now made with hydro-aeroplane equipment, and flying over water became as popular last year as flying over land did in 1910.
The first American monoplane to be equipped with the floats of a hydro-plane was shown by the "Queen" company at the New York Aero show in May, 1912. It was called an aero boat as the front part of the fuselage was enclosed like a boat and the operator sat in it, under the wings. The propeller was at the rear and there was a small pontoon at each end of the wings to keep it on an even keel when stationary in the water. A short time after this the Curtiss company turned out the flying boat which was described on page [90].
THE WORLD'S LONGEST GLIDE
This photograph shows the new Wright glider, driven by Orville Wright, being held above Kill Devil Hill, N. C., in the face of a high wind, for 10 minutes 1 second.
THE END OF A GLIDE
After remaining aloft the new glider was allowed gently to settle to earth.
LANDING ON A WARSHIP
Lieutenant Ely is here shown landing in a Curtiss biplane on the platform built on the deck of the cruiser Birmingham, at anchor in Hampton Roads.
Courtesy of the Scientific American
BOARDING A BATTLESHIP
Glenn Curtiss being hoisted aboard the battleship Pennsylvania in San Diego Harbour after alighting alongside in his hydro-aeroplane.
In general outline the aeroplanes in use to-day differ greatly from those seen several years ago, but the difference is in form rather than in principle. There have been many improvements, of course, in construction, control of the fliers, and in the powerful engines that drive them. In fact the tendency of aeroplane builders has been to adopt the successful devices on other machines rather than to work out original ones.
The most noticeable change in the present-day aeroplanes is the way in which builders nowadays are enclosing the bodies and landing framework in canvas or even light metal, so that they shall offer as little resistance to the air as possible. It gives the machines the appearance of being armoured, as will be noticed from the pictures of the new planes, so the term has come to be used in that sense, although, of course, the covering would not protect them against bullets. This armour has become particularly popular with the designers who are making aeroplanes for the French Army, and at the recent military tests in France most of the machines were covered to some degree, and many of them looked for all the world like great long-bodied gulls or mammoth flying fishes.
Several aeroplanes have been equipped with twin motors and double steering systems so that either or both could be used. This, of course, is a great advantage in case one fails. Also designers are figuring on wing surfaces that can be reefed or telescoped for better stability as well as wings that can be folded for easier transportation.
Experts do not agree on the respective merits of the two great general types of aeroplanes—that is, monoplanes and biplanes. Some claim that the monoplane is the best and others that the biplane is the most successful flier. Records show that so far monoplanes are the faster of the two types, but biplanes can be fitted with hydro-aeroplane floats, whereas it is impractical with most monoplanes. Many declare the biplane to have the greater lifting power, but the Blériot "Aero-Bus" has carried a jolly family party of eight without difficulty. Each type has its champions as to safety, reliability and endurance, but time will have to decide the question.