[MECHANICAL FLIGHT.]
Few, if any, problems have so strongly influenced the imagination and exercised the ingenuity of mankind as that of aërial navigation. There is something in our nature that rebels against being condemned to the condition of “featherless bipeds” when birds, bats, and even minute insects have the whole realm of air and the wide heavens open to them. Who has not, like Solomon, pondered upon “the way of a bird in the air” with feelings of envy and regret that he is chained to earth by his gross body; contrasting our laboured movements from point to point of the earth’s surface with the easy gliding of the feathered traveller? The unrealised wish has found expression in legends of Dædalus, Pegasus, in the “flying carpet” of the fairy tale, and in the pages of Jules Verne, in which last the adventurous Robur on his “Clipper of the Clouds” anticipates the future in a most startling fashion.
Aeromobilism—to use its most modern title—is regarded by the crowd as the mechanical counterpart of the Philosopher’s Stone or the Elixir of Life; a highly desirable but unattainable thing. At times this incredulity is transformed by highly-coloured press reports into an equally unreasonable readiness to believe that the conquest of the air is completed, followed by a feeling of irritation that facts are not as they were represented in print.
The proper attitude is of course half-way between these extremes. Reflection will show us that money, time, and life itself would not have been freely and ungrudgingly given or risked by many men—hard-headed, practical men among them—in pursuit of a Will-o’-the-Wisp, especially in a century when scientific calculation tends always to calm down any too imaginative scheme. The existing state of the aërial problem may be compared to that of a railway truck which an insufficient number of men are trying to move. Ten men may make no impression on it, though they are putting out all their strength. Yet the arrival of an eleventh may enable them to overcome the truck’s inertia and move it at an increasing pace.
Every new discovery of the scientific application of power brings us nearer to the day when the truck will move. We have metals of wonderful strength in proportion to their weight; pigmy motors containing the force of giants; a huge fund of mechanical experience to draw upon; in fact, to paraphrase the Jingo song, “We’ve got the things, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too”—but we haven’t as yet got the machine that can mock the bird like the flying express mocks the strength and speed of horses.
The reason of this is not far to seek. The difficulties attending the creation of a successful flying-machine are immense, some unique, not being found in aquatic and terrestrial locomotion.
In the first place, the airship, flying-machine, aerostat, or whatever we please to call it, must not merely move, but also lift itself. Neither a ship nor a locomotive is called upon to do this. Its ability to lift itself must depend upon either the employment of large balloons or upon sheer power. In the first case the balloon will, by reason of its size, be unmanageable in a high wind; in the second case, a breakdown in the machinery would probably prove fatal.
Even supposing that our aerostat can lift itself successfully, we encounter the difficulties connected with steering in a medium traversed by ever-shifting currents of air, which demands of the helmsman a caution and capacity seldom required on land or water. Add to these the difficulties of leaving the ground and alighting safely upon it; and, what is more serious than all, the fact that though success can be attained only by experiment, experiment is in this case extremely expensive and risky, any failure often resulting in total ruin of the machine, and sometimes in loss of life. The list of those who have perished in the search for the power of flight is a very long one.
Yet in spite of these obstacles determined attempts have been and are being made to conquer the air. Men in a position to judge are confident that the day of conquest is not very far distant, and that the next generation may be as familiar with aerostats as we with motor-cars. Speculation as to the future is, however, here less profitable than a consideration of what has been already done in the direction of collecting forces for the final victory.