(2) Practical wireless covering knowledge useful to a pilot.
(3) All ground signals as given on new Artillery Observation card, 40-W.O.-2584.
Thus every step in the education of the flier was provided for and thus the United States turned out over 10,000 aviators.
CHAPTER V
AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENT, 1903 TO 1918
ADER’S EXPERIMENTS—MAXIM’S MULTIPLANE—DUMONT’S AEROPLANE—WRIGHTS’ 1908 PLANE—VOISIN PUSHER—BLERIOT’S MONOPLANE—AVRO TRIPLANE—FARMAN’S AILERONS—OTHER TYPES
Although the Wright brothers made their first flight in a heavier-than-air machine in December, 1903, it was not until September 15, 1904, that Orville Wright, flying the Wright biplane, succeeded in making the first turn, September 25 before they made the first circle, and October 4, 1905, before they managed to stay in the air for over half an hour. Moreover, it was not until 1908 that they made their first public flights.
Long before the Wrights first flew at Kitty Hawk military men realized the value of observation from the air, and balloons attached to cables had been used for that purpose in the Franco-Prussian and Boer wars for discovering the movement and disposition of troops. Clement Ader, however, was the first to succeed in securing an appropriation for the construction of a heavier-than-air machine which was to fly in any direction like a bird. In 1890 he induced the French Government to appropriate $100,000 for the construction of such an engine. After many experiments his machine failed to get off the ground, and in 1897, after seven years of hard work, the French Government refused to appropriate any more money.
In 1905, however, as soon as the same government heard of the sustained manœuvred flight of 33 minutes, 17 seconds, done by the Wrights, they negotiated for the acquisition of the machine, provided it could attain a height of 3,000 feet. But at that time the Wrights had not flown over three hundred feet, nor risen above one hundred feet, and could not promise to fill the French requirements.
The British Government had also given Sir Hiram Maxim an appropriation for constructing a flying-machine about the same time that the French Government was financing Ader. Maxim built one of the multiplane type, measuring 120 feet, equipped with two steam-engines of 170 horse-power and weighing 7,000 pounds, but like Ader’s experiment it never got off the ground.