Three-quarters View of a Flight at Simms Station, November 16, 1904.
CHAPTER VIII
SPORTS OF THE AIR, AEROPLANES
ANY contest of air-ships makes excellent sport. A city to city flight by aëroplane, for instance, attracts greater crowds than could any procession or royal progress in the past. The aëronautical tournaments and meets already have been held from Egypt in the East, to California in the west. Let an aëroplane soar higher than any has risen before, stay aloft longer, or make a new record for speed or distance, and the news is instantly cabled around the world.
All who have gone aloft tell us that flying is the greatest sport in the world. The free, rapid glide we all enjoy in skating or coasting becomes speedier and smoother in an air-ship, without exerting the least effort. It is this sense of rapid motion which has made the automobile so popular, and the air-ship improves upon the automobile, just as the automobile improved on the lumbering coaches of the past. Once aloft, the aërial passenger glides with the swallow’s swiftness. “Now,” cried an enthusiastic Frenchwoman, after her first aëroplane flight, “now I understand why the birds sing.”
As the aëroplane is brought under better control, we will see these contests grow more and more exciting. The development of the new craft has been so rapid, we have come to expect so much from it, that the exhibition at which the world marvels to-day, becomes the commonplace of to-morrow.
The early flights of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk failed to attract much attention. There had been so many announcements of successful flying machines that many were sceptical, especially in Europe, and the world did not realize that the great day, so long promised, was dawning. It was not till the Wrights flew in North Carolina that the world began to take the matter seriously.
Every movement of the curious new craft was closely watched thereafter. When one of the brothers went aloft the world knew it, and crowds stood patiently before bulletin boards in New York, London, or Sidney, to count the minutes. When he succeeded in staying aloft for an hour, the waiting crowds in many widely separated cities, broke into simultaneous cheers. Next came the trip to Pau, in France, and other European cities, and day by day the flights became longer and higher. The brothers made double progress, for while one was in Southern Europe increasing the time aloft, the other was flying higher and higher in Germany. In these early days no attempt was made to fly across the country. The aëroplane merely flew around and around some large field, and the distance traversed was calculated more or less accurately.
After the triumphant return of the Wrights to America, a cross-country run was made at Fort Myer, to show the Government that the aëroplane was more than a toy. A flight of twenty miles was made over a rough, mountainous country and several deep valleys. The air of the valleys drew the machine down with a dangerous rush, but the aviator pluckily worked his way higher, and passed over it in safety.
Shortly after this, during the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York, Mr. Wilbur Wright rose from Governor’s Island in New York harbor, encircled the Statue of Liberty, and again sailed high above the river north to Grant’s Tomb, and returned to the starting point. Each of these feats was, in a peculiar sense, record breaking.