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.