“The launching car was released at 4.45 p. m. . . . The car was set in motion and the propellers revolved rapidly, the engine working perfectly, but there was something wrong with the launching. The rear guy-post seemed to drag, bringing the rudder down on the launching ways, and a crashing, rending sound, followed by the collapse of the rear wings, showed that the machine had been wrecked in the launching, just how, it was impossible for me to see.”
March 3, 1904, the Board stated that it was not “prepared to make an additional allotment at this time for continuing the work,” whereupon Doctor Langley requested that arrangements be made for a distribution of the aerodrome material procured jointly from funds allotted by the Board and by the Smithsonian Institution. Doctor Langley was informed that all of the material would be left in his possession and available for any future work that he might be able to carry on in connection with the problem of mechanical flight.
That this refusal of the Board of Ordnance and Fortification to render further assistance to the work was due to the fear that such action would result in a curtailment of their appropriation by Congress is clearly shown by the following extract from the official report of the Board on November 14, 1908, to the Secretary of War:
AERIAL NAVIGATION
For a number of years the Board has been interested in the subject of aerial navigation, and as long ago as 1898 made allotments to carry on experiments with a machine of the heavier-than-air type, under the direction of the late Dr. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who had made exhaustive experiments in aerodynamics,[48] and who had demonstrated the practicability of mechanical flight by the successful operation of engine-driven models.
The many problems and mechanical difficulties met with in the development of the full-size machine have been set forth in the various published statements[49] [p280] of Doctor Langley, and the unsuccessful outcome of the experiments is too well known to require reiteration. It may be said, however, that at the time of the trials the Board was of the opinion that the failure of the aerodrome to successfully operate was in no manner due to the machine itself, but solely to accidents in the launching apparatus, which caused the wreck of the aerodrome before it was in free flight.
Doctor Langley considered it desirable to continue the experiments, but the Board deemed it advisable, largely in view of the adverse opinions expressed in Congress and elsewhere, to suspend operations in this direction.
These adverse opinions expressed in Congress were wholly due to the bitter criticism by the newspapers, whose hostility was engendered by Mr. Langley’s refusal to admit their representatives to the shops and house-boat where the work was in progress. Mr. Langley had at all times tried to make his position in the matter clear to the newspapers, but, on August 19, 1903, at the time of one of his visits to the experimental station near Widewater, Va., he found the newspaper representatives so persistent in their misrepresentations of his reasons for excluding them that he gave out the following statement, which was published at that time:
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, WASHINGTON, D. C.,
August 19, 1903.