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Show B ST U D I E S OF THRILLING LIVES raps I III5' yM lAAyl H J Te Wright '4$ t In England today if the weather is 13 fright and you nvish to go ballooning, -.8' ;tvou simply telephone to your club: V "Duhvkh Balloon dub, arc 3-011 "If, I there ?" . "T j "Yes. sir." jy ''Well, please have Number Sis ready J at 3 o'clock, promptly." pair I "Very well, sir. Any thine: else, mad SlV(0ht yes. We'll havo tea, of course, dinri in the baboon; havo tho thermal bot-n7s bot-n7s files filled." QQ I i And so, promptly at i5 o'clock, you 6Tcl cooly leave this sordid earth, with ,.4 .fits "fogs and noises and dirt and dis-6uE dis-6uE jr. cord, and for a space j'ou livo and f a! r breathe- in another world, a moat wou-;, wou-;, Jdurful world, interesting, exhilarating, F7fi innA inspiring dangerous, too 7 Yes, T t'and not half so dangerous as autoing, 1 K $aud many other sports. ii $ Wo havo no such balloon dubs in , -f America; but it can scarcely be said -. ilwt wo are behind Europe in the mat-v mat-v 'cr of aerial navigation. To prove this v ato your own satisfaction go up to the 5Q l'cw York Aero club some night and j ylisten. You will leave there quite con-? con-? ovinced ihat you are a very ordinary .. sort of earth-plodder and a century n,i iraoro or less behind tho times. LUUil. J A squarely built, well dressed busi-vided busi-vided vness man he is a very successful bro-t,vJ bro-t,vJ iCT downtown arrives and gravely fs .caIIs the Hub's attention to the fact (Jcijf vhat New York will soon ncod a station , (land parage for the uso of the Internals Interna-ls vtional Airship line. In fact, says ho, ' Jvfilancing earnestly over -his eyeglasses, ri tho need Is pressing, and ho advises -J .ihat steps toward that end be taken i; lUts night. Your sense of humor is spcedilv , Troltenwl and you. snicker aloud. , ; j5Vhercnpou several other substantial , .looking business men, and some pro H Lfessional men of note, and some ath-;Ietic ath-;Ietic looking men with tho lean, ncr-' ; jvous faces of close students, turn ; quickly and glare at you; and you . .i quickly subside, aware that it was not , - ; r.n. -oke at all. Then you begin to think; . ;r Tt is high time you did. Another .. ;nan is talking .now, giving an earnest i appreciation oC the country's lead in ilio- y "mcs aeronautic and concluding with ' .' :an apathetic statement, given half jl ;fPoloretically, as if it were too trite i to be of much valuo, that in a very few - i.voars aerial flicht will be a very com- j 'Jmon and orrlinary method of travel. ; Strange words are soundintr in your ather -JTS now "aviator," "aerocef." :.'i-.acrx cutvcs." "helicopters and or-SCep-, lhopter3," "moaoplanes and bi-solid bi-solid .W1"-3 : other winged oppressions buzz ., ' -abou yon and your mind crows hazy. ieatiyi ymt .yon have been lifted altogether ccnti! :'?-ut ? vour first flePfcu of ignorant in- -uu. significance, and before tho meeting ' : 5 over you aro quite ready to step from , itno window of this Eeventh story and , 1 jltly uracefuUy home. i T, . " s it.-,.11.1.5 ,Jot -ong ago that flying ina- jcnimsts were generally regarded as -1 rJ!Da;ics: mced. it is less than ,six ll 8v0Thf,aC that tIj0 -Gro club of New 1 ii0-,P9uEflt t a good idea to publish - Jfr rflet,P .of tho Wright brothers' ' : -i!iFtts "Cuing thereto the names .of -'u1 ie8s,et0 provc 10 tho skeptical pub-i"o pub-i"o that these things actually occurred. J : "cn.carae Orville Wright Js vonderful i iC0JQ!i at Washington, followed bv his . , (".orotner s achievements in France B 'rn6 so.-iujckb-. so unexpectedly that ' ;iJ,ubl15. Is 6tU1 gasping, thouch ad-fhati ad-fhati .H?Mnflt tbe ying machino is a I -.ttw-i -Practicable achievement. .! i1 ,ha,Ye tho story of Orvillo Wrinht's , thirst tlight at Washington from an eyo- 1 saw alo, the only of-I of-I i""8 rscord of ii the back of a long " y? po up?n .whicl1 aie Pencil marks V fl" ouns of ,I1V. sch as you would fancy ffso in a card game, and underneath a arf h?(atu".;'0.K. 0. Wright." - Hit,pcP1q freccrallv, the newspapers, even ' - J'-V department, bad so little faith J w,ri?-t,s success that so much, as ' 5aecenry rccorder ot deemed l"lcro was .ist il handful of ob-sliP. ob-sliP. 'w0? ,nrc,s.ct, in fact, wlicn W.rieht ii c ivenT.,di,s "'achinist, a few soldiers ;ClI.aS' froMFort aryor and myself. "T took this euvelope from my pock- ot and began to tabulate the revolutions revolu-tions made. Tt was a calm, clear day and Wright was flying gracefully, easily, without a hitch. "A half-hour went swiftly by then a quarter then ten minutes "I realized that an event of world-wido world-wido importance was taking place above me, and I felt tho peculiar elation ela-tion a senso of importance, too incident inci-dent to the beholder in such circumstances. circum-stances. ilThe machinist was immovable, gazing upward with open mouth. Tho soldiers, too, stood like statues. They knew, ' 'Sudden' one man could stand the strain no longer. 'Whoop-pe!' lie yelled. :c 'Shut up,' said the machinist, turning turn-ing on him savagely. And then there was siloucc, all of us looking up and turning our heads like automatons as tho aeronaut swept around in his circles. cir-cles. "The phone rang and I stopped back to answer it, still watching the flight. "A roporter was at the other end of tho wire. 'What's going on?' ho asked, in an uninterested way "''Wright is going !' I yelled triumphantly. tri-umphantly. " 4 My "God!' he gasped, and dropped the phone. Intense excitement fol-lowod fol-lowod in the city and tho telephone began be-gan jingling ceaselessly. I made no attempt to answer it. I was busily watching Wright, who was still in the air. "Suddenly a quick succession of 'honks' canio from the rear and an an tomobilo advance guard came spinning through tho parade' ground, bearing officials of-ficials from the war department, newspaper news-paper representatives and others. In a brief time the crowd filled tho grounds, livery one was at fever heat with excitement. Wright, who had just descended, was tho coolest of them all. 'Why, I expected it,' said he, simply." A few others "expected it." notably not-ably those earnest men at tho Aero club and some silout workers hero and there throughout the country who havo been active- for years along the sumo lines as the Wright brothers and who deserve, most of them, quite as much credit men like Captain Thomas Scott. Baldwin. Leo Stevens. Octave Chauutc, A. M. Herring, Israel Ludlow and A. V. Wilson. Wilson's work is most interesting; so, too, is the man himself. He is a gardener at Bar Harbor, Me. a good gardener, but only engaged at that trade as a. means to another end. lie makes money enough each summer to enable him to carry on his experiments during the winter; and he has been doing this !:inco 18S5. in a quiet way and asking no. aid or odds of any ono. Previous to 1SS5 and siuco his boyhood boy-hood days ho had been a parachutist if one may uso that word makiug about fourteen hundred jumps in all. I "See," said he, indicating his nose, "how wide that, bridge is!' The bridge of his nose, I saw, was almost j twice the normal width. "That comes from having the nostrils opened so many times with hot irons. "In .lumping, 1 lie paracbuto doesn't open for from threo hundred to five hundred feet. You're going pretty fast thou and there's torriblo roaring in your ears. vOu have to swallow hard to keep tho air passages open. Sometimes Some-times you can't and wheu you land you aro breathing only through your mouth, i Then the physician gets busy and burns a holo through the urmer nostrils, "You'll notice my Gugors, too drawn in, see, at tho .loiuts. Thar, comes from falling. I have a trick of landing land-ing on my hands and feet. It saves your bones. "There's a great deal in knowing how to fall. Tho birds learn that before be-fore they leavn to fly. Ever notico a young robin, ."just, out of tho nest how he goes 'Peepl ' wheu he first hits the ground'.' That 'peep' moans pain as well as surprise, and after that he learns how not to hurt himself. Then lie learns to fly. The Aeronaut By William Allen Johnston .r i. '1 Santos-Dumonfs Aeroplane. "After all, to my way of thinking, falling and flying " arc " very closehr j allied. Flight, in fact, is the control j of falling that's all, but that's a great deal. We arc just learning the first principles and putting them into practice. prac-tice. Woudcrful things will be done in tho near future." i Parachuting taught Wilson nian3' I moro first principles: opened his eyes, indeed, to the possibilities of aerial flight. One day in dropping some hand bills from his balloon lie noticed that a few of them glided easily and systematically, systemat-ically, while the others fluttered aimlessly aim-lessly in the uir. These few had been accidentally wet, about an inch from tho bottom. That circumstance taught him something about weight. n Again, he found that by running forward for-ward with a wide, light plane, inclined at a certain angle, he could suddenly reverse this plane and soar against tho wind. That gave him another practical prac-tical principle. At Bar Harbor he began sfud3ring birds and air currents in a crude wa.v, perhaps, but in a most practicaly, intimate inti-mate way. In fact, there is no theory in this man at all. He simply studies nature and then goes and does likewise. like-wise. He studied birds and dragon flies, which havo four wings instead of two, and ho got many interesting results. Ho found that a- hawk, when its legs are tied together, has a Jilting power in its wings of twenty-six pounds (no wonder they fly away with large fowls). But the same hawk, wheu its nock and head wero raado rigid with splints bound by a bic3"cle tape, could only fly in a straight lino and bur. a short distance. That taught him the- necessity of au oscillating motion in flight, and the sensitive sen-sitive automatic, adjustment a machine must havo in order to moot all air conditions con-ditions and bo propelled at will in every direction. "It's like riding a bicyclo over uneven un-even ground." said he. "An experienced experi-enced cyclist shifts bis handle bars subconsciously, automatically, or whatever what-ever you wish to-call it. "That's his iustinct of equilibrium applied by practice to one form of locomotion. Well, it's tho samo way witl flying. You must learn to keep your equilibrium and have a machine which will allow you to do so easily when traveling through uneven air currents." Continuing his experiments with birds, Wilson figured out their lifting power over square inch of wing surface, sur-face, and then he plucked tho feathers from their wings aud substituted artificial arti-ficial flying planes made of silk and delicate rattan strips, like a Japanese fan. These artificial wings were, as far as possible, exact reproductions in size and weight of tho natural ones, but tho birds could not fly with them so far or so well. Why? Wilson studied and found somo more interesting facts about equilibrium, oscillation and sensitive adjustment. ad-justment. To get his birds back Wilson employed em-ployed an intelligent water spaniel retriever. re-triever. Ono day this faithful animal was brought back to the shop by an irato woman, who loudly denounced tho inventor for his cruelty'to birds. "I looked up at her hat," said Wilson. Wil-son. "It was gayly decorated with an entire wing, and, picking up some of my pigeon feathers, I offered them to her. 'INext time you have a hat made,' said I, 'you won't have to kill another bird. I don't kill mine.' "That seemed to mako her all tho madder, and she said she would report me at once to the Society for the Prevention Pre-vention of Cruelty to Animals. "I was going to ask her which was tho more important ladies' hats or flying fly-ing machines. Then I remembered a saying of a friend of mine: 'In all mv lite,' said he, 'I've met but one woman who had reasoning powers, and she refused re-fused to uso them.' "' In studing the air currents Wilsou watched a Gold of waving grain from the top of a pino tree. He made rough maps, nnd, comparing these with river currents, he found much similarity. Then he set brush pile3 burning in a large open field and studied, tho vagaries of smoke from each. In winter ho stretched a cord over the surface of a lake and hung long streamers to it. "That gave mo a living picture, you might say, " said he, "of a wide cross section of air current. I kept records of it for an entire winter. Some doj'S I loaded the streamers with bird shot, a different amount of shot to each streamer, and this mado an excellent ex-cellent series of weight experiments. Weight is a very important thing in flying." added Wilson, "a main, fundamental funda-mental principle to both ovcrcomo and utilize." Before attempting himself to flv Wilson constructed a number of small models and used these for test purposes. pur-poses. "I wasn't afraid," he said. "Don't think that. 1 was brought up in rho air, you might say. And after fourteen four-teen years of parachute jumping vou en n judge for yourself that falling would have few terrors. "Yes," he smiled, "I signed mv own death certificate ouco. That's getting pretty near to it. If you don't mind th interruption "t happened at a Dutch picnic in I Peoria, 111,, a number of years ago. T I ! was billed to go up and jump a mile. There was a big crowd present, farmers mostly, from the whole central part of the state, it seemed. They came in in prairie schooners, some of them a distance dis-tance of sixty miles. ' "T was having a good deal of trouble with the balloon the gas was wrong when a tramp balloonist came along and offered his services. He seemed to know a good deal about ballooning, so I gladly engaged him. "I was worrying about the balloon ', just before it was time to go up. 'I I don't sec how- I'm going to maiiago I that balloon and parachute both.' said L 1 "'Well, let me jump,' he said. I i i "I wouldn't listeu to it at first, but ' ho urged mo so hard, said it would make his name and give him a start and all that, that I finally consented, after ! giving tho parachute a good overhaul-I overhaul-I ing and thorough examination. ! "When we were up outy a thousand feet I made him cut loose, and down he shot, while tho crazy crowd was yelling below. "I don't know what happeucd to him. lie couldn't open tho cog some- ! how or other, and I guess ho kept his mouth open too long using bad language and choked. An.yway, he never got the parachute open at all, and he dropped i like a cannon ball, smashing every bond in his body when he hit the gTOu'nd, head first. "The crowd went wild, thev tell mo. T?unn3' thing about people, how they think they have their money's worth . when a man gets killed. "Well. T landed in a pecan grove some distance from tho city, and when I got back it was dark and the excitement ex-citement had subsided. Tho prairie schooners were traveling homeward. "Tho first man I found was the chairman of the committee of arrangements. arrange-ments. Ho had made the contract with me, and knew mo well by sight. WelL, sir, as soon as. ho got ono good look at mo he gave a. yell, hurled a beer glass at me and started running for his home as fast as his fat logs would carry him. "You see. tho tramp's head was smashed past recognition, and ;iM)y thought, of course,' that it was T who ' had fallen. "I had hard work getting near any one after that, and finally I sat down and read the paper. It was the Peoria Herald, and there on the first page was an elaborate account of my death. I began to feel creepy myself. "Lato that night tho coroner came to the hotel, shoved a death certificate certifi-cate at mo and I signed il. Then I rend it over and found it was made out in my own name. "After that I gave up. 'Seems liko you'ro bound to have me dead,' said I to the coroner, 'so we'll let it go at that.' But P went right out and telegraphed my wife told her not to believe the popers, that I was not dead, though just at proscnt I couldn't prove il to her; asked her to believe mc and remember my past record for truthfulness. truth-fulness. "Then came the sad part. T had It take the tramp's body to his homo in Galesburg, a little house with a wid- o ved mother and three sisters had to 1 tell them tne news and bury him. "So, I'm not afraid of falling." said Wilson, earnestly. "Nono of us, is; but we all would liko to stay hero a bit longer aud help the good work aloug. Tho great thing now is to educate edu-cate the .public, to make them understand under-stand what flying is and what it means, and how practicable it is. Then, perhaps, per-haps, they will help us." So Wilson perfected his modols first and then built his flying machines. Brieflj', their principle is that of the variable fulcrum. The operator rides them just as a bicyclist guides his wheel at tlie handle bars, shifting weight hero and there and turning his planes, now up and now down, now to quo side or another as his instinct of equilibrium equili-brium or his sense of direction prompts him. Wilson has been flying successfully for several year's, and claims to have stayed in the air an hour and twenty minutes also to have covered three miles in two minutes. He has witnesses of tlieso tests, but ho asks no one to believe them. Ho has full patents covering cov-ering his discoveries; and he is stili going ahead and making more in his cool, deliberate, independent way. He has not as yet suffered a single accident, nor did he have any to speak of in his parachute days. Captain Baldy win has a similar record. There hav been accidents, however. Tsrael Lim-low Lim-low is still partly paralyzed from nib aeroplane fall in Florida; Orrille Wright is just getting over his injuries, in-juries, and Lieutenant Sclfridgo, it will bo remembered, was killed by the same fall. A number of others have been hurt here and abroad, "and thore will be many more," said Wilson. "Free ballooning ut comparatively safe, but the airship and aeroplano are other misters. mis-ters. This, the experimental stage, is especially daugcrous. ' ' w .i A particularly interesting branch of Wilson's work is that devoted to the designing of aerial darts and torpodoos. They havo wings like a bird's and a keel liko a. boat's, and somo of them have dangerous looking bodies. "You cau drop them from a captive balloon," said Wilson calmly, "o-nd you can tell very nearly whore they will land, according to the angJ you set them at. This one will go half-way around a mountain; so you see an army eau't hide from it very cosily. And here's an idea of a guncottou "torpedo. If yoy dropped guncotton on the deck of a man-of-war, you know, it wouldn't do moro than scar tho paint. You must confine it. "Well, in this torpedo the cotton is confined in the body say two pounds of it. Those flaps here shoot up when tho torpedo hits tho water and explode tho cotton at a suitable depth. Then goodby ship and crewl" "Littlo devils of war!" I suggested. "IS'o," said Wilson solemnly. "2o. Call them rather 'big angels of pcaco'! " Ho leaned back and pushed up his spectacles, lookiug earnestly at mc. Why, groat. Scott, man,'' said li--, "have you over really figured out jura , The Finest Type of Balloon. what airships mean, what power they 1 have, what effect they must have upon civilization? j "Do you realize' that the Zeppelin airship, carrying several tons of dynamite, dyna-mite, could sail over this great city and mako a rubbish pile of it? "Do you realize that the greatest armored fleet in tho world todaj- is but a plaything in tho hands of a few airships carrying high explosives? That intrenchnients and forts and all tho agents of war and protections from it are really jokes in the light of dirigible high sailing airships and perfected aerial aer-ial torpedoes? "Xo, angels of peace I call them, and such they are. "You know and I know, and all sonsiblo peoplo know, that the Peace Conference business doesn't amount to much and never will. When it conies to fighting a nation is just liko an individual. in-dividual. Thoy will fight under certain cer-tain circumstances. Pick out any man 3'ou know, the most highly cultured and best educated, and if ho has any self- respect at all you can. make him fight) easily enough 'if yon just get past his' self 'control. "But suppose you mako it utterly foolish and useless for him to fight.) Now. that's a different matter. ? "The most peaceful man I ever knewi was an unarmed mau covered by a gun.. He forgot all about fighting. 11 "But, seriously, 'haven't you evcrl fll felt your utter helplessness some timoi when 3'ou wero a tin3' thing at thoi WM mercy of the terrific forces of nature ? 11 The 'balloonist knows that feeling. Or perhaps you've had to bow your head1 against the forces of circumstance, knowing well that 3'ou couldn't do an3-- fl thjng else. IH "'Well, that's just the way airships WM will make a nation feel; and when a IB country realizes that its very existence hangs "in the balance, why it seems as! WM though war would speedily become an WM almost ridiculous back number. And! 11 so it will!" H |
