| Show HOW WE SHALL FLY washington D C dec ath 1896 0 C 0 C the pas past t C 0 0 0 few months an P 9 0 Z Z C 0 invention h has as 00 a been made here at washington which promises 01 to revolutionize 00 the trav travel elof of the world it may qa transfer th the e Q vessels of the ocean to the air and carry the loc 1 0 c 0 motives m 0 tives among the clouds the development of it will in all probability change the warfare of the world and it may make war so terrible that the national troubles of the future will be settled by arbitration I 1 refer to mr langlays Lang leys aerodrome the word means air runner and the machine is such that it runs faster upon the surface of the air than a horse can trot for sixteen years mr langley has steadily pursued his work upon it en grossed as he has been first in astronomical investigation and later in adminis bering the greatest of our scientific institutions tut ions he be has had only his leisure moments to devote to it and now after thousands of experiments and hundreds upon hundreds of failures failure she he has accomplished what scientists once declared to be impossible knowing that his work was done almost at the risk of his bis scientific reputation being questioned during the early years of it he kept the object of his investigations to himself today the world knows practically nothing of them and it was only last may after persistent urging on the part of his friend professor alexander graham bell that he allowed him to state the fact that he had succeeded since then additional improvements have been made A new and better machine than that which flew a half a mile in may last has been tested it has made a more successful flight and today mr langley permits me to give in my own words the first full description of his success to the public I 1 have spent several days with him upon the island in the potomac river about thirty miles below washington where his last experiments peri ments have been conducted and on saturday november I 1 witnessed the most successful flight which has yet been made I 1 saw this machine made chiefly of steel weighing as much as a four year old boy yet so large that it would just about fill the average parlor moved by a steam engine which was a part of it dart forth from the launching stage and fly in an almost straight line through the air a distance of more than 1500 yards or over three quarters of a mile it flew almost as tar far as the length of pennsylvania avenue between the treasury and the capitol the flight was horizontal there was not a quiver of the wings and the great birdlike bird like aerodrome swam as it were upon the planes of the atmosphere it first flew to the right across the bay toward a strip of woods and as mr langley and myself watched it our hearts for the moment came into our throats tor for it seemed as though it would dash itself against the trees As it neared them however it gracefully swept round and downward then turned and rose and as straight as an arrow flew across the bay where we were standing on en toward washington washingto it continued to fly in this straight horizontal line until the water which furnish ed the steam was exhausted when it slowly but gracefully swept down and rested upon the water it lighted so gently that not a bit ot of its machinery was injured and had it not been that the evening shades were falling it could have been flown again I 1 have never seen any inanimate thing look so like a thing of life it was as graceful as any bird and as it swam through the air its propellers which were going about at the rate of over a thousand revolutions a minute made a whirring noise like the wings of a bird in rapid flight the feathery smoke of the engine could be seen wreathing its way out of the smoke stack and as the setting sun caught its silken wings and the white silvery substance which bound the body containing its machinery it seemed like a wonder ful new species of bird the great danger of losing the machine in the trees led mr langley to put only enough water in it to allow it to fly about one and one half minutes it could have carried water for about five minutes but as it was it flew by two independent stop watches one minute and forty five seconds being the only flight of any aerial machine except itself which has ever lasted for more than a very few seconds in this minute and three it flew a distance of almost a mile going at the rate of over thirty miles an hour and showing that if it had been fully supplied with water it would have flown for more than two miles As it was its flight was only limited by the exhaustion of its st steam eamand and there seem ed no reason but that with more steam to run it it might have gone on indefinitely with a machine ten times its weight eight mr langley told me a condensing apparatus could be carried upon it which could use the water over and over again and the same amount ot of water would carry it for hundreds of times its present flight the machine flew against the wind Ther ewas nothing of the balloon nature about it there were no gs gas bags to uphold it its wings were immovable and they merel merely steadied it as it flew like a bird through through the air the force which carried it onward was generated upon it As I 1 looked at it I 1 could hardly realize the remarkable thing which mr langley has accomplished let me repeat it the aerodrome is a machine made almost altogether of steel A baloon floats because it is lighter than the air this machine weighs more than one thousand times as much as the air through which it moves the working parts of its machinery are of it carries a peculiar steam engine which forces it along through the air in constructing ting this machine the question of weight was an all important one and everything had to be reduced to the minimum the aerodrome weighing less than thirty pounds carries about tour pounds of water this is about two quarts and the little litte engine is so wasteful of it that its flight must be proportionately short for when the water E has as been once converted into steam the zero aerodrome drome must stop flying as there is no more water to furnish steam to run it the machinery of the air runner is very light indeed but it requires a considerable force to move it in proportion to its weight its eng engine engines ineis is equalito equal to more than one horse power and the movable parts of the machinery weigh twenty six ounces you could put all of its machinery into a peck measure now a horse weighs a thousand pounds think of reducing the size of a horse to a peck eck measure and its weight to that of a bitten kitten and you have have some idea of mr langlays Lang leys aerial engine what does the aerodrome look like I 1 have described it in flight I 1 examined it at rest and I 1 have gone care tully fully over its different parts it is about fifteen feet long and about fourteen feet wide from the tip of one wing to the other the machine moves through the air on much the same principle as that by which the twin screw steamer forces its way through the water on each side of the at ae there is ia a sort of screw propeller or pair of blades in the shape of one cutting of a screw so hung upon a pivot that when the steam is on they fly around at the rate of a thousand revolutions a minute they look in fact much like the wheels of an electric fan when in action they cut the air so rapidly that you cannot seethe see the blades and they are in fact a pair of wheels about four feet in diameter flying at this wonderful speed around through the air As they move they screw the air ship onward and this advancing motion keeps it up in somewhat the same that a swift skater can be supported by thin ice the machinery is in a metal receptacle which ends in a smokestack this is hung to a frame work of steel the wi wings ng 9 which are stationary are fastened to th me upper part 0 of f the frame wor kand they extend aut out above the body holding the machinery the machinery is wonderfully delicate but it is as strong and at the same time as light las IBS scientific investigation can make it the fuel is gasoline which is converted into gas before it is used and which furnishes such an intense heat that it would melt the boiler in a second it if there were not a special pump by which the water is kept flowing rapidly through the boiler the intense heat converting averting some of the water into steam as it flows every part bof the machinery is ot of the most practical nature and it has been abeen constructed at an enormous expense of patience and experiment it may be said that nearly every evay atom of the aerodrome as it is now put together is is the result of experiment the making of the boiler alone consumed months of work every bit of the machinery had to be constructed with scientific accuracy it had to be tested again and again the difficulty of get ting the machine light enough was such that every part of it had to be remade many times it would be in full working order when something would give way and this part would have to be strengthened this caused additional weight and necessitated the cutting off on of that much weight from some other part of the machinery at times the difficulty seemed almost heartbreaking but mr langley went on piece by piece and atom by atom until he at last succeeded in getting all the parts of the right strength and proportions even after he be had completed his model and had it ready for flight he was confronted with an unexpected difficulty which was it seemed at the time almost impossible to surmount this was the launching of the machine into the air one of the most difficult things that large soaring birds have to contend with in flying is is in getting a start you know how difficult it isto launch a ship into the water it is far more difficult to launch an air ship mr langley found that his machine had to be clamped down on the launching stage and to be arranged in such a way that the machinery could be started so that it should receive a slight initial velocity and then be released with a spring this looks easy it was hard but mr langley at last succeeded in iii launching his machine by banging it to a movable table so that it could be turned to face the direction in which the flight was to be made and so that the wheels of the table would carry the aerodrome aeto drome straight out in a horizontal line and launch it off into the air the launching apparatus which we used on november 28 was built on the top of a house boat and the work of arranging the table was no small one As I 1 stood upon it and examined its construction mr langley said it dont seem to be much but it is the result of five years of experiments I 1 here asked mr langley what first at his attention to aerial 1 ial navigation 1 I cant tell when I 1 was not interested in it 11 he replied 1 I used to watch the birds flying when I 1 was a boy and to wonder what kept them up I 1 afterward heard the theory that they possessed great muscular power you know some scientific men have stated their belief that the muscular strength of birds must be enormously greater in proportion than that of men but this it seemed to me could not be true I 1 could not believe what some french mathematicians calculated namely that an eagle must be nearly as strong as man it finally occurred to me that there must be something in the condition of the air which ane soaring birds in in understood but which we do not this idea I 1 held for a long time the flight of birds continuing to be a wonder to me it is curious how an idea of that kind sticks to you I 1 seldom saw a bird flying that I 1 did not think of it and even lately I 1 have watched them for hours trying to understand how they could move about through the air rising and talling tailing soaring up and sailing down without any motion of the wings but mr langley I 1 thought that birds used a great deal of strength to fly they cant fly without moving their wings can they the soaring birds can replied mr langley and they do fly long distances with apparently i ivery little exertion darwin once wa watched ached the south ameri amen can condors which you know are immense birds for hours he says they ascended and descended soared and circled about with scarcely the movement of a feather he could not detect a single flap of their wings 1 I remember continued mr langley how I 1 stood one cold november day on the aqueduct bridge that crosses the potomac river above georgetown and watched a turkey buzzard which was lazily lacily soaring round and round watching something in the river below the wind was blowing a gale it was going at the rate of at least thirty five miles an hour still the bird moved about with the greatest ease keeping generally on one level but swaying a little as it went round and round it was not more than sixty feet above me I 1 could see it perfectly and could not note the flap ping of a wing though I 1 watched it for a long time I 1 stayed in fact until I 1 got so cold that I 1 had to leave 1 I then you early saw that there was something wrong in in our theories as to the wind mr langley yes s 11 was the reply 1 I have always felt so and I 1 remember well when I 1 began to experiment to see if my supposition was correct it was after a meet ing of a scientific association in which some one stated that an inanimate thing could under certain circumstances be made to move in the air against the wind by the power of the opposing s ing wind itself he claimed that ofru be had ad made experiments proving this fact and he stated as an evidence of the truth of his theory that he had seen birds not only come close to the earth and hang stationary in the air but even advance against the wind and ascend in the air without flapping their wings he was laughed e at but it is now conceded that what he claimed is not theoretically impossible 1 I myself did not believe he was right at the time but it set me thinking my old interest in the subject revived and I 1 began at once to make experiments I 1 wanted to know the actual facts as to the power needed for flight and how it was possible that bodies heavier than the air they displaced could keep themselves in the air without falling I 1 did discover that there was no doubt but that a machine could be made which could support bodies in the air and which would carry them forward I 1 have shown you here today a machine which will do this I 1 have proved that we have the power and the only question now is to learn how to direct and control it tell me something of your 0 ur experiments m ants mr langley said 1 1 my first experiments were made wl when en I 1 was connected with the as trono mical observatory in pittsburg it is now more than fifteen years ago that I 1 built my first laboratory for aerial investigation vesti gation there A friend of mine mr william thaw a wealthy citizen of pittsburg supplied the means and I 1 was enabled to make alt all sorts of tests to as certain the power used in aerial motion one device which I 1 had was a whirling table this was an arm about thirty feet long which swung about on a central pivot ten feet above the ground it was moved by a ten horse power steam engine and it went flying around moving at all speeds up to seventy miles an hour now on the end of the arm I 1 put instruments which would i measure the lifting power of the wind upon an any inclined surface hung bung to them I 1 haz had for instance a spring scale hung there and to this brass plates were attached when the arm was put in motion I 1 found that the faster it went the less weight the plates registered on the scales until at great speed they almost floated in the air I 1 fo found in fact that the higher the speed the less was the force required to lo keep the plates from falling this seems at first a contradiction of known principles but I 1 have no time now to explain it I 1 found that not one twentieth of the force before |
