Show I r r Ie HUMAN FLIGHT POSSIBLE Progress Made in Ship Flying Construction Con Con- Pro Prophetic of Early and and Complete So Solution of Problem BY HENRY HELEN CLA CLAYTON Of or the Blue Hill Observatory But little more than years ago ego the first successful successful- trip of man Into the blue sky was made by Montgolfier l in France and our own Benjamin Franklin who witnessed this first flight or one Immediately succeeding It said It tt Is an ad Infant to day but it may become a giant The first elongated balloon was wal built Rufus by-Rufus by Rufus Porter p of ot the United States about 1833 Successive improvements improvements Im Improvements im- im along this line Une were made by the French engineer b bK by Renard and Krebs and finally by Santos Dumont and b by Le Le- baud baudle Ie who have brought the speed to 12 or 14 miles an hour Bt Past everi even everit At t these speeds the balloon is but th this the plaything of the wind which at d a height of to E oo feet has an average average av avs speed I of 1 more miles an hour so that the air could only b ba be navigated na by this this means in quiet we weather ther sU lJ Calculation showed that It would not be possible to Increase the speed greatly without bursting the flimsy materials of which the balloons baBoons are built and It U Is not not possible to make these stronger without losing the needed lifting power Hence Hence- th thoughtful thought ful men had ceas ceased d to look forward with any great hope to success along this line On the other hand an army of workers was endeavoring to solve the problem of pf Imitating the bird n End driving themselves themselves through the air on lifting planes or wings Finally am d universal failure failure signs of success began to appear thai thal showed that It was possible to ta glide down hill on outstretched wing or planes for m many ny hundreds of feet and land safely Langley succeeded In flying a model carr carrying a steam engine for about a mile in fre free flight Hiram Maxim built bunt a large flying ma machine hine driven by a a. a wonderfully light engine of horse power which actually rose into the air fir ir for a which brie Interval lifting a weight of pounds but was speedily wrecked Langley built a man-lifting man machine wh which ch was caught at the moment o of launching and wrecked A A wave of ot and ridicule swept through the country and many thought that man flight was an Impossible dream But already quietly at work were two young manufacturers the Wright brothers of Ohio who following In Inthe Inthe Inthe the footsteps f of Lilienthal of Geri many and Chanute and Herring of our OUI own c were learning to glide down hill In a properly constructed machine to balance In the air and t to toland toland land safely Ingenious Improvements were devised and Introduced and the machine was ready for the trial of a motor Profiting by the accumulated experience of those who had previously previous previous- ly tried and by the very light motors which have been developed for auto I mobiles and boats an e engine for driving their th was built and anda a suc successful but brief preliminary I flight was made In December 1903 I Brief though it was the possibility possibility of human flight had been demonstrated ed cd edi and they set about perfecting the I machine By the autumn of 1905 the machine was so far perfected that I there b began gan over the prairies near Dayton 0 O. a remarkable series of flights On September 26 one one of the Wrights mad a flight of ofa a a. a little over 11 miles On September 30 this was wa Increased to 12 5 1 miles mlles on October 3 to 15 5 1 miles and on the to toWA WA 4 miles during which flights the operator remained in the air 38 38 min min utes min I 1 After centuries of effort elfort successful flight Is at last accomplished After hundreds of failures failures' the loss of many lives and of many thousands of dollars dollars dol dol- lars Jars one of of- the greatest achievements in history the conquest of the the air has auspiciously begun I r r 1 jJ w wi i l Ji f 1 M I-M f l |