THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AIRPLANE
The story of the development of the heavier-than-air machine--which
were called aëroplanes at first, but have been given the simpler
name of airplanes--is far shorter than that of the balloons. It is
really a record of achievement made since 1903 when the plane built
by Professor Langley of the Smithsonian Institution came to utter
disaster on the Potomac. In 1917, at the time of writing this book,
there are probably thirty distinct types of airplanes being
manufactured for commercial and military use, and not less than
fifty thousand are being used daily over the battlefields of Europe.
No invention save possibly the telephone and the automobile ever
attained so prodigious a development in so brief a time. Wise
observers hold that the demand for these machines is yet in its
infancy, and that when the end of the war shall lead manufacturers
and designers to turn their attention to the commercial value of the
airplane the flying craft will be as common in the air as the
automobiles at least on our country roads.
The idea of flying like a bird with wings, the idea basicly
underlying the airplane theory, is old enough--almost as old as the
first conception of the balloon, before hydrogen gas was discovered.
In an earlier chapter some account is given of early experiments
with wings. No progress was made along this line until the
hallucination that man could make any headway whatsoever against
gravity by flapping artificial wings was definitely abandoned. There
was more promise in the experiments made by Sir George Cayley, and
he was followed in the first half of the nineteenth century by half
a dozen British experimenters who were convinced that a series of
planes, presenting a fixed angle to the breeze and driven against it
by a sufficiently powerful motor, would develop a considerable
lifting power. This was demonstrated by Henson, in 1842,
Stringfellow, in 1847, Wenham, who arranged his planes like slats in
a Venetian blind and first applied the modern term "aeroplane" to
his invention, and Sir Hiram Maxim, who built in 1890 the most
complicated and impressive looking 'plane the world has yet seen.
But though each of these inventors proved the theorem that a
heavier-than-air machine could be made to fly, all failed to get
practical results because no motor had then been invented which
combined the necessary lightness with the generation of the required
power.
In America we like to think of the brothers Wright as being the true
inventors of the airplane. And indeed they did first bring it to the
point of usefulness, and alone among the many pioneers lived to see
the adoption of their device by many nations for serious practical
use. But it would be unjust to claim for them entire priority in the
field of the glider and the heavier-than-air machine. Professor
Langley preceded them with an airplane which, dismissed with
ridicule as a failure in his day, was long after his death equipped
with a lighter motor and flown by Glenn Curtis, who declared that
the scientist had solved the problem, had only the explosive engine
been perfected in his time.
Despite, however, the early period of the successful experiments of
the Wrights and Professor Langley, it would be unjust for America to
arrogate to herself entire priority in airplane invention. Any story
of that achievement which leaves out Lilienthal, the German, and
Pilcher, the Englishman, is a record in which the truth is
subordinated to national pride.
[Illustration: Langley's Airplane.]
Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav--the two like the Wrights
were always associated in their aviation work--had been studying
long the problem of flight when in 1889 they jointly published their
book _Bird Flight as the Basis of the Flying Art_. Their
investigations were wholly into the problem of flight without a
motor. At the outset they even harked back to the long-abandoned
theory that man could raise himself by mere muscular effort, and
Otto spent many hours suspended at the end of a rope flapping
frantically a pair of wings before he abandoned this effort as
futile. Convinced that the soaring or gliding of the birds was the
feat to emulate, he made himself a pair of fixed, bat-like wings
formed of a light fabric stretched over a willow frame. A tail
composed of one vertical and one horizontal plane extended to the
rear, and in the middle the aviator hung by his armpits, in an erect
position. With this device he made some experimental glides, leaping
from slight eminences. With his body, which swung at will from its
cushioned supports, he could balance, and even steer the fabric
which supported him, and accomplished long glides against the wind.
Not infrequently, running into the teeth of the breeze down a gentle
slope he would find himself gently wafted into the air and would
make flights of as much as three hundred yards, steering to either
side, or rising and falling at will. He was even able to make a
circuitous flight and return to his starting place--a feat that was
not accomplished with a motor-driven airplane until years later.
Lilienthal achieved it with no mechanical aid, except the wings. He
became passionately devoted to the art, made more than two thousand
flights, and at the time of his death had just completed a
motor-driven airplane, which he was never able to test. His earlier
gliding wings he developed into a form of biplane, with which he
made several successful flights, but met his death in 1896 by the
collapse of this machine, of the bad condition of which he had been
warned.
[Illustration: © Kadel & Herbert.
_French Airdrome near the Front._]
Lilienthal was more of a factor in the conquest of the air than his
actual accomplishments would imply. His persistent experiments, his
voluminous writings, and above all his friendly and intelligent
interest in the work of other and younger men won him a host of
disciples in other lands who took up the work that dropped from his
lifeless hands.
[Illustration: Lilienthal's Glider.]
In England Percy S. Pilcher emulated the Lilienthal glides, and was
at work on a motor-propelled machine when he was killed by the
breakage of a seemingly unimportant part of his machine. He was on
the edge of the greater success, not to that moment attained by
anyone, of building a true airplane propelled by motor. Many
historians think that to Lilienthal and Pilcher is justly due the
title "the first flying men." But Le Bris, a French sailor, utterly
without scientific or technical equipment, as far back as 1854 had
accomplished a wonderful feat in that line. While on a cruise he had
watched an albatross that followed his ship day after day apparently
without rest and equally without fatigue. His imagination was fired
by the spectacle and probably having never heard of the punishment
that befell the Ancient Mariner, he shot the albatross. "I took the
wing," he wrote later, "and exposed it to the breeze, and lo, in
spite of me, it drew forward into the wind; notwithstanding my
resistance it tended to rise. Thus I had discovered the secret of
the bird. I comprehend the whole mystery of flight."
A trifle too sanguine was sailor Le Bris, but he had just the
qualities of imagination and confidence essential to one who sets
forth to conquer the air. Had he possessed the accurate mind, the
patience, and the pertinacity of the Wrights he might have beaten
them by half a century. As it was he accomplished a remarkable feat,
though it ended in somewhat laughable failure. He built an
artificial bird, on the general plan of his albatross. The wings
were not to flap, but their angles to the wind were controlled by a
system of levers controlled by Le Bris, who stood up in the basket
in the centre. To rise he required something like the flying start
which the airplanes of to-day get on their bicycle wheels before
leaving the ground. As Le Bris had no motor this method of
propulsion was denied him, so he loaded the apparatus in a cart, and
fastened it to the rail by a rope knotted in a slip knot which a
jerk from him would release. As they started men walked beside the
cart holding the wings, which extended for twenty-five feet on
either side. As the horses speeded up these assistants released
their hold. Feeling the car try to rise under his feet Le Bris cast
off the rope, tilted the front end of the machine, and to his joy
began to rise steadily into the air. The spectators below cheered
madly, but a note of alarm mingled with their cheers, and the
untried aviator noticed a strange and inexplicable jerking of his
machine. Peering down he discovered, to his amaze, a man kicking
and crying aloud in deadly fear. It was evident that the rope he had
detached from the cart had caught up the driver, who had thus
become, to his intense dismay, a partner in the inventor's triumph.
Indeed it is most possible that he contributed to that triumph for
the ease and steadiness with which the machine rose to a height
estimated at three hundred feet suggests that he may have furnished
needed ballast--acted in fact as the tail to the kite. Humanity
naturally impelled Le Bris to descend at once, which he did
skilfully without injuring his involuntary passenger, and only
slightly breaking one of the wings.
[Illustration: © U. & U.
_A German War Zeppelin._]
Had Le Bris won this success twenty years later his fame and fortune
would have been secure. But in 1854 the time was not ripe for aeronautics.
Le Bris was poor. The public responded but grudgingly to his appeals
for aid. His next experiment was less successful--perhaps for lack of
the carter--and he ultimately disappeared from aviation to become an
excellent soldier of France.
[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service.
_A French Observation Balloon Seeking Submarines._]
Perhaps had they not met with early and violent deaths, the
Lilienthals and Pilcher might have carried their experiments in the
art of gliding into the broader domain of power flight. This however
was left to the two Americans, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who have
done more to advance the art of navigating the air than all the
other experimenters whose names we have used. The story of the
Wright brothers is one of boyhood interest gradually developed into
the passion of a lifetime. It parallels to some degree the story of
Santos-Dumont who insisting as a child that "man flies" finally made
it a fact. The interest of the Wrights was first stimulated when, in
1878, their father brought home a small toy, called a "helicopter,"
which when tossed in the air rose up instead of falling. Every child
had them at that time, but curiously this one was like the seed
which fell upon fertile soil. The boys went mad, as boys will, on
the subject of flying. But unlike most boys they nurtured and
cultivated the passion and it stayed with them to manhood. From
helicopters they passed to kites, and from kites to gliders. By
calling they were makers and repairers of bicycles, but their spare
time was for years devoted to solving the problem of flight. In time
it became their sole occupation and by it they won a fortune and
world-wide fame. Their story forms a remarkable testimony to the
part of imagination, pertinacity, and courage in winning success.
After years of tests with models, and with kites controlled from the
ground, the brothers had worked out a type of glider which they
believed, in a wind of from eighteen to twenty miles an hour, would
lift and carry a man. But they had to find a testing ground. The
fields near their home in Ohio were too level, and their firm
unyielding surface was not attractive as a cushion on which to light
in the event of disaster. Moreover the people round about were
getting inquisitive about these grown men "fooling around" with
kites and flying toys. To the last the Wrights were noted for their
dislike of publicity, and it is entirely probable that the sneering
criticisms of their "level headed" and "practical" neighbours had a
good deal to do with rooting them in this distaste.
Low steep hills down the sides of which they could run and at the
proper moment throw themselves upon their glider; a sandy soil which
would at least lessen the shock of a tumble; and a vicinage in which
winds of eighteen miles an hour or more is the normal atmospheric
state were the conditions they sought. These they found at a little
hamlet called Kitty-Hawk on the coast of North Carolina. There for
uncounted centuries the tossing Atlantic had been throwing up its
snowy sand upon the shore, and the steady wind had caught it up,
piled it in windrows, rolled it up into towering hills, or carried
it over into the dunes which extended far inland. It was a lonely
spot, and there secure from observation the Wrights pitched their
camp. For them it was a midsummer's holiday. Not at first did they
decide to make aviation not a sport but a profession. To their camp
came visitors interested in the same study, among them Chanute, a
well-known experimenter, and some of his associates. They had
thought to give hours at a time to actual flight. When they closed
their first season, they found that all their time spent in actual
flight footed up less than an hour. Lilienthal, despite all he
accomplished, estimated that he, up to a short time before his
death, spent only about five hours actually in the air. In that
early day of experimentation a glide covering one hundred feet, and
consuming eight or ten seconds, was counted a triumph.
[Illustration: Chanute's Glider.]
But the season was by no means wasted. Indeed such was the estimate
that the Wrights put upon it that they folded their tents determined
that when they returned the year following it would be as
professionals, not amateurs. They were confident of their ability to
build machines that would fly, though up to that time they had never
mounted a motor on their aircraft.
In the clear hot air of a North Carolina midsummer the Wrights used
to lie on their backs studying through glasses the methods of flight
of the great buzzards--filthy scavenger birds which none the less
soaring high aloft against a blue sky are pictures of dignity and
grace.
Bald eagles, ospreys, hawks, and buzzards give us daily
exhibitions of their powers [wrote Wilbur Wright]. The buzzards
were the most numerous, and were the most persistent soarers.
They apparently never flapped except when it was absolutely
necessary, while the eagles and hawks usually soared only when
they were at leisure. Two methods of soaring were employed. When
the weather was cold and damp and the wind strong the buzzards
would be seen soaring back and forth along the hills or at the
edge of a clump of trees. They were evidently taking advantage of
the current of air flowing upward over these obstructions. On
such days they were often utterly unable to soar, except in these
special places. But on warm clear days when the wind was light
they would be seen high in the air soaring in great circles.
Usually, however, it seemed to be necessary to reach a height of
several hundred feet by flapping before this style of soaring
became possible. Frequently a great number of them would begin
circling in one spot, rising together higher and higher till
finally they would disperse, each gliding off in whatever
direction it wished to go. At such times other buzzards only a
short distance away found it necessary to flap frequently in
order to maintain themselves. But when they reached a point
beneath the circling flock they began to rise on motionless
wings. This seemed to indicate that rising columns of air do not
exist everywhere, but that the birds must find them. They
evidently watch each other and when one finds a rising current
the others quickly make their way to it. One day when scarce a
breath of wind was stirring on the ground we noticed two bald
eagles sailing in circling sweeps at a height of probably five
hundred feet. After a time our attention was attracted to the
flashing of some object considerably lower down. Examination with
a field-glass proved it to be a feather which one of the birds
had evidently cast. As it seemed apparent that it would come to
earth only a short distance away, some of our party started to
get it. But in a little while it was noted that the feather was
no longer falling, but on the contrary was rising rapidly. It
finally went out of sight upward. It apparently was drawn into
the same current in which the eagles were soaring and was carried
up like the birds.
It was by such painstaking methods as these, coupled with the
mathematical reduction of the fruits of such observations to terms
of angles and supporting planes, that the Wrights gradually
perfected their machine. The first airplane to which they fitted a
motor and which actually flew has been widely exhibited in the
United States, and is to find final repose in some public museum.
Study it as you will you can find little resemblance in those
rectangular rigid planes to the wings of a bird. But it was built
according to deductions drawn from natural flight.
[Illustration: Photo by Paul Thompson.
_A German Taube Pursued by British Planes._]
The method of progress in these preliminary experiments was, by
repeated tests, to determine what form of airplane, and of what
proportions, would best support a man. It was evident that for free
and continuous flight it must be able to carry not only the pilot,
but an engine and a store of fuel as well. Having, as they thought,
determined these conditions the Wrights essayed their first flight
at their home near Dayton, Ohio. It was a cold December day in 1903.
The first flight, with motor and all, lasted twelve seconds; the
fourth fifty-nine seconds. The handful of people who came out to
witness the marvel went home jeering. In the spring of the next year
a new flight was announced near Dayton. The newspapers had been
asked to send reporters. A crowd of perhaps fifty persons had
gathered. Again fate was hostile. The engine worked badly and the
airplane refused to rise. The crowd dispersed and the newspapermen,
returning the next day, met only with another disappointment.
[Illustration: The First Wright Glider.]
These repeated failures in public exhibitions resulted in creating
general indifference to the real progress that the Wrights were
making in solving the flight problem. While the gliding experiments
at Kitty-Hawk were furnishing the data for the plans on which the
tens of thousands of airplanes used in the European war were
afterwards built, no American newspaper was sufficiently interested
to send representatives to the spot. The people of the United States
were supremely indifferent. Perhaps this was due to the fact that
superficially regarded the machine the Wrights were trying to
perfect gave promise of usefulness only in war or in sport. We are
not either a warlike or a sporting people. Ready enough to adopt a
new device which seems adapted for utilitarian purposes, as is shown
by the rapid multiplication of automobiles, we leave sport to our
professional ball players, and our military equipment to luck.
[Illustration: Pilcher's Glider.]
So after continued experimental flights in the open fields near
Dayton had convinced them that the practical weaknesses in their
machine had been eliminated, the Wrights packed up their flyer and
went to France. Before so doing they tried to get encouragement from
the United States Government, but failed. Neither the government nor
any rich American was willing to share the cost of further
experiments. All that had been done was at their own cost, both in
time and money. In France, whither they went in 1908, they had no
coldness to complain of. It was then the golden day of aviation in
the land which always afforded to the Knights of the Air their
warmest welcome and their most liberal support. Two years had
elapsed since Santos-Dumont, turning from dirigibles to 'planes, had
made a flight of 238 yards. This the Wrights had at the time
excelled at home but without attracting attention. France on the
contrary went mad with enthusiasm, and claimed for the Brazilian the
honour of first demonstrating the possibility of flight in a
heavier-than-air machine. England, like the United States, was cold,
clinging to the balloon long after all other nations had abandoned
it. But France welcomed the Wrights with enthusiasm. They found
rivals a-plenty in their field of effort. Santos-Dumont, Bleriot,
Farman, Latham were all flying with airplanes, but with models
radically different from that of the American brothers. Nevertheless
the latter made an instant success.
[Illustration: Permission of _Scientific American_.
_The Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Airplanes at the
Opening of the War._
_The French Army had at least 500 aëroplanes. England had about 250
aëroplanes of all types Russia had 50 aëroplanes--Austria had at
least 50 aëroplanes Germany is about the equal of France, having 500
flyers._]
From the moment they found that they had hit upon the secret of
raising, supporting, and propelling an airplane, the Wrights made of
their profession a matter of cold business. In many ways this was
the best contribution they could possibly have made to the science
of aviation, though their keen eye to the main chance did bring down
on them a certain amount of ridicule. Europe laughed long at the
_sang-froid_ with which Wilbur Wright, having won the Michelin prize
of eight hundred pounds, gave no heed to the applause which the
assembled throng gave him as the money was transferred to him with a
neat presentation speech. Without a word he divided the notes into
two packets, handed one to his brother Orville, and thrust the other
into his own pocket. For the glory which attended his achievement he
cared nothing. It was all in the day's work. Later in the course of
trials of a machine for the United States Government at Fort Myer,
just across the Potomac from Washington, the Wrights seriously
offended a certain sort of public sentiment in a way which
undoubtedly set back the encouragement of aviation by the United
States Government very seriously.
[Illustration: Permission of _Scientific American_.
_The Comparative Strength of Belligerents in Dirigibles at the
Opening of the War._
_France must be credited with at least eighteen airships of various
types--England had only seven--Russia had probably not more than
three airships available--Belgium had one airship Austria had not
less than three, not more than five airships available--Germany had
twenty three airships of the rigid, semi-rigid, and non-rigid
type._]
In 1909, they had received a contract from the government for a
machine for the use of the Signal Service. The price was fixed at
$25,000, but a bonus of $2500 was to be paid for every mile above
forty miles an hour made by the machine on its trial trip. That
bonus looked big to the Wrights, but it cost the cause of aviation
many times its face value in the congressional disfavour it caused.
Aviation was then in its infancy in the United States. Every man in
Congress wanted to see the flights. But Fort Myer, whose parade was
to be the testing ground, was fully fourteen miles from the Capitol,
and reached only most inconveniently from Washington by trolley, or
most expensively by carriage or automobile. Day after day members
of the House and Senate made the long journey across the Potomac.
Time and again they journeyed back without even a sight of the
flyer in the hangar. One after another little flaws discovered in
the machine led the aviators to postpone their flight. Investigating
statesmen who thought that their position justified them in seeking
special privileges were brusquely turned away by the military guard.
The dusk of many a summer's night saw thousands of disappointed
sightseers tramping the long road back to Washington. The climax
came when on a clear but breezy day Wilbur Wright announced that the
machine was in perfect condition and could meet its tests readily,
but that in order to win a bigger bonus, he would postpone the
flight for a day with less wind. All over Washington the threat was
heard that night that Congress would vote no more money for
aviation, and whether or not the incident was the cause, the
sequence was that the American Congress was, until the menace of war
with Germany in 1916, the most niggardly of all legislative bodies
in its treatment of the flying corps. When the Wrights did finally
fly they made a triumphant flight before twelve thousand spectators.
The test involved crossing the Potomac, going down its north side to
Alexandria, and then back to Fort Myer. Ringing cheers and the
crashing strains of the military band greeted the return of the
aviator, but oblivious to the enthusiasm Wilbur Wright stood beside
his machine with pencil and pad computing his bonus. It figured up
to five thousand dollars, and the reporters chronicled that the
Wrights knew well the difference between solid coin and the bubble
of reputation.
[Illustration: Wright Glider.]
But this seemingly cold indifference to fame and single-minded
concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights
was in fact of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science.
They were pioneers and successful ones. Their example was heeded by
others in the business. In every way they sought to discourage that
wild reaching after public favour and notoriety that led aviators to
attempt reckless feats, and often sacrifice their lives in a foolish
effort to astonish an audience. No one ever heard of either of the
Wright brothers "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in any
other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a
circus. In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken
idea of the ethics of their calling, were appealing to sensation
lovers by the practice of dare-devil feats, the Wrights with
admirable common sense and dignity stood sturdily against any such
degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they were joined
by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to be
shown in the reduced number of lives sacrificed in these follies
when the Great War broke upon the world and gave to aviation its
greatest opportunity. The world will hope nevertheless that after
that war shall end the effort to adapt the airplane to the ends of
peace will be no less earnest and persistent than have been the
methods by which it has been made a most serviceable auxiliary of
war.
In July, 1915, _Collier's Weekly_ published an interview with
Orville Wright in which that man, ordinarily of few words, set up
some interesting theories upon the future of airplanes.
"The greatest use of the airplane to date," said Mr. Wright, "has
been as a tremendously big factor of modern warfare. But--
"The greatest use of the airplane eventually will be to prevent
war.
"Some day there will be neither war nor rumours of war, and the
reason may be flying machines.
"It sounds paradoxical. We are building airplanes to use in time
of war, and will continue to build them for war. We think of war
and we think of airplanes. Later on, perhaps, we shall think of
airplanes in connection with the wisdom of keeping out of war.
"The airplane will prevent war by making it too expensive, too
slow, too difficult, too long drawn out--in brief, by making the
cost prohibitive.
"Did you ever stop to think," inquires Wright, "that there is a
very definite reason why the present war in Europe has dragged
along for a year with neither side gaining much advantage over
the other? The reason as I figure it out is airplanes. In
consequence of the scouting work done by the flying machines each
side knows exactly what the opposing forces are doing.
"There is little chance for one army to take another by surprise.
Napoleon won his wars by massing his troops at unexpected places.
The airplane has made that impossible. It has equalized
information. Each side has such complete knowledge of the other's
movements that both sides are obliged to crawl into trenches and
fight by means of slow, tedious routine, rather than by quick,
spectacular dashes.
"My impression is that before the present war started the army
experts expected it to be a matter of a few weeks, or at the
most, a few months. To-day it looks as if it might run into years
before one side can dictate terms. Now, a nation that may be
willing to undertake a war lasting a few months may well hesitate
about engaging in one that will occupy years. The daily cost of a
great war is of course stupendous. When this cost runs on for
years the total is likely to be so great that the side which wins
nevertheless loses. War will become prohibitively expensive. The
scouting work in flying machines will be the predominating
factor, as it seems to me, in bringing this about. I like to
think so anyhow."
"What, in your opinion, has the present war demonstrated
regarding the relative advantages of airplanes and Zeppelin
airships?" the inventor was asked.
"The airplane seems to have been of the more practical use,"
replied Wright. "In the first place, dirigible airships of the
Zeppelin type are so expensive to build, costing somewhere around
a half million dollars each, that it is distinctly
disadvantageous to the nation operating them to have one
destroyed. But what is more important is the fact that the
Zeppelin is so large that it furnishes an excellent target,
unless it sails considerably higher than is comparatively safe
for an airplane. And when the Zeppelin is at a safe height it is
too far above the ground for your scout to make accurate
observations. Similarly, when the Zeppelin is used for dropping
bombs, it must be too high for the bomb thrower to show much
accuracy."
"You think that the use of flying machines for scouting purposes
will be of considerably more importance than their use as a means
of attack?" was another question.
"That has been decidedly true so far," replied Wright. "About all
that has been accomplished by either side from bomb dropping has
been to kill a few non-combatants and that will have no bearing
on the result of the war.
[Illustration: _At a French Airplane Base._ © International Pilot
Service.]
"English newspapers have long talked of the danger of Zeppelin
attacks or airplane attacks, but it was all for a purpose,
because they did not believe the country was sufficiently
prepared for war and sought to arouse the people and the War
Department to action by means of the airship bogy. [Later history
showed Mr. Wright sadly in error on this point.]
"Aside from the use of the machines for war purposes the war will
give a great boost to aviation generally. It has led more men to
learn to fly, and with a higher degree of skill than ever before.
It has awakened people to aviation possibilities.
[Illustration: Stringfellow's Airplane.]
"Just like the automobile, it will become more and more
fool-proof, easier to handle and safer. There is no reason why it
should not take the place of special trains where there is urgent
need of great speed.
"The airplane has never really come into its own as a sporting
proposition. Of late years the tendency has been to develop a
high rate of speed rather than to build machines that may be
operated safely at a comparatively low speed. You see, a machine
adapted to make from seventy to one hundred miles an hour cannot
run at all except at a pretty rapid clip, and this means
difficulty in getting down. One must have a good, smooth piece of
ground to land on and plenty of it. When we get an airplane that
will fly along at twenty miles an hour, one can land almost any
place,--on a roof, if necessary,--and then people will begin to
take an interest in owning an airplane for the enjoyment of
flying."
"Is it true that you and your brother had a compact not to fly
together?"
"Yes, we felt that until the records of our work could be made
complete it was a wise precaution not to take a chance on both of
us getting killed at the same time. We never flew together but
once. From 1900 to 1908 the total time in the air for both Wilbur
and myself, all put together, was only about four hours."
Mr. Wright's statement of the brevity of the time spent in actual
flying in order to learn the art will astonish many people. Few
novices would be so rash as to undertake to steer an automobile
alone after only four hours' practice, and despite the fact that the
aviator always has plenty of space to himself the airplane can
hardly yet be regarded as simple a machine to handle as the
automobile. Nevertheless the ease with which the method of its
actual manipulation is acquired is surprising. More work is done in
the classroom and on the ground to make the fighting pilot than in
the air. As we have traced the development of both dirigible and
airplane from the first nascent germ of their creation to the point
at which they were sufficiently developed to play a large part in
the greatest of all wars, let us now consider how hosts of young
men, boys in truth, were trained to fly like eagles and to give
battle in mid-air to foes no less well trained and desperate than
they.