THE FORM OR SHAPE OF FLYING MACHINES
EVERY investigator, experimenter, and scientist,
who has given the subject of flight study, proceeds
on the theory that in order to fly man must
copy nature, and make the machine similar to the
type so provided.
THE THEORY OF COPYING NATURE.--If such is the
case then it is pertinent to inquire which bird is
the proper example to use for mechanical flight.
We have shown that they differ so radically in
every essential, that what would be correct in one
thing would be entirely wrong in another.
The bi-plane is certainly not a true copy. The
only thing in the Wright machine which in any
way resembles the bird's wing, is the rounded end
of the planes, and judging from other machines,
which have square ends, this slight similarity does
not contribute to its stability or otherwise help
the structure.
The monoplane, which is much nearer the bird
type, has also sounded wing ends, made not so
much for the purpose of imitating the wing of the
bird, as for structural reasons.
HULLS OF VESSELS.--If some marine architect
should come forward and assert that he intended
to follow nature by making a boat with a hull of
the shape or outline of a duck, or other swimming
fowl, he would be laughed at, and justly so, because
the lines of vessels which are most efficient
are not made like those of a duck or other swimming
creatures.
MAN DOES NOT COPY NATURE.--Look about you,
and see how many mechanical devices follow the
forms laid down by nature, or in what respect
man uses the types which nature provides in devising
the many inventions which ingenuity has
brought forth.
PRINCIPLES ESSENTIAL, NOT FORMS.--It is essential
that man shall follow nature's laws. He cannot
evade the principles on which the operations
of mechanism depend; but in doing so he has, in
nearly every instance, departed from the form
which nature has suggested, and made the machine
irrespective of nature's type.
Let us consider some of these striking differences
to illustrate this fact. Originally pins were
stuck upon a paper web by hand, and placed in
rows, equidistant from each other. This necessitates
the cooperative function of the fingers and
the eye. An expert pin sticker could thus assemble
from four to five thousand pins a day.
The first mechanical pinsticker placed over
500,000 pins a day on the web, rejecting every bent
or headless pin, and did the work with greater
accuracy than it was possible to do it by hand.
There was not the suggestion of an eye, or a finger
in the entire machine, to show that nature furnished
the type.
NATURE NOT THE GUIDE AS TO FORMS.--Nature
does not furnish a wheel in any of its mechanical
expressions. If man followed nature's form
in the building of the locomotive, it would move
along on four legs like an elephant. Curiously
enough, one of the first road wagons had "push
legs,"--an instance where the mechanic tried to
copy nature,--and failed.
THE PROPELLER TYPE.--The well known propeller
is a type of wheel which has no prototype in
nature. It is maintained that the tail of a fish
in its movement suggested the propeller, but the
latter is a long departure from it.
The Venetian rower, who stands at the stern,
and with a long-bladed oar, fulcrumed to the
boat's extremity, in making his graceful lateral
oscillations, simulates the propelling motion of
the tail in an absolutely perfect manner, but it is
not a propeller, by any means comparable to the
kind mounted on a shaft, and revoluble.
How much more efficient are the spirally-formed
blades of the propeller than any wing or fin movement,
in air or sea. There is no comparison between
the two forms in utility or value.
Again, the connecting points of the arms and
legs with the trunk of a human body afford the
most perfect types of universal joints which nature
has produced. The man-made universal
joint has a wider range of movement, possesses
greater strength, and is more perfect mechanically.
A universal joint is a piece of mechanism
between two elements, which enables them to be
turned, or moved, at any angle relative to each
other.
But why multiply these instances. Like samples
will be found on every hand, and in all directions,
and man, the greatest of all of nature's
products, while imperfect in himself, is improving
and adapting the things he sees about him.
WHY SPECIALLY-DESIGNED FORMS IMPROVE NATURAL
STRUCTURES.--The reason for this is, primarily,
that the inventor must design the article
for its special work, and in doing so makes it better
adapted to do that particular thing. The
hands and fingers can do a multiplicity of things,
but it cannot do any particular work with the facility
or the degree of perfection that is possible
with the machine made for that purpose.
The hands and fingers will bind a sheaf of
wheat, but it cannot compete with the special machine
made for that purpose. On the other hand
the binder has no capacity to do anything else than
what it was specially made for.
In applying the same sort of reasoning to the
building of flying machines we must be led to the
conclusion that the inventor can, and will, eventually,
bring out a form which is as far superior to
the form which nature has taught us to use as
the wonderful machines we see all about us are
superior to carry out the special work they were
designed to do.
On land, man has shown this superiority over
matter, and so on the sea. Singularly, the submarines,
which go beneath the sea, are very far
from that perfected state which have been attained
by vessels sailing on the surface; and while
the means of transportation on land are arriving
at points where the developments are swift and
remarkable, the space above the earth has not yet
been conquered, but is going through that same
period of development which precedes the production
of the true form itself.
MECHANISM DEVOID OF INTELLIGENCE.--The great
error, however, in seeking to copy nature's form
in a flying machine is, that we cannot invest the
mechanism with that which the bird has, namely,
a guiding intelligence to direct it instinctively, as
the flying creature does.
A MACHINE MUST HAVE A SUBSTITUTE FOR INTELLIGENCE.
--Such being the case it must be endowed
with something which is a substitute. A
bird is a supple, pliant organism; a machine is a
rigid structure. One is capable of being directed
by a mind which is a part of the thing itself; while
the other must depend on an intelligence which is
separate from it, and not responsive in feeling or
movement.
For the foregoing reasons success can never
be attained until some structural form is devised
which will consider the flying machine independently
of the prototypes pointed out as the correct
things to follow. It does not, necessarily, have to
be unlike the bird form, but we do know that the
present structures have been made and insisted
upon blindly, because of this wrong insistence on
forms.
STUDY OF BIRD FLIGHT USELESS.--The study of
the flight of birds has never been of any special
value to the art. Volumes have been written on
the subject. The Seventh Duke of Argyle, and
later, Pettigrew, an Englishman, contributed a
vast amount of written matter on the subject of
bird flight, in which it was sought to show that
soaring birds did not exert any power in flying.
Writers and experimenters do not agree on the
question of the propulsive power, or on the form
or shape of the wing which is most effective, or
in the matter of the relation of surface to weight,
nor do they agree in any particular as to the effect
and action of matter in the soaring principle.
Only a small percentage of flying creatures use
motionless wings as in soaring. By far, the
greater majority use beating wings, a method of
translation in air which has not met with success
in any attempts on the part of the inventor.
Nevertheless, experimenting has proceeded on
lines which seek to recognize nature's form only,
while avoiding the best known and most persistent
type.
SHAPE OF SUPPORTING SURFACES.--When we examine
the prevailing type of supporting surfaces
we cannot fail to be impressed with one feature,
namely, the determination to insist on a broad
spread of plane surface, in imitation of the bird
with outstretched wings.
THE TROUBLE ARISING FROM OUTSTRETCHED
WINGS.--This form of construction is what brings
all the troubles in its train. The literature on
aviation is full of arguments on this subject, all
declaring that a wide spread is essential, because,
--birds fly that way.
These assertions are made notwithstanding the
fact that only a few years ago, in the great exhibit
of aeroplanes in Paris, many unique forms of machines
were shown, all of them capable of flying,
as proven by numerous experiments, and among
them were a half dozen types whose length fore
and aft were much greater than transversely, and
it was particularly noted that they had most wonderful
stability.
DENSITY OF THE ATMOSPHERE.--Experts declare
that the density of the atmosphere varies throughout,
--that it has spots here and there which are,
apparently, like holes, so that one side or the
other of the machine will, unaccountably, tilt, and
sometimes the entire machine will suddenly drop
for many feet, while in flight.
ELASTICITY OF THE AIR.--Air is the most elastic
substance known. The particles constituting it
are constantly in motion. When heat or cold penetrate
the mass it does so, in a general way, so as
to permeate the entire body, but the conductivity
of the atmospheric gases is such that the heat
does not reach all parts at the same time.
AIR HOLES.--The result is that varying strata
of heat and cold seem to be superposed, and also
distributed along the route taken by a machine,
causing air currents which vary in direction and
intensity. When, therefore, a rapidly-moving
machine passes through an atmosphere so disturbed,
the surfaces of the planes strike a mass of
air moving, we may say, first toward the plane,
and the next instant the current is reversed, and
the machine drops, because its support is temporarily
gone, and the aviator experiences the sensation
of going into a "hole."
RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACCIDENTS.--These so-called
"holes" are responsible for many accidents. The
outstretched wings, many of them over forty feet
from tip to tip, offer opportunities for a tilt at one
end or the other, which has sent so many machines
to destruction.
The high center of gravity in all machines makes
the weight useless to counterbalance the rising
end or to hold up the depressed wing.
All aviators agree that these unequal areas of
density extend over small spaces, and it is, therefore,
obvious that a machine which is of such a
structure that it moves through the air broadside
on, will be more liable to meet these inequalities
than one which is narrow and does not take in such
a wide path.
Why, therefore, persist in making a form which,
by its very nature, invites danger? Because birds
fly that way!
THE TURNING MOVEMENT.--This structural arrangement
accentuates the difficulty when the machine
turns. The air pressure against the wing
surface is dependent on the speed. The broad
outstretched surfaces compel the wing at the outer
side of the circle to travel faster than the inner
one. As a result, the outer end of the aeroplane
is elevated.
CENTRIFUGAL ACTION.--At the same time the
running gear, and the frame which carries it and
supports the machine while at rest, being below
the planes, a centrifugal force is exerted, when
turning a circle, which tends to swing the wheels
and frame outwardly, and thereby still further
elevating the outer end of the plane.
THE WARPING PLANES.--The only remedy to
meet this condition is expressed in the mechanism
which wraps or twists the outer ends of the planes,
as constructed in the Wright machine, or the
ailerons, or small wings at the rear margins of the
planes, as illustrated by the Farman machine.
The object of this arrangement is to decrease the
angle of incidence at the rising end, and increase
the angle at the depressed end, and thus, by manually-
operated means keep the machine on an even
keel.