"The birds can fly and why can't I?"
This query of Darius Green's, in various forms, has suggested itself to
man since the dawn of history. Born with an inspiration to look upward
and aspire, the navigation of the air has appealed with peculiar force
to his imagination and through the centuries has at different times led
bold and adventurous spirits to attempt what the world long regarded as
impossible. The heavens seemed reserved for winged insects, birds and
angels. Audacious man might not venture out upon the impalpable air. Can
man fly? After more than four thousand years it was left for man to
answer yes, to rise from the earth on wing and thrill the world "with
the audacity of his design and the miracle of its execution." Bold
enterprise! Fitting achievement to usher in a new century! A seeming
miracle at first, but destined soon to excite no more curiosity than the
flight of bees and birds. The solution of the problem of human flight
was no miracle nor was it the swift work of genius accomplished at a
magic master stroke. It was the result of intelligence and industry
patiently applied for years till the barriers of difficulty gave way and
man ventured out with assurance on the highways of the air.
Just when he first attempted to fly is not known. Ancient Greek
mythology abounds in stories of flying gods and mortals. Kites which
bear some relation to the aeroplane were toys among the Chinese
thousands of years ago. A Greek by the name of Achytes is reported to
have made a wooden dove which flew under the propelling power of heated
air. Baldad, a tribal king in what is now England, so tradition has it,
attempted to fly over a city but fell and broke a leg. A similar
accident is said to have happened to a Benedictine monk in the eleventh
century and to others attempting like exploits in after years. A fall
and a broken leg seem to have been the usual results of these early
attempts at aerial flight.
In the fifteenth century students and inventors gave serious attention
to the navigation of the air and trustworthy accounts of their labors
come down to us. Jean Baptiste Dante, a brother of the great Italian
poet, made a number of gliding flights from high elevations and while
giving an exhibition at a marriage feast in Perugia, like his
predecessors in the middle ages, alighted on a roof and broke a leg.
Leonardo da Vinci, the great painter and sculptor, was an amateur
aviator of no mean attainment for his day. He invented a machine which
the operator was to fly by using his arms and legs to set wings into
flapping motion, like those of birds. This was called an orthopter, or
ornithopter, a name which may be properly applied to any similar device.
Another machine invented by him was in the form of a horizontal screw
ninety-six feet in diameter. By the twisting of this the machine was
designed to fly upward. This was called a helicopter. Da Vinci's third
invention in this line was the parachute, with which successful descents
were made from towers and other elevations. In the early half of the
eighteenth century the Swedish philosopher, Emanuel Swedenborg, sketched
in one of his works a flying machine of the orthopter style which he
knew would not fly but which he suggested as a start, saying "It seems
easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into actuality, for it
requires greater force and less weight than exists in the human body."
In 1742 the Marquis di Bacqueville at the age of sixty-two attempted to
make a gliding flight from the tower of his home in Paris across the
river Seine to the gardens of the Tuileries, started successfully in the
presence of a great multitude, but suddenly halted over the river and
fell into a boat, paying the historic penalty of a broken leg.
At this point it may be well to classify the flying devices thus far
considered.