There is a poem called "Darius Green and His Flying Machine." In this
poem Darius, a country boy says, "The birds can fly and why can't I?"
A Greek story, centuries old, tells how a certain man and his son made
themselves wings of wax. They flew far out over the sea, but the warm
sun melted the waxen wings, and the two flying men were drowned.
Today the aeroplanes cut through the air with great speed. There are
many different designs, and daring young men are eager to manage these
swift flying crafts.
However, it is but a short time since two American boys made the first
successful flights in the United States and started a factory for
building aeroplanes. Wilbur and Orville Wright lived in Dayton, Ohio.
Their father was a minister, who spent his spare time working with
tools. Once he invented a typewriter, but it was never put on the
market. The boys were interested in his workshop, and while very young
began to find their greatest pleasure in making things that would go.
It was in the year 1879, when Orville was eight years old, that his
father brought home a toy that made a great impression on the boyish
mind. It was called a heliocopter, but the Wright boys called it "the
bat." Made of bamboo, cork, and thin paper, it had two propellers that
revolved in opposite directions by the untwining of rubber bands that
controlled them. When thrown against the ceiling, it would hover in
the air for a time. They made many models of this toy, but after a
time they became tired of it and wanted to build something more
difficult.
[Illustration: ORVILLE WRIGHT
Joint Inventor of the Aeroplane]
Their first venture was a printing press; and when Orville was fifteen
years of age, they were publishing a four-page paper called the
Midget. They did all the work from editor to delivery boys.
Just about this time the bicycle craze passed over the country.
Everyone rode a wheel. Automobiles were unknown, and the new machines,
that could be ridden so fast along the highways, seemed a wonderful
invention. The Wright brothers had no money to buy a bicycle, so they
made one. You may laugh when you hear that they used a piece of old
gas pipe for the frame, but nevertheless they succeeded in their
undertaking and could ride as well on their home-made machine as their
friends did on expensive, high-grade ones. No doubt they had many long
rides and great sport with the bicycle they had built, but the Wright
brothers always found their greatest pleasure in making things rather
than in using them. Therefore, it did not seem strange to any one when
they said they wanted something better than a bicycle; but when it
became known that instead of riding rapidly over city streets and
country roads they wanted to fly through the air like birds, the
people were amazed and thought the two boys had lost their wits.
So to do this and buy materials with which to build their new machine,
they opened a bicycle repair shop. It was in the shed back of this
shop that they first made their models of air craft. They had no
wealthy friends to back them with money. They had no chance to go
abroad, where clever men were being urged by their governments to make
experiments with what the world called "flying machines." They were
not able to go to college or to any school where they could obtain
help in working out their plan, so they started in to study by
themselves what the German, French, and English inventors had to say
about the art of flying.
Seemingly, nothing discouraged them. Everywhere the newspapers and
magazines were poking fun at mad inventors who thought men would some
day soar through the air as birds do. There was a Professor Langley, a
man much older than the Wright brothers, who finished a machine in
1896. It flew perfectly, on the sixth day of May in that year. The
flight was made near Washington, D. C., along the Potomac river for
the distance of about three-quarters of a mile. He made another
successful flight in November. Then the United States Government urged
him to build a full-sized machine, capable of carrying a man. He
completed this machine in 1903 and attempted to launch it on the
seventh day of October in that year. An accident caused the machine to
fall into the Potomac. The aviator was thrown out and came near
drowning. Professor Langley tried to launch his machine again in
December and the same accident occurred. The machine was broken. The
newspapers made cruel fun of Professor Langley; he was criticized in
the U. S. Congress; and overcome by grief at the failure of his great
idea he tried no more. Two years later he died, crushed and broken in
spirit.
But the Wright brothers did not let any such unkind comment hinder
their work. They kept on studying the flight of birds. Lying flat on
their backs they would watch birds for whole afternoons at a time,
until at last they came to believe that a bird himself is really an
aeroplane. The parts of the wings close to the body are supporting
planes, while the portions that can be flapped are the propellers.
Watch a hawk or a buzzard soaring and you will see they move their
wings but little. They balance themselves on the rising currents of
air. A hawk finds that on a clear warm day the air currents are high
and rise with a rotary motion. That is why we see these birds go
sailing round and round. When you see one poised above a steep hill on
a damp, windy day you may be sure he is balancing himself in the air
which rises from its slope and he will be able to glide down at will.
The Wright brothers were certain if they could balance a machine in
the air they could make it go. To find out how to do this they made a
difficult experiment with delicate sheets of metal balanced in a long
tube. Through this tube steady currents of air were blown. The speed
with which the currents were sent through the tube was changed often,
as well as the angles of sending. Over and over they did this, until
they were sure of the same results each time. They knew how to plan
the shape of a surface that would do what they wanted it to in the
air, and they were soon ready to make a trial flight with their
aeroplane.
The United States Weather Bureau told them the winds were strongest
and steadiest at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and there they made their
first test flights in 1900. That year they had only two minutes of
actual sailing in the air. But they went back the next year and the
next, learning more each time, and working untiringly.
One day Dr. Octave Chanute, the man who knew more than any one else in
the United States about flying, appeared suddenly at Kitty Hawk. He
watched them, and gave as his opinion that they had gone farther than
any one else in this new art. Cheered by his words they began to work
harder. Now that they could balance in the air they must make their
machine go.
It took them a year to learn to turn a corner. During the years 1904
and 1905, they made 154 flights. At last they were ready, in 1909, to
make a test for our government. The United States said it would pay
$25,000 for a machine capable of going forty miles an hour. Every mile
above this speed would be paid for at the rate of $2500 and for every
mile less than this down to the rate of thirty-six miles an hour they
would deduct $2500 from the purchase money. The flight was to be in a
measured course of five miles from Ft. Meyer to Alexandria, Va. It was
not an easy flight, and it was considered to be more difficult than
crossing the English Channel, a feat then engaging the attention of
Europeans.
Orville Wright with one passenger made the flight in fourteen minutes
and forty-two seconds, a rate of speed a little more than forty-two
miles an hour. Army officers then went to him to learn how to manage
the machine, for even then it was believed the greatest use of the
aeroplane would be in war.
When Orville Wright was succeeding in this country, Wilbur Wright went
to France with one of their machines. At first the French people
laughed, made cartoons of him and his machine, even wrote a song about
his effort; but he soon rose above all such petty and silly things.
The French people began to see the progress the Americans were making
and took hold of the new invention more rapidly than any other
nation.
On the same trip, Wilbur Wright visited Italy, Germany, and England,
making many flights and winning a large number of prizes. When he
returned to this country he was overwhelmed with dinners, receptions,
and medals. He made a great flight in New York City, encircling the
Statue of Liberty in the harbor and flying from Governor's Island to
Grant's Tomb and return, a distance of twenty-one miles.
Not long after these successes Wilbur died, and his brother Orville
was left to go on with their plans. Orville still lives in Dayton,
Ohio, and has a large factory given over to building aeroplanes.
Long before the outbreak of the great war he had said warfare could be
carried on extensively in the air, and that we were realizing but a
few of the uses of this new invention. Although he believes air travel
will become quite an everyday happening, he does not expect it to take
the place of the railroad or the steam boat. However, he hopes to see
the government carry the mails by an aerial route, and to go quickly
and easily to out-of-the-way places.
At present his greatest interest lies in making an aeroplane that is
simple enough for any one to manage and at the same time can be sold
at a low enough price for the average person to own. This may not seem
possible to you, but remember no one ever believed the Wright boys
would be able to fly, so it would not be strange if before many years
aeroplanes were used as much as automobiles are today. In fact,
Orville Wright says: "The time is not far distant when people will
take their Sunday afternoon spins in their aeroplanes precisely as
they do now in their automobiles. People need only to recover from the
impression that it is a dangerous sport, instead of being, when
adopted by rational persons, one of the safest. It is also far more
comfortable. The driver of an automobile, even under the most
favorable circumstances, lives at a constant nerve tension. He must
keep always on the lookout for obstructions in the road, for other
automobiles, and for sudden emergencies. A long drive, therefore, is
likely to be an exhausting operation. Now the aeroplane has a great
future because this element of nerve tension is absent. The driver
enjoys the proceeding as much as his passengers and probably more.
Winds no longer terrorize the airman. He goes up except in the very
bad days."
Concluding he says: "Aeroplaning as a sport will attract women as well
as men. Women make excellent passengers. I have never yet taken up one
who was not extremely eager to repeat the experience. This fact will,
of course, hasten the day when the aeroplane will be a great sporting
and social diversion."
* * * * *
_"Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties,
passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and
seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable
undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards
rewarded by joy."_
--DR. JOHNSON.
[Illustration: ROBERT E. PEARY
Discoverer of the North Pole]