Transcriber's note:
Italic text has been marked with _underscores_. Subscript numbers
are displayed as _{2} as in the equation in Chapter VII. Please
see the end of this book for further notes.
[Illustration: WILBUR WRIGHT
Who with his younger brother, Orville Wright, invented the first
practical aeroplane. Wilbur Wright's death of typhoid fever in
the summer of 1912 was an irreparable loss to aviation.]
THE BOY'S BOOK
OF NEW INVENTIONS
BY
HARRY E. MAULE
[Illustration]
MANY ILLUSTRATIONS
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1912
_Copyright, 1912, by_
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
_All rights reserved including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian_
TO MY MOTHER
In Appreciation of Her Broad Interest In All the Activities of the
World
_ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_
_The thanks of the publishers and author are due a great many
individuals and publications for aid in securing photographs and data
used in the preparation of this volume._
_Although space prevents giving the names of all, opportunity is here
taken to express to each the heartiest appreciation of their generous
help and valuable suggestions._
_More than to all of these are my thanks due my wife, Edna O'Dell
Maule, for her constant aid and coöperation._
PREFACE
In the preparation of this book the author has tried to give an
interesting account of the invention and workings of a few of the
machines and mechanical processes that are making the history of our
time more wonderful and more dramatic than that of any other age
since the world began. For heroic devotion to science in the face of
danger and the scorn of their fellowmen, there is no class who have
made a better record than inventors. Most inventions, too, are far
more than scientific calculation, and it is the human story of the
various factors in this great age of invention that is here set forth
for boy readers.
New discoveries, or new applications of forces known to exist,
illustrating some broad principle of science, have been the chief
concern of the author in choosing the subjects to be taken up in the
various chapters, so that it has been necessary to limit the scope
of the book, except in one or two instances, to inventions that have
come into general use within the last ten years. In "The Boy's Book
of Inventions," "The Second Boy's Book of Inventions," and "Stories
of Invention," Mr. Baker and Mr. Doubleday have told the stories
of many of the greatest inventions up to 1904, including those of
the gasoline motor, the wireless telegraph, the dirigible balloon,
photography, the phonograph, submarine boats, etc. Consequently for
the most part the important developments in some of these machines
are treated briefly in the final chapters, while the earlier chapters
are devoted to new inventions, which, if made before 1904, did not
receive general notice until after that time.
Although the subjects treated in the earlier chapters are here spoken
of as new inventions, all of them are not recent in the strictest
sense of the word, for men had been working on the central idea of
some of them for many years before they actually were developed to a
stage where they could be patented and sent out into the world.
H. E. M.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE AEROPLANE 3
How a Scientist Who Liked Boys and a Boy Who
Liked Science Followed the Fascinating Story of
the Invention of the Aeroplane.
II. AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENT 49
How the Inventors Carried On the Art of Aviation
Until It Became the Greatest of All Sports
and Then a Great Industry.
III. AEROPLANES TO-DAY 91
Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look Over
Modern Aeroplanes and Find Great Improvements
Over Those of a Few Years Ago. A
Model Aeroplane.
IV. ARTIFICIAL LIGHTNING MADE AND HARNESSED
TO MAN'S USE 129
Our Friends Investigate Nikola Tesla's Invention
for the Wireless Transmission of Power, by
Which He Hopes to Encircle the Earth With
Limitless Electrical Power, Make Ocean and Air
Travel Absolutely Safe, and Revolutionize Land
Traffic.
V. THE MOTION PICTURE MACHINE 164
Machines That Make Sixteen Tiny Pictures Per
Second and Show Them at the Same Rate Magnified
Several Thousand Times. Motion Pictures
in School. Our Boy Friend Sees the
Whole Process of Making a Motion Picture Play.
VI. ADVENTURES WITH MOTION PICTURES 195
Perilous and Exciting Times in Obtaining Motion
Pictures. How the Machine Came to Be Invented
and the Newest Developments in Cinematography.
VII. STEEL BOILED LIKE WATER AND CUT LIKE
PAPER 224
Our Boy Friend Sees How Science Has Turned
the Greatest Known Heats to the Everyday Use
of Mankind.
VIII. THE TESLA TURBINE 263
Dr. Nikola Tesla Tells of His New Steam Turbine
Engine, a Model of Which, the Size of a
Derby Hat, Develops More Than 110 Horse
Power.
IX. THE ROMANCE OF CONCRETE 288
The One Piece House of Thomas A. Edison and
Other Uses of the Newest and Yet the Oldest
Building Material of Civilized Peoples, Seen By
the Boy and His Scientific Friend.
X. THE LATEST AUTOMOBILE ENGINE 320
Our Boy Friend and the Scientist Look Over the
Field of Gasoline Engines and See Some Big
Improvements Over Those of a Few Years Ago.
XI. THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH UP TO THE MINUTE 332
The Scientist Talks of Amateur Wireless Operators.
The Great Development of Wireless That
Has Enabled It to Save Three Thousand Lives.
Long Distance Work of the Modern Instruments.
XII. MORE MARVELS OF SCIENCE 352
Color Photography, the Tungsten Electric Lamp,
the Pulmotor, and Other New Inventions Investigated
by Our Boy Friend.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Wilbur Wright _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
The First Wright Aeroplane 4
The First Wright Glider 5
The Second Wright Glider 5
A Long Glide 5
Motor of the Wright Biplane 12
A 16-Cylinder, 100-Horsepower Antoinette Motor 12
An 8-Cylinder, 50-Horsepower Curtiss Motor 12
Standard Gnome Aeroplane Motor 13
A 14-Cylinder, 100-Horsepower Gnome Motor 13
Testing a Gnome Motor on a Gun Carriage 13
Model Aeroplane Fliers 16
A Modern College Man's Glider 17
Otto Lilienthal Making a Flight in His Glider 17
The Chanute Type Glider 32
The Herring Glider 32
An Early Helicopter 32
Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley 33
Sir Hiram Maxim 33
Octave Chanute 33
Langley's Steam Model 36
The Maxim Aeroplane 36
Medals Won by the Wright Brothers 37
The First Santos-Dumont Aeroplane 44
The Cross-Channel Type Blériot Monoplane 44
A Voisin Biplane 44
Glenn Curtiss About to Make a Flight 45
Henri Farman Starting Aloft with Two Passengers 45
Louis Blériot 45
Glenn Curtiss Making a Flight in the _June Bug_ 52
Orville Wright Making a Flight at Fort Myer 52
The First Letter Ever Written Aboard an Aeroplane
in Flight 53
The Goddess of Liberty 60
First Actual War Expedition of an Aeroplane 61
War Manoeuvres 61
Harry N. Atwood Arriving at Chicago 64
Finish of Atwood's St. Louis to New York Flight 64
Starting with the Aeroplane Mail 65
Chavez on His Fatal Flight Across the Alps 80
The Late Calbraith P. Rodgers, Trans-Continental
Flier 81
The World's Longest Glide 96
The End of a Glide 96
Landing on a Warship 97
Boarding a Battleship 97
The Curtiss Flying Boat 112
The Flying Boat Starting 112
Glenn Curtiss Allowing His Hydro-Aeroplane to
Float on the Water After Alighting 112
Hydro-Aeroplanes at Monte Carlo 113
The Wright Biplane 116
Standard Curtiss Biplane 117
Curtiss Steering Gear 117
Standard Farman Biplane 120
Farman with Enclosed Nose 120
A Modern Blériot 121
A Standard Blériot 121
Passenger-Carrying Blériot 121
The Antoinette Monoplane 124
The Nieuport Monoplane 125
Like a Bolt of Lightning 136
Dr. Nikola Tesla 137
Doctor Tesla's First Power Plant 137
Electricity Enough to Kill an Army 164
A Battle Scene in the Studio 165
The Men Who Gave the World Motion Pictures 172
The Motion-Picture Projector 173
A Section of Motion-Picture Film 176
Making a Motion-Picture Play in the Studio 177
A Motion-Picture Studio 192
A Realistic Film of Washington Crossing the Delaware 193
The Corsican Brothers--A Famous Trick Film 200
The Guillotine 201
A Romance of the Ice Fields 216
The Spanish Cavalier 216
All Ready for a Thermit Weld 217
Thermit in Eruption 224
Dr. Hans Goldschmidt 225
Thermit Weld on Sternframe of a Steamship 240
A Large Shaft Welded by the Thermit Process 240
Cutting Up the Old Battleship _Maine_ 241
Cutting Away the Decks 241
An Oxy-Acetylene Gas Torch Weld 260
Tiny 200-Horsepower Turbine 261
The Tesla Turbine Pump 261
The Marvellous Tesla Turbine 280
Thomas A. Edison and His Concrete Furniture 281
Model of Edison Poured Concrete House 281
What One Set of Boys Did with Concrete 288
Massive Concrete Work 289
A Level Stretch of Catskill Aqueduct 289
Huge Concrete Moulds at Panama 304
Concrete Locks on the Panama Canal 305
The World-Wide Use of Concrete 308
The Catskill Aqueduct 309
The Aqueduct Deep Under Ground 309
The Silent Knight Motor 316
A Portable Army Wireless Outfit 317
The Wireless in the Navy 317
The Navy Wireless School 344
An Amateur Wireless Outfit 345
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
A Simple Model Aeroplane 120
Diagram of the Earth 147
A Motion-picture Camera 177
A Motion-picture Printing Machine 184
Diagram of the Tesla Turbine 275
The Curtiss Turbine 285
Marconi Transmitter Layout 342
Marconi Detector Layout 344
The Pulmotor 372
THE BOY'S BOOK OF NEW INVENTIONS
CHAPTER I
THE AEROPLANE
HOW A SCIENTIST WHO LIKED BOYS AND A BOY WHO LIKED SCIENCE
FOLLOWED THE FASCINATING STORY OF THE INVENTION OF THE AEROPLANE.
When, with engine throbbing, propellers whirling, and every wire
vibrating, the first successful aeroplane shot forward into the teeth
of a biting December gale and sailed steadily over the bleak North
Carolina sand dunes for twelve seconds, the third great epoch in the
age of invention finally was ushered in. First, man conquered the
land with locomotive, electricity, steam plow, telegraph, telephone,
wireless and a thousand other inventions. Almost at the same time he
conquered the ocean with steamship, cable, and wireless. Now, through
the invention of the aeroplane, he is making a universal highway of
the air.
Such was the way the real beginning of aviation was summarized one
day to a bright young man who spent all his spare time out of school
at the laboratory of his good friend the scientist. Always in good
humour, and with a world of knowledge of things that delight a
boy's heart, the man was never too deep in experiments to answer any
questions about the great inventions that have made this world of
ours such a very interesting place.
The laboratory was filled with models of machines, queer devices
for scientific experiment, a litter of delicate tools, shelves of
test tubes, bottles filled with strange smelling fluids, and rows
upon rows of books that looked dull enough, but which the scientist
explained to the boy contained some of the most fascinating stories
ever told by man.
Coming back to aeroplanes the boy said, "But my father says that
aviation is so new it is still very imperfect."
"That is true," answered the scientist, taking a crucible out of the
flame of his Bunsen burner and hanging it in the rack to cool, "but
it has seen a marvellous development in the last few years.
"It was less than ten years ago--the end of 1903, to be exact--that
Orville and Wilbur Wright first sailed their power-driven aeroplane,"
he continued, "but so rapid has been the progress of aviation that
nowadays we are not surprised when a flight from the Atlantic to the
Pacific is accomplished. It seems a tragic thing that Wilbur Wright
should have been called by death, as he was in May, 1912, by typhoid
fever, for he was at the very zenith of his success and probably
would have carried on his work to a far, far greater development."
[Illustration: THE FIRST WRIGHT AEROPLANE
This was the machine that made the first successful flight in the
history of the world, of a power-driven, man-carrying aeroplane.]
[Illustration: THE FIRST WRIGHT GLIDER
This device was first flown as a kite without a pilot, and the
levers worked by ropes from the ground, to test the principles.]
[Illustration: THE SECOND WRIGHT GLIDER
The machine was launched into the air from the top of a sand dune
against a high wind, and proved a great success.]
[Illustration: A LONG GLIDE
Wright glider in full flight over Kill Devil Hill, N. C.]
After a little pause the scientist continued, saying that, at
the time the Wright brothers made their first flight they were
experimenting with what we now know as a biplane, or Chanute type
glider, at Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, N. C. It is a desolate
wind-swept spot on the coast where only a little rank marsh grass
grows on the sheltered sides of the great sand dunes. The brothers
chose this barren place for their experiments because here the winds
were the most favourable for their purpose.
They were not ready for their first attempt to fly in a
motor-propelled machine until December 17th, and though they sent out
a general invitation to the few people living in that section, only
five braved the cold wind. Three of these were life savers from the
Kill Devil Hill station near by. Doubtless the other people had heard
of the numerous failures of flying machines and expected the promised
exhibition of the silent young men who had spent the autumn in their
neighbourhood, to be just another such. They were sadly mistaken,
for they missed a spectacle that never before had been seen in all
the history of the world. Nowadays we are familiar with the sight of
an aeroplane skimming over the ground and then soaring into the sky,
but to the five people who, besides the inventors, were present it
undoubtedly was almost beyond belief.
The brothers had installed a specially constructed gasoline engine
in their glider, and after thoroughly testing it they carried the
machine out on to a level stretch of sand, turned it so that it
would face the wind, and while the life savers held it in place the
brothers went over every wire and stay. They felt perfectly confident
that the machine would fly, but they made no predictions, and in fact
spoke but few words between themselves or to the five men gathered
about the aeroplane. The machine was not the smoothly finished one
we know to-day as the Wright biplane. The operator lay flat on his
face on the lower plane, the elevating rudder composed of two smaller
planes stuck out in front, instead of behind, and there were several
other important differences in design, but in principle it was the
same machine that has carried the fame of the American inventors
around the world.
Finally the operator took his place, the engine was started, the
signal was given, the men holding the machine dropped back and it
started out along the rail from which it was launched. It ran along
the track to the end, directly against the wind, and rose into the
air.
It meant that the air had been turned into a highway, but the Wright
brothers were very modest in setting down an account of their
achievement.
"The first flight," they wrote, "lasted only twelve seconds,"
a flight very modest compared with that of birds, but it was,
nevertheless, the first in the history of the world in which a
machine carrying a man had raised itself by its own power into the
air in free flight, had sailed forward on a level course without
reduction of speed, and had finally landed without being wrecked. The
second and third flights (the same day) were a little longer, and the
fourth lasted fifty-nine seconds, covering a distance of 853 feet
over the ground against a twenty-mile wind.
"After the last flight the machine was carried back to camp and set
down in what was thought to be a safe place. But a few minutes later,
when engaged in conversation about the flights, a sudden gust of wind
struck the machine and started to turn it over. All made a rush to
stop it, but we were too late. Mr. Daniels, a giant in stature and
strength, was lifted off his feet, and, falling inside between the
surfaces, was shaken about like a rattle in a box as the machine
rolled over and over. He finally fell out upon the sand with nothing
worse than painful bruises, but the damage to the machine caused a
discontinuance of experiments."
"Thus," said the scientist, "we see the record aeroplane flight for
1903 was 853 feet while in 1911 a Wright biplane flew more than 3,000
miles from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In ten years more we may
look back to our monoplanes and biplanes of to-day in the same way
we do now on the first cumbersome 'horseless carriages' that were
replaced by the high-powered automobiles we know now. Some experts
in aeronautics say that we may even see the complete passing of the
monoplane and biplane types in favour of some now unknown kind of
aeroplane."
Who knows but that the man to invent the perfect aeroplane will be
one of the boy readers of this! Everywhere the making and flying of
model aeroplanes by boys is looked upon, not only as play, but as a
valuable and instructive sport for boys and young men of any age. One
of the indications of this may be seen in the public interest taken
in the tournaments of boys' model aeroplane clubs. Not only do crowds
of grown people with no technical knowledge of aeroplanes attend the
tournaments, but also older students of aviation who realize that
among the young model fliers there may be another Orville or Wilbur
Wright, a Blériot, or a Farman.
So important is this knowledge of aviation considered that the
principles and the practical construction of model aeroplanes are
taught in many of the public schools. Instead of spending all their
school hours in the study of books, the boys now spend a part of
their time in the carpenter shop making the model aeroplanes which
they enter in the tournaments. Of course, dozens of types of models
are turned out, some good and some bad, but in the latter part of
Chapter III is given a brief outline for the construction of one of
the simplest and most practicable model aeroplanes.
Not only the schools but the colleges also have taken up aviation,
and nearly every college has its glider club, and the students work
many hours making the gliders with which they contest for distance
records with other clubs. As a consequence aviation has become a
regular department of college athletics, and intercollegiate glider
meets are a common thing.
The epochs of invention go hand in hand with the history of
civilization, for it has been largely through invention that man has
been able to progress to better methods of living. In the olden days,
when there were few towns and every one lived in a castle, or on the
land owned by the lord of the castle, war was the chief occupation,
and the little communities made practically everything they used by
hand. When they went abroad they either walked or rode horses, or
went in clumsy ships. Pretty soon men began to invent better ways of
doing things; one a better way of making shoes, another a better way
of making armour, and the people for miles around would take to going
to these men for their shoes and armour. Towns sprang up around these
expert workmen, and more inventions came, bringing more industries to
the towns. Inventions made industry bigger, and war more disastrous
because of the improvement invention made in weapons. Then came
inventions that changed the manner of living for all men--the
machines for making cloth, which did away with the spinning-wheels of
our great-grandmothers, and created the great industry of the cotton
and woollen mills; the inventions for making steel that brought about
the great steel mills, and enabled the armies of the world to use the
great guns we know to-day, and the battleships to carry such heavy
armour plate; the steam locomotive that enabled man to travel swiftly
from one city to another; the steamship that brought all the nations
close together; the telegraph, cable, telephone, and wireless, that
made communication over any distance easy; the submarine that made
war still more dangerous; and finally the aeroplane that makes a
highway of the air in which our earth revolves.
But even from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans man had
tried to fly. Every nation had its list of martyrs who gave their
lives to the cause of aviation. In modern times, too, many attempts
had been made to discover the secret of flight. Otto Lilienthal, a
German, called the "Flying Man," had made important discoveries about
air currents while gliding through the air from hills and walls by
means of contrivances like wings fitted to his person. Others had
made fairly successful gliders, and Prof. Samuel Pierepont Langley
of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington actually had made a
model aeroplane that flew for a short distance. Also, Clement Ader,
a Frenchman, had sailed a short way in a power flier, and Sir Hiram
Maxim, the English inventor, had built a gigantic steam-driven
aeroplane that gave some evidences of being able to fly. But these
men were laughed at as cranks, while the Wrights kept their secret
until they were sure of the success of their biplane. However,
the question as to who first rode in a power-driven flier under
the control of the operator still is the subject of a world-wide
controversy.
It was as boys that the Wright brothers first began experiments
with flying, and though they have received the highest praises from
the whole world, Orville still is, and until his death Wilbur was,
the same quiet, modest man who made bicycles in Dayton, and the
surviving brother of the pair is working harder than ever. In telling
the story of their own early play, that later proved to be one of
the most important things they ever did, the Wright brothers wrote
for the _Century Magazine_: "We devoted so much of our attention
to kite-flying that we were regarded as experts. But as we became
older we had to give up the sport as unbecoming to boys of our age."
As every boy knows, kite-flying was one of the early methods of
experimenting with air currents and greatly aided the scientists
in their exploration of the ocean of air that surrounds the world,
eddying and swirling up and down, running smoothly and swiftly here,
coming to a dead stop there--but always different from the minute
before.
But before the Wright brothers gave up flying kites they had
played with miniature flying machines. They were known then as
"helicopteres," but the Wright brothers called them "bats," as the
toys came nearer resembling bats than anything else the boys had seen
about their home in Dayton, Ohio. Most boys probably have played with
something of the kind themselves, and maybe have made some. They were
made of a light framework of bamboo formed into two screws driven in
opposite directions by twisted rubber bands something like the motors
on boys' model aeroplanes of to-day. When the rubber bands unwound
the "bats" flew upward.
"A toy so delicate lasted only a short time in our hands," continues
the story of the Wright brothers, "but its memory was abiding. We
began building them ourselves, making each one larger than that
preceding. But the larger the 'bat' the less it flew. We did not know
that a machine having only twice the size of another would require
eight times the power. We finally became discouraged."
This was away back in 1878, and it was not until 1896 that the
Wright brothers actually began the experiments that led to their
world-famous success.
Strangely enough it all started when Orville, the younger of the two,
was sick with typhoid fever, the same disease that caused Wilbur
Wright's death. According to all accounts, the elder brother, having
remained away from their bicycle factory in order to nurse Orville,
was reading aloud. Among other things he read to Orville the
account of the tragic death of Otto Lilienthal, the German "Flying
Man" who was killed while making a glide.
[Illustration: MOTOR OF THE WRIGHT BIPLANE]
[Illustration: A 16-CYLINDER 100-HORSEPOWER ANTOINETTE MOTOR
A frequent prize winner.]
[Illustration: AN 8-CYLINDER 5O-HORSEPOWER CURTISS MOTOR]
THE GNOME MOTOR
[Illustration: Standard Gnome aeroplane motor, showing interior.]
[Illustration:
Photo by Philip W. Wilcox.
Fourteen-cylinder 100-horsepower Gnome motor. Used on many racing
aeroplanes.]
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the _Scientific American_
Testing a Gnome motor on a gun carriage. So great is the power of
the engine that the tongue of the heavy carriage is buried in the
ground to hold it in place.]
"Why can't we make a glider that would be a success?" the brothers
asked each other. They were sure they could, and they got so excited
in talking it over that it nearly brought back Orville's fever.
When he got well they studied aeronautics with the greatest care,
approaching the subject with all the thoroughness that later made
their name a byword in aviation for care and deliberation.
Neither of these two young men was over demonstrative, and neither
was lacking in the ability for years and years of the hardest kind
of work, but together they made an ideal team for taking up the
invention of something that all the scientists of the world hitherto
had failed to develop. Wilbur was called by those who knew him one
of the most silent men that ever lived, as he never uttered a word
unless he had something to say, and then he said it in the most
direct and the briefest possible manner. He had an unlimited capacity
for hard work, nerves of steel and the kind of daring that makes the
aviator face death with pleasure every minute of the time he is in
the air.
No less daring is Orville, the younger of the two, who is a little
bit more talkative and more full of enthusiasm than was Wilbur. He
was the man the reporters always went to when they knew the elder
brother would never say a word, and his geniality never failed them.
He also is a true scientist and tireless in the work of developing
the art of aviation.
First, the brothers read all the learned and scientific books of
Professor Langley, and Octave Chanute, the two first great American
pioneers in aviation, and the reports of Lilienthal, Maxim, and the
brilliant French scientists.
They saw, as did Professor Langley, that it was out of the question
to try to make a machine that would fly by moving its wings like a
bird. Then they began with great kites, and next made gliders--that
is, aeroplanes without engines--for the brothers knew that there
was no use in trying to make a machine-driven, heavier-than-air
flier before they had tested out practically all the theories of the
earlier scientists.
They fashioned their gliders of two parallel main planes like those
of Octave Chanute. The width, length, distance between planes,
rudders, auxiliary planes and their placing were all problems for the
most careful study. It was very discouraging work, for no big thing
comes easily. As their experiments proceeded they said they found one
rule after another incorrect, and they finally discarded most of the
books the scientists had written. Then with characteristic patience
they started in to work out the problem from first principles. "We
had taken aeronautics merely as a sport," they wrote later. "We
reluctantly entered upon the scientific side of it. But we soon found
the work so fascinating that we were drawn into it deeper and deeper."
The Wrights knew that an oblong plane--that is, a long narrow
one--driven through the air broadside first is more evenly supported
by the air than would be a plane of the same area but square in
shape. The reason for this is that the air gives the greatest amount
of support to a plane at the entering edge, as it is called in
aviation--that is, the edge where it is advancing into the air. A
little way from the edge the air begins to slip off at the back and
sides and the support decreases. Thus, it will be seen that if the
rear surface, which gives little support because the air slips away
from under it, is put at the sides, giving the plane a greater spread
from tip to tip and not so much depth from front to rear, the plane
is more efficient--that is, more stable, less subject to drifting,
and better able to meet the varying wind currents. Scientists
call this proportion of the spread to the depth the aspect ratio
of planes. For instance, if a plane has a spread of 30 feet and a
depth of 6 feet it is said to have an aspect ratio of _5_. This is
a very important consideration in the designing of an aeroplane,
because aspect ratio is a factor in the speed. In general, high
speed machines have a smaller aspect ratio than slower ones. The
aspect ratio also has an important bearing on the general efficiency
of an aeroplane, but the lifting power of a plane is figured as
proportionate to its total area. In order to hold the air, and keep
its supporting influence, aviators have tried methods of enclosing
their planes like box kites, and putting edges on the under sides.
This latter was found a mistake because the edge tended to decrease
the speed of the flier and did more harm than the good obtained
through keeping the air.
In aviation, as we know it to-day, aeroplane builders believe in
giving their planes a slight arch upward and backward from the
entering edge, letting it reach its highest point about one third
of the way back and then letting it slope down to the level of the
rear edge gradually. This curve, which is called the camber, is
mathematically figured out with the most painstaking care, and was
one of the things the Wright brothers worked out very carefully
in their early models. Also, planes are driven through the air at
an angle--that is, with the entering edge higher than the rear
edge--because the upward tilt gives the air current a chance to
get under the plane and support it. This angle is called by the
scientists the angle of incidence and is very important because of
its relation to the lifting powers of the planes.
[Illustration: MODEL AEROPLANE FLIERS
Every fair Saturday the model makers and fliers spend in the
parks either practising for or holding flight tournaments.]
[Illustration: A MODERN COLLEGE MAN'S GLIDER]
[Illustration: OTTO LILIENTHAL MAKING A FLIGHT IN HIS GLIDER]
Another one of the difficult problems the inventors had to struggle
with was the balance of their fliers. Before the Wright brothers
flew, it was thought that one of the best ways was to incline the
planes upward from the centre--that is--make them in the shape of
a gigantic and very broad V. This is known in science as a dihedral
angle. The idea was that the centre of gravity, or the point of the
machine which is heaviest and which seeks to fall to earth first
through the attraction of gravitation, should be placed immediately
under the apex of the V. The scientists thought that the V then would
keep the machine balanced as the hull of a ship is balanced in the
water by the heavy keel at the bottom. The Wrights decided that this
might be true from a scientific point of view, but that the dihedral
angle kept the machine wobbling, first to one side and then righting
itself, and then to the other side and righting itself. This was a
practical fault and they built their flier without any attempt to
have it right itself, but rather arched the planes from tip to tip as
well as from front to rear.
The winglike gliders of Lilienthal and Chanute had been balanced
by the shifting of the operator's body, but the Wrights wanted a
much bigger and safer machine than either of these pioneers had
flown. In their own words, the Wrights "wished to employ some system
whereby the operator could vary at will the inclination of different
parts of the wings, and thus obtain from the wind forces to restore
the balance which the wind itself had disturbed." This they later
accomplished by a device for warping or bending their planes, but in
their first glider there was no warping device and the horizontal
front rudder was the only controlling device used. This latter device
on the first glider was made of a smaller plane, oblong-shaped and
set parallel to, and in front of, the main planes. It was adjustable
through the system of levers fixed for the operator, who in those
days lay flat on the front plane.
Thus the two main planes and the adjustable plane in front with
stays, struts, etc., made up the first Wright glider.
The Wright brothers took their machine to Kitty Hawk, N. C., in
October, 1900, presumably for their vacation. They went there because
the Government Weather Bureau told them that the winds blew stronger
and steadier there than at any other point in the United States. Also
it was lonely enough to suit the Wrights' desire for privacy. It was
their plan to fly the contrivance like a boy does a huge box kite,
and it looked something like one. A man, however, was to be aboard
and operate the levers. According to the Wright brothers' story the
winds were not high enough to lift the heavy kite with a man aboard,
but it was flown without the operator and the levers worked from the
ground by ropes.
A new machine the next year showed little difference of design, but
the surface of the planes was greater. Still the flier failed to
lift an operator. At this time the Wright brothers were working with
Octave Chanute, the Chicago inventor, engineer and scientist whom
they had invited to Kitty Hawk to advise them. After many discussions
with Chanute they decided that they would learn the laws of aviation
by their own experience and lay aside for a time the scientific data
on the subject.
They began coasting down the air from the tops of sand dunes, and
after the first few glides were able to slide three hundred feet
through the air against a wind blowing twenty-seven miles an hour.
The reason their glider flights were made against the wind was
because the wind passing swiftly under the planes had the same effect
as if the machine was moving forward at a good clip, for the faster
the machine moves, or the faster the air passes under it, the easier
it remains aloft. In other words, no one part of the air was called
upon to support the planes for any length of time, but each part
supported the planes for a very short time. For instance, if you are
skating on thin ice you run much less danger of breaking through if
you skate very fast, because no one part of the ice is called upon to
support you for long.
In 1902 the Wright brothers were approaching their goal. Slowly and
with rare patience they were accumulating and tabulating all the
different things different kinds of planes would do under different
circumstances. In the fall of that year they made about one thousand
gliding flights, several of which carried them six hundred feet or
more. Others were made in high winds and showed the inventors that
their control devices were all right.
The next year, 1903, which always will be remembered as the banner
one in the history of aviation, the brothers, confident that they
were about to succeed in their long search for the secret of the
birds, continued their soaring or gliding. Several times they
remained aloft more than a minute, above one spot, supported by a
high, steady wind passing under their planes.
"Little wonder," wrote the Wright brothers a few years, later, "that
our unscientific assistant should think the only thing needed to keep
it indefinitely in the air would be a coat of feathers to make it
light."
What the inventors did to keep their biplane glider in the air
indefinitely, however, was to add several hundred pounds to the
weight in the shape of a sixteen-horsepower gasoline motor. The total
weight of the machine when ready to fly was 750 pounds. Every phase
of the problem had been worked out in detail--all the calculations
gone over and proved both by figures and by actual test. The
planes, rudders, and propellers had been designed by mathematical
calculations and practical tests.
The main planes of this first machine had a spread from tip to tip of
40 feet, and measured 6 feet 6 inches from the entering edge to the
rear edge, a total area of 540 square feet. This will show how great
is the spread of the main planes as compared to their length from
front to rear. The two surfaces were set six feet apart, one directly
above the other, while the elevating rudder was placed about ten
feet in front of the machine on a flexible framework. This elevating
rudder was composed of two parallel horizontal planes which together
had an area of eighty square feet. The elevating planes could be
moved up or down by the operator just as he desired to fly upward or
downward. The machine was steered from right to left or left to right
by two vertical vanes set at the rear of the machine about a foot
apart. They were a little more than six feet long, extending from the
upper supporting plane to a few inches below the lower supporting
plane. These also were turned in unison by the operator, according to
the direction toward which he wished to fly.
The most intricate device of their machine, however, was not
perfected on their first biplane. This is the one for maintaining a
side to side balance, or lateral equilibrium, as the scientists say.
In watching the flights of gulls, hawks, eagles, and other soaring
birds, the brothers had observed that the creatures, while keeping
the main part of their wings rigid, frequently would bend the extreme
tips of their wings ever so slightly, which would seem to straighten
their bodies in the air. The inventor decided that they needed some
such device as nature had given to these birds.
The system was called by the scientists the torsional wing system,
which means that the tip ends of the wings were flexible and could
be warped or bent or curled up or down at will by the operator. Only
the rear part of the tips of the wings on the Wright machines could
be bent, but this was enough to keep the machine on an even keel when
properly manipulated. How the Wright modern machines are operated is
fully described on page (99). The whole machine was mounted on a pair
of strong light wooden skids like skiis or sled-runners.
To start the early Wright biplanes, the machines were placed on a
monorail, along which they were towed by a cable. The force for
towing them at sufficient speed was obtained by dropping from the top
of a derrick built at the rear of the rail a ton of iron which was
connected with the cable. The later Wright biplanes were equipped
with rubber-tired wheels mounted on the framework, which still
retained the skids. Heavy rubber springs were provided to absorb the
shock. With the wheels the machine could run over the ground of its
own power and thus the cumbersome derrick and monorail were done away
with.
The operator was supposed to lie on his face in the middle of the
lower plane, but in the later machines a seat was provided for him
alongside the engine, and in still later ones seats for one or two
passengers.
The engine which was designed by the Wright brothers themselves
for this purpose, was a water-cooled four-cylinder motor which
developed sixteen horsepower from 1,020 revolutions per minute.
The engine was connected with the propellers at the rear of the
biplane by chains. The propellers were about eight feet in diameter
and the blades were six to eight inches wide. The materials used
in the biplane were mostly durable wood like spruce pine and ash,
the metal in the engine and the canvas on the planes. There was not
one superfluous wire. Everything had a use, and even the canvas
was stretched diagonally that it might fit more tightly over the
framework of the planes and offer less wind resistance, and also
stretch more easily for the wing warping.
Finally on December 17, 1903, everything was in readiness for the
first attempt of these two patient men--then unknown to the world--to
fly in a power-driven machine. That first flight, made practically
in secret amid the desolate sand dunes of the North Carolina coast,
lasted only twelve seconds. However, it was the first time, but one,
in the history of the world that a machine carrying a man had lifted
itself from the ground and flown entirely by its own power.
The two succeeding flights were longer, and the fourth covered 853
feet, lasting fifty-nine seconds.
The inventors were not heralded as the greatest men of their time.
There were no medals or speeches. The five men--fishermen and life
savers--who saw the flights agreed that it was wonderful, but they
kept the Wrights' secret and the brothers calmly continued their
studies and experiments.
The spring of 1904 found them at work on Huffman Prairie about eight
miles east of Dayton. The first trials there were not very successful
and the brothers, who had worked seven long years in secret, had the
unpleasant experience of failing to show satisfactory results to the
few friends and reporters invited to see an aeroplane flight. Their
new machine was larger, heavier, and stronger, but the engine failed
to work properly.
Of course this was no great disappointment to those two silent,
determined young men. "We are not circus performers," they said. "Our
aim is to advance the science of aviation."
And advance it they did.
Their experiments continued, and in 1904 they made a record of three
miles in 5 minutes 27 seconds. The next year, 1905, they made a
record flight of 24.20 miles and remained in the air 38 minutes 13
seconds at heights of from 75 to 100 feet.
All this time the brothers were solving problems and correcting
faults, but in 1904 and 1905 their chief endeavour was to keep their
machines from tipping sidewise when they turned. Only the most
technical study and the final development of their wing-warping
device solved the problem.
Perhaps the strangest part was the lack of interest shown in their
work by the world and even by their own townsmen, for, though there
had been several newspaper accounts of their test flights, no great
enthusiasm was aroused.
They were not wealthy and they had spent more on their experiments
than they could afford, so all this time they had proceeded without
attracting any more attention than necessary. They desired to perfect
their patents before letting the world know the secret of their
inventions, and spent the next two years in business negotiations.
Meanwhile, the French inventors were making much progress and soon
brought out several successful aeroplanes.
Why was this?
Why was it that the art of air navigation sought by man since the
earliest times should have been discovered and mastered so quickly?
The answer lies in the putting together of two things by the Wright
brothers--that is, their discovery of the kind of a plane that would
stay aloft with the air passing under it at a swift enough clip to
give it support, and their adaptation of the gasoline engine to the
use of driving the plane forward with enough speed.
When they began work, the gasoline engine was just coming to its
real development. It was light, developed a high power, and its fuel
could be concentrated into a small space. These things were essential
to the success of the aeroplane--light weight, high power, and
concentrated fuel. And these were things that the early inventors
lacked. Sir Hiram Maxim equipped his machine with a steam engine,
while Langley used steam engines in most of his models. These were
very heavy, cumbersome, gave slight power in comparison to their
weight, and could carry only a little fuel with them.
Undoubtedly the adaptation of the gasoline engine to the use of the
aeroplane marked the difference between mechanical flight and no
flight, but it also is not to be doubted that those aviators, who are
more mechanical than scientific, have overrated the importance of the
engine in aeroplane construction. Before engines ever were used, the
Chanute type of biplane had to be worked into a state of reliability,
if not perfection. Now the scientific leaders in aviation are giving
every bit as much attention to the perfection of their planes, their
gliding possibilities, and the scientific rules governing their
action as they are to their engines.
Most boys understand, at least generally, how an automobile or
motor-boat engine works. Scientists call gasoline engines "internal
combustion motors," and that means that the force is gathered from
the explosion of the gasoline vapour in the cylinder. Enough gasoline
to supply fuel to run an aeroplane motor for as much as eight or nine
hours can be carried in the tank. From the tank a small pipe carries
the gasoline to a device called the carbureter. The carbureter
turns the gasoline into gas by spraying it and mixing it with air,
for gasoline turns into a very inflammable and explosive gas when
mixed with the oxygen in the air. So this gas, if lighted in a closed
space, will explode. The explosion takes place in the motor-cylinder
by the application of an electric spark, and the force pushes the
piston, which turns the crank and drives the aeroplane propeller,
automobile wheels, or motor-boat screw.
Thus we have the piston driven out and creating the first downward
thrust, but the thrusts must be continuous. The piston must be
drawn back to the starting place, the vapours of the exploded gas
expelled, and the new gas admitted to the cylinder ready for the next
explosion. On the ordinary four-cycle motor two complete revolutions
of the flywheel are necessary to do all the work. First, we must have
the explosion that causes the initial thrust; second, the return of
the piston rod in the cylinder by the momentum of the flywheel as it
revolves from the initial thrust, thus forcing out the burned gas of
the first explosion; third, the next downward motion to suck in a
fresh supply of gas; and, fourth, the next upward thrust to compress
it for the second explosion. It sounds simple enough, but it isn't,
as every one knows who has tried to run a gasoline motor for himself.
The carbureter must do its work automatically and convert the air
and gasoline into gas in just the right proportions. A slight fault
with the feed of gasoline or air would cause trouble. Also the
electric-spark system that ignites the gas and causes the explosions
must be in perfect running order. The explosions cause great heat, so
some system of cooling the cylinders either by air or water must be
used.
Only one cylinder has been explained here, but most engines have
several, each working at a different stage, so that the power is
exerted on the shaft continuously. For instance, take a four-cylinder
engine; on the instant that the first cylinder is exploding and
driving the shaft, the second cylinder is compressing gas for the
next explosion, the third is getting a fresh supply of gas, and the
fourth is cleaning out the waste gas of the explosion of a second
before. Thus it will be seen why the explosions are almost constant.
Now think of the aeroplane motor that has fourteen cylinders and
develops 140 horsepower! This is probably the most powerful aeroplane
engine in the world, although there are many motor boats that have
engines developing 1,000 horsepower.
In the early days when scientists were groping for the secret of air
navigation the best that the clumsy steam engines they had at their
disposal would do was to generate one horsepower of energy for every
ten pounds of weight. These days the light powerful aeroplane engines
we hear roaring over our heads are generating one horsepower of
energy for every three or three and a half pounds of dead weight,
and engines have been constructed weighing only one pound to every
horsepower, though they are impractical for general use.
The first engines that were used in aeroplanes were simply automobile
engines adapted to air navigation. The main question in those days
was lightness and power. This was achieved by skimming down the best
available automobile engines so that they were as light as safety
would allow.
Although lightness is still an important factor in aeroplane engine
construction, many authorities declare that it is growing less so as
the science advances and aeroplanes are able to carry heavier loads.
There were many intricate and difficult problems, however, that
attended taking a motor aloft to drive an aeroplane. The motor had
to run at top speed every second, for it could not rest on a low
gear as an automobile engine could. First one part and then another
would give out and the motors were constantly overheating. Experience
taught the makers how to make their machines light enough and yet
strong enough to do the required work.
It was in cooling that the greatest difficulties were met, and it
was this that brought about the great innovations in motor building.
The system of cooling the engine with water required much heavy
material, such as pipes, pumps, water, water jackets, and radiator.
On account of the general efficiency of a water-cooled engine many
builders of aeroplanes stuck to it and developed it to a very high
standard. At present many of the prize-winning engines are water
cooled, as, for instance, the Wright and Curtiss.
All of these water-cooled engines and several standard air-cooled
makes are of the reciprocating type that have stationary cylinders
and crankcase while the crankshaft rotates like that of the motor
boat.
The famous Curtiss, Anzani, Renault, and others are all engines of
this type. They all differ, but all have a high capacity, as we know
from the records they have broken. The Anzani and R. E. P. makers,
whose motors are air cooled, have used to great advantage the plan of
making their motors star-shaped--that is, with the cylinders arranged
in a circle around the crankshaft.
This is the shape taken by the famous air-cooled rotary engines of
which the much-discussed Gnome is the best known make. In this rotary
motor the cylinders and crankcase revolve about the crankshaft which
is stationary. Authorities are divided over the Gnome, which has many
severe critics as well as many enthusiastic supporters. Its lightness
is certainly an advantage. The ordinary Gnome has seven cylinders
and develops fifty horsepower while the newest models have fourteen
cylinders and develop 100 and 140 horsepower.
A brief description of the motor here will suffice to show the
general principle of the rotary engine. The stationary crankshaft
is hollow, and through it the gasoline vapour passes from the
carbureter at the rear to the cylinders. Of course the inlet valves
in the pistons are made to work automatically. The magneto is also
placed behind the motor and the segments revolve on the crankcase.
Wires extend from the segments to the spark plugs in the cylinders,
and revolve with them. The cylinders are turned out of solid steel
and the whole engine is conceded by experts to be one of the most
wonderfully ingenious ever built. The cylinders and crankcase
themselves serve as flywheel, thereby eliminating the dead weight
of the usual heavy flywheel in the other types of motors, and the
rotation serves to cool the engine perfectly. Again, the rotary
motor is light and small, while it develops a tremendously high
power. Aviators also claim for it other advantages too technical for
consideration here.
Many authorities, in fact, declare that the rotary engine is the
aeroplane motor of the future. It is very popular among the French
aviators and at present holds a great many speed records. It was with
one of these high-power Gnomes that Claude Grahame-White, the English
flier, won the Gordon Bennett race at Belmont Park in the fall of
1910, and Weyman again in England in 1911.
While this high state of development in the aeroplane motor has been
attained comparatively within a few years, the art of flying has
occupied the mind of man since it was described in Greek mythology.
The Chinese for thousands of years have used kites and balloons.
The ancient Greeks watched the wonderful flights of the birds and
invented myths about men who were able to fly. Then Achytes, his mind
fired by these stories, invented a device in the form of a wooden
dove which was propelled by heated air. Other inventors made devices
that were intended to fly, and during the reign of Nero, "Simon the
Magician" held the world's first aviation meet in Rome. According to
the account, he "rose into the air through the assistance of demons."
It further states that St. Peter stopped the action of the demons
by a prayer, and that Simon was killed in the resultant fall. Simon
made another record that way by being the first man to be killed in
an aeronautical accident. Other records show that Baldud, one of the
early tribal kings in what later was named England, tried to fly over
a city, but fell and was killed. A little later, in the eleventh
century, a Benedictine monk made himself a pair of wings, jumped from
a high tower and broke his legs. These wings really were rude gliders
and the principle remained in the minds of men, even in those days
when their chief occupation was war. According to the legends, a
man named Oliver of Malmesburg, who lived during the Middle Ages,
built himself a glider and soared for 375 feet.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
THE CHANUTE TYPE GLIDER
Upon this machine was based the invention of the biplane.]
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
THE HERRING GLIDER
Based on the idea of the Lilienthal gliders.]
[Illustration: AN EARLY HELICOPTER
An idea that was abandoned before the aeroplane became a reality.]
THE THREE GREAT PIONEERS IN AVIATION
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley]
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the _Scientific American_
Sir Hiram Maxim]
[Illustration:
Courtesy of E. L. Jones, N. Y.
Octave Chanute]
It was in the fifteenth century that men first began to make flying a
scientific study by making records and, in part at least, tabulating
the results of their experiments.
Among these early students of the science were Leonardo da Vinci,
who is best known to the world as a painter and sculptor, but who
was a great engineer and architect of his time, and Jean Baptiste
Dante, a brother of the great poet. Although Da Vinci was the more
scientific in his experiments, Dante made greater progress, and it is
on record that he made many wonderful flights with a glider of his
own construction over Lake Trasimene. He launched his glider from a
cliff into the teeth of the wind, showing thereby his knowledge of
the fact that a glider works best when flown against a high wind,
because in that way the air is passing under it at greater speed. In
one flight he made about 800 feet, which would be a fine record for
any glider manipulated by an expert to-day. Finally Dante attempted
an exhibition at Perugia, at the marriage festival of a celebrated
general, fell on the roof of the Notre Dame Church and broke one of
his legs.
Da Vinci had three different schemes for human flight. One was the
old idea of bird flight, first dreamed of by the Greeks when Ovid
wrote the poem of "Dædalus and Icarus." Scientists called the
machine that Da Vinci proposed an orthopter and the operator was
supposed by the movement of both arms and legs to fly by flapping
the wings. Needless to say it did not work, and we know to-day that
bird flight by wing flapping is probably impossible for man. Another
of Da Vinci's ideas is still being worked upon by some inventors.
This was a machine known as the helicopter, which was supposed to
fly upward by the twisting of a great horizontal screw ninety-six
feet in diameter. The idea was just the same as that of the toy that
started the Wright brothers to thinking. The trouble with Da Vinci's
machine was that he had no power to run it. Boys in playing with toy
helicopters to-day can run them with rubber bands, but Da Vinci had
to turn his screw by human power. Little was accomplished with this
machine, although Da Vinci showed its practicability with models.
The third scheme of this Italian scientist is one that many years
later was perfected and demonstrated at every county fair--that is,
the parachute. The first parachute was very crude, but it soon was
developed to a fairly high stage of effectiveness and men came down
from the tops of towers in them without much injury.
Again, in 1742, the Marquis de Bacqueville, then sixty-two years
old, made a contrivance with which he flew about nine hundred feet
before he fell into a boat in the Seine River and broke his leg. The
Marquis had announced in advance that he would fly from his great
house in Paris, across the Seine River and land in the famous Garden
of the Tuileries. A crowd assembled and marvelled when the nobleman
sailed into the teeth of the wind supported by what apparently were
great wings. Something went wrong after a flight that would be
considered remarkable by a scientific glider to-day, and his fall
resulted in a broken leg for the experimenter. According to the
authorities, all these experiments were not very valuable to science,
because while the flights were accurately described the construction
of the fliers (except in the case of Leonardo da Vinci) was not
given, or only indicated in the most uncertain and unscientific
language.
In 1781 a French scientist named Blanchard attempted to make a flying
machine of which the man driving it was to be the power. He was still
working with it when ballooning became known, and he took up that
sport with avidity.
At that point came the true division between heavier-than-air and
lighter-than-air machines. Before 1783 many scientists had hinted at
the practicability of a hot air or gas balloon, but all successful
flying experiments had been made with what we suppose to have been
some form of gliders. However, in 1783 Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian
scientist living in London, made a small hydrogen balloon, and was
followed by the manufacture of fairly successful balloons by the
Montgolfier brothers, two French inventors.
From that time ballooning, with which this chapter has no concern,
made rapid strides, until to-day the balloon has reached the stage
where great motor-driven balloons are used by the European armies,
and also to carry passengers.
The next step in the heavier-than-air machine, known these days as
the aeroplane, was taken in 1810, by Sir George Cayley, an Englishman
and a true scientist, who constructed a glider and tabulated much
valuable information. It was this scientist who made the first
conclusive demonstrations looking toward the proof that man can never
fly like a bird, but must proceed upon the principle of sustained
planes. Sir George set down many laws of equilibrium governing the
control of flying machines, estimated the power necessary to carry a
man, and even hinted at the possibility of a gas engine more powerful
and lighter than the then crude steam engine. He declared that a
plane driven through the air, and inclined upward at a slight angle,
would tend to rise and support a weight, and also that a tail with
horizontal and vertical vanes would tend to steady the machine and
enable the pilot to steer it up or down.
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution
LANGLEY'S STEAM MODEL
This tandem monoplane made several successful trial flights.]
[Illustration: THE MAXIM AEROPLANE
Maxim's great machine was claimed as the first successful
aeroplane. In trials it rose a few inches off the ground.]
[Illustration: MEDALS WON BY THE WRIGHT BROTHERS
Top, Langley medal bestowed by the Smithsonian Institution;
bottom, medal authorized by Act of Congress.]
This, it will be seen, was a very close approach to the idea of the
aeroplane as we know it to-day. It remained for another British
inventor, by the name of Henson, to carry these ideas to a further
development, and with his colleague, F. Stringfellow, he worked out a
model that embodied most of the principles of the present-day flier
of the monoplane type. They decided the proper proportion for the
width and length of the plane and steadied their machine with both
horizontal and perpendicular rudders. In 1844 Henson and Stringfellow
built a model of their aeroplane and equipped it with a small steam
engine. A subsequently constructed steam-propelled model made a free
flight of forty yards. This is claimed to be the first flight of a
power-driven machine, although it was only a model. In 1866 F. H.
Wenham, another Englishman, took out a patent on an aeroplane made
up of two or more planes, or, as the scientists call it, two or
more superposed surfaces. Immediately following this, Stringfellow
constructed a steam-propelled model of triplane type, but it was no
more successful than his monoplane. This latest model may be seen in
the Smithsonian Institution at Washington to-day along with other
models marking the progress of aeroplanes.
In the years following other inventors contributed much valuable
information to the data concerning aviation. Among these was Warren
Hargrave, the Australian, who had discovered the box kite, and who
had seen in it the principle for the aeroplane. Hargrave even built
a small monoplane weighing about three pounds and propelled by
compressed air, which flew 128 feet in eight seconds.
Though the Wright brothers were the first to make a practical
man-carrying, power-propelled aeroplane, they were not the first
men to be carried off the ground by such a machine. The first
man admitted by most authorities to have flown in a power-driven
aeroplane was Clement Ader, a Frenchman, who had spent his life in
the study of air navigation. His first machine was of monoplane type
driven by a forty-horsepower steam engine. It was called the _Eole_
and it had its first test before a few of the inventor's friends near
the town of Gretz on October 9, 1890, making, according to witnesses,
a free flight of 150 feet. Ader built two more machines in subsequent
years and succeeded in interesting the French military authorities.
In October of 1897 he made several secret official tests of his last
machine, the _Avion_. It had a spread of 270 square feet, weighed
1,100 pounds, and was driven by a forty-horsepower steam engine. The
day for the trial was squally but he persevered. The flier ran at
high speed over the ground, several times lifted its wheels clear
off its track and finally turned over, smashing the machine. The
officials did not consider the exhibition successful, and the support
of the army was withdrawn. Ader in disgust gave the _Avion_ to a
French museum and abandoned aviation, with success almost within his
grasp.
Shortly before this time Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley of the
Smithsonian Institution and Octave Chanute, the great American
pioneers in aviation, were making their early experiments. Professor
Langley experimented with numerous kinds of model fliers, and
finally, on May 6, 1896, launched a steam-propelled model over the
Potomac River. According to the scientist Dr. Alexander Graham Bell,
who was present, it flew between 80 and 100 feet and then "settled
down so softly and gently that it touched the water without the least
shock, and was in fact immediately ready for another trial." The
second test was equally successful. The speed was between twenty and
twenty-five miles an hour and the distance flown about 3,000 feet.
Professor Langley's first aerodrome, as he called it (the word is
now used to mean aviation field), was made in the form of a tandem
monoplane about sixteen feet long from end to end and with wings
measuring about thirteen feet from tip to tip. The steam engine and
propellers were placed between the forward and aft planes. The whole
machine weighed about thirty pounds and of course was too small to
carry a pilot.
Langley next made a model which took the form of a tandem biplane,
and which had some success in flights. When the Government
appropriated $50,000 for him to build an aerodrome that would carry a
man, Langley began to experiment with a gasoline engine. He used his
tandem biplane and a motor that developed two and a half to three
horsepower. The whole machine weighed fifty-eight pounds, and the
planes, which were set at a dihedral angle, had sixty-six square feet
of surface. A successful test without a pilot was made on the Potomac
River below Washington on August 8, 1903, and while the spectators
and reporters were lauding him the inventor merely remarked: "This is
the first time in history, so far as I know, that a successful flight
of a mechanically sustained flying machine has been seen in public."
The man-carrying machine was ready for its tests a few months later.
Ever since having been financed by the Government, Langley had been
at work, and the result was a tandem monoplane much like his early
models. It was driven by a gasoline motor placed amidships which
acted on twin screw propellers, which also were between the tandem
planes. The whole machine with the pilot weighed 830 pounds, and
had 1,040 square feet of wing surface. It was fifty-two feet long
from front to rear and the wings measured forty-eight feet from tip
to tip. The wings were arched, like those of modern aeroplanes,
and the double rudder at the rear had both horizontal and vertical
surfaces to steer the machine up or down, or from right to left. The
aerodrome did not have any device for keeping it on an even keel,
such as the ailerons we know to-day, or the wing-warping system of
the Wright machine. This was a serious drawback, according to the
present-day scientists, but Professor Langley had set his wings in
a dihedral angle--that is, like a broad V, to give what is called
automatic stability. This dihedral angle, it will be remembered, is
one of the principles discarded by the Wright brothers early in their
experiments as one that tended to keep the machine oscillating from
side to side. Professor Langley realized this, it is said, and to
offset it had already advanced several ideas along the line of wing
warping, for keeping his machine on an even keel when buffeted by the
wind.
The aerodrome also lacked the wheels now used on aeroplanes for
starting and alighting, and even the skids that were used on the
first Wright machines. His motor was remarkably well adapted to the
work. It developed 50 horsepower with a minimum of vibration, and
with its radiator, water, pump, tanks, carbureter, batteries, and
coil weighed twenty pounds, or about five pounds per horsepower. The
arrangement of the five cylinders around the shaft like the points of
a star was one that has become very popular in modern aviation motors.
The first trial took place at Widewater, Va., on September 7, 1903.
The machine was placed on a barge on the Potomac River; the pilot,
Charles M. Manley, Professor Langley's able young assistant, took his
seat in the little boat amidships, and a catapult arrangement, like
the early Wright starting device, sent it into the air. To the bitter
disappointment of Langley and his friends the machine dived into
the water. It came up immediately, the daring Manley undaunted and
uninjured. Investigation showed that in launching it the post that
held the guys which steadied the front wings had been so bent that
the forward planes were useless.
At the next trial, December 8, the rear guy post was injured in a
similar accident and the machine fell over backward. This ended the
experiments, as the Government appropriation had been spent, and the
machine was repaired and stored in the Smithsonian Institution, where
it is yet.
Professor Langley died a few years after this, feeling that his great
work had never been appreciated or understood by the world. Many have
declared that he died of a broken heart as a result of the frequent
ridicule of the public and press. Although he never saw the triumph
of aerial navigation, he died firm in the belief that it was only a
matter of time and the working out of theories then laid down until
man could fly. His last hours were cheered by the receipt of a copy
of resolutions of appreciation passed by the Aero Club of America.
In the meantime, the Frenchman Ader had actually flown in a
power-driven machine of his own construction, at private tests, while
Captain Le Bris and L. P. Mouillard, Frenchmen, and Otto Lilienthal,
a German, had been carrying on important glider flights. Also Sir
Hiram Maxim, the American-born inventor who was knighted in England,
made a great aeroplane that was tested with some success. The
machine was built in 1889 and was mounted on a track. It was called
a multiplane--that is, it had several planes, one above the other,
and was driven by a powerful steam engine. The whole machine weighed
three and a half tons and had a total surface of 5,500 square feet.
During its tests on the track it lifted a few inches off the ground.
Thus Maxim claimed that his was the first machine that had ever
lifted a man off the ground by its own power.
It was Otto Lilienthal, however, the "flying man," who established a
systematic study of one phase of aviation which became general enough
to be called the Lilienthal School. This was the system of practising
on gliders before attempting to go into the air with power-driven
machines. As will be remembered, this was exactly the system the
Wright brothers followed out.
Lilienthal's first experiments were made in 1891 with a pair of
semicircular wings steadied by a horizontal rudder at the rear. The
whole apparatus weighed forty pounds and had a total plane surface of
107 square feet. He would run along the ground and jump from the top
of a hill. He made many good flights, and in 1893 with a new glider
averaged 200 to 300 yards and steered up or down or to either side
at will. Lilienthal found that the air flowing along the earth's
surface had a slightly upward current, as science tells us it does,
and that it would carry him upward if the wind was blowing strong
enough. Hence he could go forward either up or down in about the same
way that a yacht tacks against the wind. But Lilienthal had the same
trouble in balancing that the Wright brothers had at first, so he
kept an even keel as best he could by swinging his legs and body from
side to side as he hung underneath the glider.
The "flying man" made about 2,000 flights and then constructed a
still more successful biplane glider for which he built an engine.
He was killed while making a glide on August 9, 1896, however, and
the motor was never used. Several authorities who were in touch
with Lilienthal declared that the machine had become wobbly and
unreliable. This, they said, was the cause of its collapsing in
midair under the heavy strain.
Lilienthal's death, though mourned by scientists all over the world,
did not interfere with the great work he had started, for his system
had many disciples both in Europe and America. Among these, besides
the Wrights, were the Americans Octave Chanute and A. M. Herring, and
Percy S. Pilcher of the University of Glasgow. Pilcher was killed
three years after Lilienthal, September 30, 1899, while trying to
make a glide in stormy weather.
[Illustration: THE FIRST SANTOS-DUMONT AEROPLANE
This was the first successful aeroplane to be flown in Europe,
and was quickly followed by others.]
[Illustration: THE CROSS-CHANNEL TYPE BLÉRIOT MONOPLANE
The Blériot monoplane was the first of the monoplane type to make
a success in Europe.]
[Illustration: A VOISIN BIPLANE
The Voisin brothers perfected the first permanent aeroplane used
in Europe. Henri Farman made his first wonderful flights in a
Voisin.]
[Illustration: GLENN CURTISS ABOUT TO MAKE A FLIGHT]
[Illustration: HENRI FARMAN STARTING ALOFT WITH TWO PASSENGERS]
[Illustration: LOUIS BLÉRIOT SHORTLY AFTER COMPLETING HIS
TRANS-CHANNEL FLIGHT]
Great credit must be given to Chanute because it was in great part
through his advice that the Wright brothers achieved final
success, and all biplanes to-day are known to the technical side of
the aviation world as Chanute type machines. Chanute and Herring
started experiments with gliders among the sand dunes on the southern
shore of Lake Michigan, and, after some indifferent success with the
Lilienthal monoplane type of glider, made a flier of five surfaces
one above the other. The rudder was in the rear and the pilot hung
below the machine. One by one experiments pared down the number of
planes to three and then to two. The planes were arched, as they are
in modern aeroplanes. The rudder extended behind the contrivance and
had both horizontal and vertical blades. The whole machine weighed 23
pounds and had 135 square feet of plane surface.
The biplane was eminently satisfactory and Herring decided to make
an engine for it and sail in a power-driven flier--or a dynamic
aeroplane, as the scientists call it. His motor was a compressed air
machine and he proposed to go into the air as if for a glide and then
start the engine. According to newspaper accounts, he accomplished
this and his compressed air engine drove him forward seventy-three
feet in eight or ten seconds against a strong breeze. The flight was
not given very much consideration, however, for lack of authoritative
witnesses.
This brings us around again to the activities of the Wright
brothers, who started their work with the glider built along the
lines laid down by Octave Chanute. They had the active support
and aid of this inventor throughout their three or four years
of experiments, although many other scientists were inclined to
discredit their work.
While the brothers were going ahead with their practical flier the
European scientists were developing with rapid strides and Prof. John
J. Montgomery of Santa Clara College, Santa Clara, Cal., who was
killed in a glider accident in 1911, was astonishing the far West
with gliding experiments of great importance.
Montgomery's best glider was a tandem monoplane with a device by
which the pilot could change at will the amount of curvature of any
of the wings. This gave him the tremendous advantage of being able
to vary the lifting power of the wings independently of each other
and hence a means of maintaining side to side balance. Professor
Montgomery made his own flights until injuring his leg in alighting,
and then he hired trained aeronauts to glide from great heights. As
it turned out it would have been better had he never resumed flying
himself. He used balloons to carry up the gliders and when they
reached the required altitude the operator cut the cable. Daniel
Maloney, a daring parachute jumper, and two other aeronauts, named
Wilkie and Defolco, carried on these hair-raising experiments.
Flights were made at Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, San José, Oakland, and
Sacramento, in 1905. The balloon would take up the aeroplane, and
aviator, who sat on a saddle like a bicycle seat between the tandem
planes and manipulated the wing control and rear rudder with hand
levers and a pair of stirrups for his feet. In April of that year a
forty-five-pound glider, such as the one described, with Maloney in
the seat, was taken up four thousand feet. When the aviator cut loose
he glided to earth, making evolutions never before made by man in the
air, and finally landed as lightly as a feather on a designated spot.
Shortly afterward Maloney while making a sensational glide was
killed. As the balloon was rising with the aeroplane, a guy rope
switched around the right wing and broke the post that braced the two
rear wings and which also gave control over the tail. Those below
shouted to Maloney that the machine was broken, but he probably did
not hear, and when he cut loose the machine turned turtle.
One of the saddest of all the many aeroplane fatalities was the
accident early in the fall of 1911, in which Professor Montgomery was
killed while experimenting with his glider.
Thus we see that the pioneers whose work has counted for the most in
the early history of aviation were Americans--that the science can
almost be claimed as a development of American genius. True, Ader was
the first man to fly in a power-propelled machine, and Lilienthal
led the way in the science of gliding, but it remained for Chanute,
Langley, Montgomery, and the Wright brothers to gather all this
scientific data together and put it to practical use so that the
motor could be installed and power flight, or dynamic flight, as the
scientists call it, begun.
CHAPTER II
AEROPLANE DEVELOPMENT
HOW THE INVENTORS CARRIED ON THE ART OF AVIATION UNTIL IT BECAME
THE GREATEST OF ALL SPORTS AND THEN A GREAT INDUSTRY
So interested in aviation had our young friend become that he forgot
all other inventions in his enthusiasm for flying. He never missed
a chance to go to the aviation field, and sometimes his scientist
friend would go with him. These days were rare treats indeed, for
the boy always learned some new and important points from their
conversations.
With them we have seen how the science of aeronautics has been
divided into two great departments: balloons, or lighter-than-air
fliers, and all other machines that are not maintained in the air
by hot air or gas. We have seen also the three great divisions of
heavier-than-air aviation--that is, orthopters or wing-flapping
machines; helicopters or machines that fly upward through the
operation of horizontal screws; and aeroplanes. Lastly we see the
three divisions of aeroplanes: gliders; dynamic aeroplanes, or the
machines we know to-day; and true bird soaring, the art of flying
without artificial power and without the flapping of wings.
But on every side the boy heard people talking of great feats of
flying that he knew nothing about.
"Who was Santos-Dumont? What was that first trans-Channel flight?
Why do they always talk about the first Rheims meet?" he asked one
afternoon as he was returning home from the field with the scientist.
The man could not answer the questions all in one breath, but we will
follow his explanation, which extended over many pleasant hours, and
see how aviation developed into a mighty sport and industry.
For several years following 1905 the world of aviation was led by
Europeans--mostly Frenchmen who readily grasped the principles of the
science and made the best and lightest motors that the world has ever
seen. The United States, however, was the first nation to experiment
with aeroplanes for military purposes, although at present the
country is far behind France, England, and Germany in the development
of aeroplanes for use in war.
Alberto Santos-Dumont, a daring young Brazilian who a few years
earlier had astounded the world with his achievements with dirigible
balloons, was the first of the aviators working in Europe to
construct a practical man-carrying power flier. Scores of brilliant
foreigners were working on the principles for gliders laid down
by Lilienthal, but Santos-Dumont, working along the ideas of the
scientists who had built power-propelled models, made himself a
clumsy biplane equipped with a 50-horsepower motor and actually
inaugurated public flights, considering that all done by the Wrights
up to that time was experimental and practically in secret.
On August 22, 1906, he made his first flight near Paris. It was
brief, but authorities agree that it was the first time in Europe
that a power-propelled flier had risen in free flight with a man at
the steering wheel since Ader's secret flight in 1892. Two months
later he made a public flight of 221 metres in 21 seconds, winning
the world's first regularly offered aviation prize. This was the
Archdeacon Cup of 2,000 francs authorized by the Aero Club of France
for a flight of 100 metres.
Scientists gave these flights more attention than they did the
flights of the Wright brothers the year before because they were
viewed by many thousands of people and also by men who had studied
the science of aviation for years. Besides this, Santos-Dumont
made no secret of the construction or workings of his machine as
the Wright brothers did. He was already a popular idol through his
work with dirigible balloons, and being very rich--the son of a
millionaire plantation owner in Brazil--he did not have the same
financial incentive for keeping his plans secret.
His flights gave the aviators of France tremendous encouragement and
it was but a short time until half a dozen aeroplanes, the makes of
which are all well known now, were making successful flights and
breaking records.
Santos-Dumont called his biplane an aeromobile. The two main planes
had perpendicular surfaces enclosing them so that the wings of each
side looked like two box kites hitched together side by side, as
shown in the picture. The rudder extended to the front and it also
looked like a box kite. The pilot sat just in front of the wings and
could manipulate his rudder from side to side or up and down. Thus
he could steer his machine from right to left, upward or downward.
The Brazilian had not solved the problem of keeping his aeromobile
from tipping sideways, so he arranged its wings in a dihedral angle,
which balanced it fairly well. The starting and alighting device was
a set of wheels which we know so well to-day. The biplane contained
65 square feet of plane surface and the total weight was 645 pounds.
Perhaps the most important factor in this machine was an
eight-cylinder 50-horsepower Antoinette gasoline motor. This was the
first time that this now famous motor was used in an aeroplane and it
gave promise at that time of the prize-winning capabilities it later
developed. The propeller, which was made of aluminum, was about six
feet in diameter, or about two feet less than the diameter of the
twin screws in the early Wright biplanes.
[Illustration:
Copyright H. M. Benner, Hammondsport, N. Y.
THE JUNE BUG
Glenn Curtiss making a flight in one of his first aeroplanes.]
[Illustration: ORVILLE WRIGHT MAKING A FLIGHT AT FORT MYER
The aeroplane first became well known in this country when the
Wright brothers carried on their Fort Myer tests.]
[Illustration:
Courtesy of the _Scientific American_
THE FIRST LETTER EVER WRITTEN ABOARD AN AEROPLANE IN FLIGHT
This was written at the time Ovington was carrying aeroplane mail
from Garden City to Mineola, by aeroplane.]
Several years before this the Voisin brothers had been taken by the
general fever for aviation and in 1907 they finished a practical
biplane in which Henri Farman, a former auto racer, and Leon
Delagrange, an artist, astonished the world. This early machine
is described by one authority as something like a cross between a
box kite and a Chanute glider. Extending out behind the two main
planes was a rudder like a huge box kite, which was used to steer
the machine from right to left. This also helped to keep the biplane
from tipping forward or backward. A single horizontal rudder in front
steered it upward or downward. These rudders were manipulated by
the operator, who sat between the two main planes in front of his
engine, by either pushing his pilot wheel forward or backward or by
turning it like the steering wheel of an automobile. There was no
device for balancing the aeroplane, but the construction kept it on
a fairly even keel--or, as the scientist said, it had inherent or
automatic stability--i. e., stability automatically gained from the
construction of the machine. Also the operator was supposed to swing
his body from side to side to aid this. The aeroplane started from
and alighted on four wheels set under the main plane and the tail.
It had 559 square feet of surface and with the engine weighed 1,100
pounds. The motor was a 50-horsepower Antoinette, which drove a
single aluminum propeller.
After preliminary "bird hops" at Issy-les-Mollineaux, Farman on
October 26 beat Santos-Dumont's record by flying 771 metres. On
January 13, 1908, he won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Cup of 50,000 francs
for the first person to make a circular flight of 500 metres. Two
months later Delagrange challenged Farman for his world championship,
but lost, Farman twice circling the two pylons, or marking poles,
that had been set up 500 metres apart, in 3 minutes 31 seconds. The
distance covered with turns was 2004.8 metres. Delagrange flew the
500 metres in 2.5 minutes.
Then for the first time in the world's history two men rode in an
aeroplane, Delagrange taking his rival behind him and sailing over a
part of the course. A month later Delagrange took the distance record
from Farman with a flight of 5,575 metres in 9-1/4 minutes.
While these pioneers were winning prizes and breaking records Louis
Blériot was bringing his aeroplane to a successful stage. He had
been working on the problem of aviation since 1900, but had failed
with wing flappers and machines like box kites. Finally he had some
success with a tandem monoplane like Professor Langley's. The first
of his machines of this kind was smashed in a fall, but the second,
Blériot's seventh flier, flew steadily and was the fastest aeroplane
ever developed.
Thus Blériot at the opening of 1908 had developed his monoplane
idea far past the stage Professor Langley ever had developed it. He
had increased the size of the forward plane and decreased the size
of the rear plane until the great forward wings did all the work
of sustaining the machine in the air, while the chief uses of the
tail were steering and steadying the machine. Moreover, Blériot's
was the first machine among the practical European fliers to have a
system of wing warping such as the Wright brothers had developed in
their wonderful biplane, and such as Glenn Curtiss, another American
inventor, was at the same time developing for his machines.
This gave Blériot what is called three-rudder control--that is, the
vertical rudder at the rear to steer it from right to left, the
horizontal rudder, also on the tail, to steer it up or down, and
the flexible wing tips to keep it from tipping sidewise. The aspect
ratio of the early Blériots was low, which gave them greater speed.
In other words, the main plane did not have so great a spread as
most aeroplanes do, while it was much deeper, and, having less of
an entering edge, it could go faster. There were three wheels--two
under the main plane and the third under the tail for starting and
alighting. The engine was just under and at the front of the main
plane, driving a single propeller. This propeller--which is the type
most used on monoplanes--is called a tractor propeller because,
instead of pushing the aeroplane forward from the rear, it pulls
it from the front. The operator sat just to the rear and above the
engine so he could look out and over the top of the main plane.
The last day of October, 1908, Blériot jumped into international
fame with this machine by making a cross-country flight from Toury
to Artenay, a total distance of about 17 miles. This was the second
cross-country flight ever attempted. The day previous Farman had
flown his biplane from Châlons to Rheims, nearly 17 miles.
Meanwhile the Wright brothers had been making great progress, as will
be seen shortly, and Wilbur Wright had brought a biplane to France to
make demonstrations for a French syndicate. He took up quarters at Le
Mans in August, 1908. His notable flights broke the world's records
for distance and duration. Early in the month he flew 52 miles and
was in the air 1 hour and 31 minutes. A few days later he broke the
French records for altitude by going up 380 feet, and on the last day
of the year won the Michelin prize of 20,000 francs for the longest
flight of the year.
In January Wilbur Wright went to Pau, where he opened a school and
was joined by his brother Orville, who had just recovered from a
historical accident in the United States which will be described
shortly. At Pau they made a great many flights and exhibited their
aeroplane to thousands and thousands of people from all over the
world, including great scientists, military men, statesmen, and many
members of the European nobility. Among these was young King Alfonso
of Spain, who took such a delight in the machine that he would have
made an ascension were it not for the objections of his ministers.
King Edward of England also visited the famous brothers, talked with
them about their achievements, and witnessed several fine flights.
Then Wilbur took his machine to Italy, where King Emanuel attended
his exhibitions in Rome. Later in London the two brothers were
entertained by the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain and received
its gold medal. During this time they won the respect of the whole
world of aviation.
"Now to return to the progress made by the intrepid American
inventors in our own country, led by the Wright brothers, Glenn
Curtiss, A. M. Herring, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, and his
associates, F. W. Baldwin and J. A. D. McCurdy," continued the boy's
friend.
"You remember that toward the close of 1905 the Wright brothers
suspended their flights near Dayton because it had become necessary
for them to spend all their time in business negotiations. In the
spring of 1908, after increasing the motor power of their flier,
they began tests again because the brothers had agreed to furnish a
machine to the United States Signal Corps and another to a French
syndicate."
The machine that was to be furnished to the Signal Corps, he
explained, had to be able to carry two men and to be able to fly for
one hour without stopping, at an average speed of 40 miles an hour.
Furthermore, this flight had to be made across country dotted with
hills, valleys, and forests. Another of the requirements was that the
machine should be able to fly 125 miles without stopping. The Wright
brothers agreed to furnish such an aeroplane for $25,000, and Orville
Wright went to Fort Myer, Va., near Washington, for the tests.
His preliminary flights were very successful and thousands of
Americans flocked to the drill ground to see what was practically the
first public exhibition in the United States. About the time that the
French aviators were making flights of 1 hour or so Orville Wright
flew his machine for one hour and 3 minutes. Repeatedly he took
Lieut. Frank P. Lahm or Lieutenant Selfridge for short flights.
On the 17th of September the tragic accident that put a stop to the
flights occurred. Orville Wright was flying about 75 feet high with
Lieutenant Selfridge as a passenger when one of the propellers hit a
stay wire which coiled about the blade, breaking it and making the
machine unmanageable. The aeroplane plunged to the ground, throwing
the occupants forward. Lieutenant Selfridge suffered injuries from
which he died within three hours, while Wright suffered several
broken bones. This occurred while Wilbur Wright was at Le Mans,
France.
The year before Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the American inventor, had
invited Glenn Curtiss, a bicycle and motor manufacturer, to aid him
in equipping with power the fliers that he was constructing with the
help of Lieutenant Selfridge, F. W. Baldwin, and J. A. D. McCurdy.
They formed the Aerial Experiment Association, which later became
famous, and early in March, 1908, began the test of their first
aeroplane, which they called the _Red Wing_. The machine was tried
over the ice of Lake Keuka, near Hammondsport, N. Y., and before its
makers were ready to fly it went into the air and sailed 300 feet.
The _Red Wing_ was of biplane type and mounted on skids, with the
propeller and vertical direction rudder at the rear. The horizontal
elevating rudder was at the front. The notable feature was the curve
of the planes. The upper plane curved from the centre downward,
while the lower plane curved from the centre upward, so that the two
planes, if they had been a little bit longer, would have met. This
curvature was expected to give automatic stability, but the machine
was never a great success.
The next machine made by these experimenters was called the _White
Wing_, and made some fair flights. The next was the famous _June Bug_
which was designed by Curtiss and entered by him to contest for the
_Scientific American_ Cup for a flight of one kilometre. The test,
which was held on the 4th of July, 1908, near Hammondsport, was the
first official flight for a prize in America, and was successful in
every way, winning the cup with a flight of 200 yards. This biplane
had the three-rudder control--that is, a tail at the rear shaped like
a box kite to steer it from right to left, two small parallel planes
in front to steer it up or down, and a system of flexible wing tips
which enabled the operator to maintain a side to side balance.
In 1909 Curtiss made some important improvements over his machine of
previous years by replacing the flexible wing tips with ailerons.
This was the first time these devices were used in this country, but
they had already been introduced in Europe on several machines. There
are many kinds of ailerons, but on Curtiss's biplane they were two
small horizontal planes fixed between the outer tips of the upper
and lower planes. They could be turned so as to keep the aeroplane
balanced when making a sharp turn or when struck by a gust of wind.
Curtiss and his partner, A. M. Herring, took the machine to the
plains near Mineola, L. I., that summer, and began preliminary
flights. They won several rich prizes, including that year's
_Scientific American_ Cup for the longest flight of the season. In
this Curtiss made an official distance of 24-1/2 miles.
[Illustration:
Photograph by the American Press
THE GODDESS OF LIBERTY
Photographed from an aeroplane]
[Illustration: FIRST ACTUAL WAR EXPEDITION OF AN AEROPLANE
This picture shows Rene Simon returning from his scouting trip
over the camp of the Mexican insurrectos, February 11, 1911.]
[Illustration: WAR MANOEUVRES
American army aeroplane manoeuvring over the troops mobilized at
San Antonio, Texas, during the 1911 Mexican revolution.]
We will leave Mr. Curtiss and his associates for the time being and
take up again the work of the Wright brothers, who in the spring of
1909 returned to the United States after their European triumphs.
Their laurels were further added to by a medal from the Aero Club of
America, presented by President Taft at the White House, and medals
from the Federal Government, the state of Ohio, and their home town
of Dayton. All this time they were busy making the aeroplane with
which they were to resume the final tests for the Government that
had been interrupted the previous fall by the death of Lieutenant
Selfridge. They arrived at Fort Myer in June, but spent most of that
month and a large part of July in preparations and short practice
flights. The great crowds, among which were scores of statesmen and
politicians, gathered in Washington, became impatient at the delays,
but the brothers had waited for a good many years to perfect their
biplane and would not risk failure by attempting the official tests
in bad weather, with their plane out of tune, or their engine in bad
working order.
Finally ten thousand cheering spectators were rewarded by seeing
Orville Wright ascend with Lieutenant Lahm as a passenger, and sail
for 1 hour and 40 seconds, fulfilling the endurance requirements.
The next few days the weather prevented the distance test, but one
calm evening just before sunset Orville carried Lieut. B. D. Foulois
across hills and valleys to Alexandria and return at an average speed
of 42.6 miles per hour. This won the brothers a bonus of $5,000 on
the price of the machine because they were to receive $2,500 extra
for each mile per hour more than the 40 miles per hour called for in
the contract. It was the greatest feat of aviation ever seen in the
United States at the time and the ovation tendered the brothers was
equal to the occasion. Not once, however, did they lose their heads
in the slightest or show any undue enthusiasm over their achievement.
Statesmen, army officers, and newspaper men crowded around with
congratulations and praises, but the great victory was only what the
brothers had expected and they soon were planning improvements on
their biplane.
The real meaning of this feat by the Wright biplane, however, was
that the United States was the first nation officially to adopt an
aeroplane for military purposes. To Americans it seems peculiarly
fitting that it was the Wright machine that was adopted because it
was the Wright aeroplane, strictly an American product, that was the
first practical flier.
Later on Wilbur returned to Fort Myer to finish off his contract by
teaching two Signal Corps officers to handle the machine. During
this time the aviator changed his biplane by transferring one of the
forward elevating planes to the rear, where it was used as a fixed
tail to give greater stability from front to rear. This was such a
success that it was used in subsequent models, and the present-day
Wright biplanes have no forward lifting plane at all--the horizontal
plane at the rear serving as the elevator and also as the fore and
aft balancer.
In the fall of 1909, after the Fort Myer tests, the brothers
again separated, Orville going to Europe, where he achieved more
distinction, and Wilbur remaining at home to astonish his countrymen
with his exhibitions at the Hudson-Fulton Celebration. He made the
first trip around the Statue of Liberty on September 9, starting from
and returning to Governor's Island in New York Bay.
In the meantime the European aviators were making even greater
strides, and 1909 saw many new aeroplanes take the air to break
records of different kinds. Throughout the season there was hardly a
day that some record was not broken, or that some previously unknown
man did not achieve undying fame for his daring feats.
Aeroplane schools were established and aviation passed from the stage
of experimenting into the stage of record making and breaking.
The European governments, particularly France and Germany, were
carefully watching progress, and dozens of the pupils in the aviation
schools were young officers detailed to learn the art of flying and
report on its usefulness in warfare. Also the building of aeroplanes
became a great industry and in France thousands of scientists,
designers, mechanics, motor experts, and wood-working experts were
engaged in turning out machines as fast as they could.
It would be impossible in this brief space to describe all of the
important flights of the last few busy years in aviation, which were
talked of by the boy and his scientist friend, but a very brief
outline of the feats accomplished will show the wonderful progress
that has been made. The first great international meet, which was
held at Rheims, France, in 1909, did more than anything else up to
that time to show the world how far the science had gone and how many
good machines there were. So great was the public interest in this
meet that before the end of the year meets were arranged and held
at Blackpool and Donchester, England; Berlin, Juvisy, France, and
Brescia, Italy. The most notable achievements of the year in Europe
were the flight across the English Channel by Blériot in his graceful
monoplane, by which he won the prize of 1,000 pounds offered by the
London _Daily Mail_, the winning of the James Gordon Bennett Cup by
Curtiss, the only American to contest for the great honour, and the
winning of the Grand Prix by Farman in his biplane. Blériot, while
practising, before his famous flight across the English Channel,
broke many records with his monoplanes, No. XI and No. XII. He was
the first man to take two passengers in such a craft, those in the
machine besides himself being Santos-Dumont and A. Fournier. The
total weight of machine and three men was 1,232 pounds. He also
made several cross-country records and received medals from the Aero
Club of Great Britain and the Aero Club of France.
[Illustration: HARRY N. ATWOOD
Arriving at Chicago on his flight from St. Louis to New York.]
[Illustration: THE FINISH OF ATWOOD'S ST. LOUIS TO NEW YORK FLIGHT
The aviator is here seen arriving at Governor's Island in New
York Bay.]
[Illustration: POSTMASTER-GENERAL HITCHCOCK AND CAPTAIN BECK
STARTING WITH THE AERO-MAIL
This is the first time regular United States mail ever was
carried by aeroplane. Throughout the meet at Garden City in 1911,
Earle L. Ovington and Beck carried mail over a regular route.]
Blériot's flight over the English Channel was one of the most
dramatic that ever has been made by an aviator, as he encountered
perils that no birdman ever before had faced. He had as a contestant
one of the daring young aviators who has made the history of aviation
read like a novel. This was Hubert Latham, who used the Antoinette
monoplane, one of the most beautiful machines ever designed, and
which is described fully later on. Young Latham had become a popular
hero because of his daring feats. The aviators said that he was
carrying on an endless battle with the wind, for he seemed to prefer
flying high in the air when the wind was so gusty that other aviators
were afraid to leave their hangars. He had made several monoplane
records for endurance and altitude, and after a notable cross-country
flight announced his intention of sailing across the English Channel
to collect the 1,000 pounds from the _Daily Mail_. So he took his
graceful monoplane to Calais, and after impatiently waiting for
fair weather, soared from the towering cliffs and out over the
stormy waters of the English Channel. Thousands cheered his daring
and wished him success, but before he had gone more than six miles
his motor failed him and he glided to the water. In a few minutes
the boat that was sailing below him came up and found him calmly
sitting on the upper framework of his machine, which was buoyed up
by the great wings. He was looking as unconcerned as if he had been
sitting in a motor boat on a lake, and declared he would try again
the next day. His machine was wrecked in getting it ashore, however,
and Blériot made his famous flight before the young man could get it
repaired.
The older man had been injured in an accident and was still walking
on crutches, with a badly burned foot, when a favourable opportunity
for the trans-channel flight came. He was awakened before dawn on the
morning of July 25th, and, throwing away his crutches as he got into
his machine for a practise spin, he said: "I will show the world that
I can fly even if I cannot walk."
At 4:35, just as the sun was rising, he sailed out over the
precipice, and Latham, watching him, wept with disappointment at
not being able to enter the contest. A torpedo boat destroyer was
following him, but soon she dropped behind and he was over the
trackless channel without any landmark to guide him. Finally the
coast of France dropped out of sight and the intrepid aviator was
alone, with nothing but his carefully planned monoplane between him
and death in the tossing waters hundreds of feet below.
After ten minutes of this the cliffs of the English coast loomed up
ahead, bathed in the early morning sunlight. He saw several boats far
below him and followed their course, which brought him to the town
of Deal, near which he landed. The first man to greet him was his
good friend M. Montaine, but soon after a crowd of Englishmen were
crowding about congratulating him on his wonderful achievement. Not
to be outdone, young Latham cabled his congratulations.
August saw the beginning of the first great international meet at
Rheims. Most of the leading aviators of the world gathered there
to contest for the prizes and for fame. Curtiss, Blériot, Farman,
Latham, Lefabre, Count de Lambert, Paul Tissandier, Louis Paulhan,
Le Blanc, Roger Sommer, and Rougier all distinguished themselves and
made their names as familiar in this country as they were in France.
Latham, with his apparently fearless disregard of danger, and
his great, soaring Antoinette monoplane that looked more like a
dragon-fly when up in the air than anything else, was one of the
popular idols. Not only did he fly in rough winds but also in heavy
rainfall, as did his rival, Blériot. Of course there were several bad
accidents, but none to compare with the later fatalities.
The winning of the $10,000 Grand Prix de la Champagne for the longest
flight was not so spectacular as the next day's great race. Latham
had made a record of 96 miles that it was thought would stand. On
the day of the finals, Friday, August 27th, Latham again took the
air, making a spectacular flight several hundred feet high. At the
same time several others were performing evolutions in the air, some
high and some low. Farman was flying close to the ground and making
but poor time in his slower craft. Finally, after all the others had
come to earth, the longest flight having been made by Latham, with
68 miles to his credit, the crowd realized that Farman was making a
record. Time after time he passed the grand stand, marking off the
miles. It became dark, but the crowd still lingered, and was rewarded
finally by seeing him bring his machine softly to the ground in front
of the judges' stand, winner of the $10,000, with a record of 190
kilometres. His friends, wild with joy, pulled the exhausted aviator
from his seat and carried him off the field on their shoulders.
The next day Curtiss, the only American taking part in the meet
(although several Wright biplanes were flown by Frenchmen), brought
out his 60-horsepower biplane to try for the speed prize of $5,000
offered by James Gordon Bennett. He made two rounds of the field at
a speed of 47.04 miles an hour. Blériot then brought out his great
80-horsepower monoplane, but the test flights were discouraging.
Finally, after working over his machine all afternoon and trying
several propellers, he started at five o'clock and made his first
round in much better time than Curtiss had done. He slackened up on
the second round, however, and came to earth to find that he had lost
to the gallant American. By winning the prize Curtiss was allowed to
take the next year's contest to his own country.
There were many other records broken at the other meets held in
1909, but none of them stood long after the 1910 season had got well
under way. Altitude, endurance, distance and speed records all were
shattered by the ever-increasing army of aviators and the constantly
improving machines.
Undoubtedly the most spectacular and daring feat of 1910 was the
flight across the Alps by George Chavez, who was born in Paris of
Peruvian parents only twenty-three years before his tragic death. In
September of that year he set out to win the prize of 70,000 francs
offered by the Italian Aviation Society to the first aviator who
would fly the 75 miles from Brig to Milan, across the towering peaks
and yawning chasms of the Alps. Of the five who entered the contest
Chavez was the only one to make a real start. After waiting for
several days, during which wind, rain and fog kept him chained to the
ground, he finally rose in the air.
In a few minutes he was 7,000 feet above sea level, crossing the
famous Simplon Pass, braving the fierce eddies of wind that swirled
around the cruel, jagged crags and precipices. Finally he crossed
the mountains and glided down the Italian slope to Domodossola.
Thousands had gathered to greet his arrival, but as he was sinking
gradually to the earth, only thirty feet above the ground, a gust of
wind caught the machine, the wings collapsed and the brave young man
fell to earth underneath the machinery. He received injuries from
which he died four days later. The committee granted him one third of
the prize on the basis that he had completed the difficult part of
the journey.
No less dangerous was Glenn Curtiss's trip from Albany to New York
in his biplane, by which he won the $10,000 prize offered by the New
York _World_. Most of his route lay over wooded hills, the waters of
the Hudson River, or the cliffs along its banks, which territory,
as any one who has travelled from New York to Albany knows, offers
few landing places. Starting with a letter from the Mayor of Albany
to the Mayor of New York and followed by a special train on the New
York Central he made Camelot, 41 miles from Albany, in about an hour.
The next jump was clear to Spuyten Duyvil, the northern boundary of
Manhattan, which completed the required 128 miles in a total elapsed
time of 2 hours and 32 minutes. His average speed was 50-1/2 miles an
hour.
This stage of the journey nearly brought serious disaster to the
aviator, for, while passing the famous old mountain Storm King, he
was caught by a terrific gust of wind and his machine was twisted
sideways so that it dropped suddenly toward the river. By skilful
manipulation he righted his biplane and continued.
After a brief pause at Spuyten Duyvil he sailed down the Hudson River
and the upper New York Bay to Governor's Island. Every whistle in
the harbour, a few million people and the reporters representing
the newspaper readers of the whole civilized world, proclaimed his
victory over the wind gusts eddying around the palisades and the New
York skyscrapers.
In the United States there were many aviators besides Curtiss who
were making an effort to win long distance prizes. The New York
_Times_ and the Philadelphia _Ledger_ had offered a large purse,
supposed to be $10,000, for the first flight from New York to
Philadelphia, and on June 13th, a few days after Glenn Curtiss's
flight from Albany to New York, Charles K. Hamilton, another young
man new to aviation, sailed in his Curtiss biplane the 86 miles from
Governor's Island to Philadelphia in 1 hour and 43 minutes, and
returned the same day. His average speed was 50-1/2 miles an hour,
the same maintained by Curtiss in his Albany-New York trip. These two
flights added tremendously to the fame of the Curtiss machines.
The great International Aviation Tournament of 1910, held at Belmont
Park in October, was the climax of the season in this country. Of
course interest centred around the race for the James Gordon Bennett
Cup and prize of $5,000, which had been won the year before at Rheims
by Curtiss. The total prizes amounted to $60,000 and practically
every standard make of aeroplane was represented. The American
aviators came into prominence at this meet, as will be remembered
by the feats of Walter Brookins, Arch. Hoxsey, Ralph Johnstone, J.
A. Drexel and a dozen others. The English contingent was led by
Claude Grahame-White, who had been making himself famous at the
Harvard-Boston meet. Of the Frenchmen, Alfred LeBlanc, Hubert Latham,
Emiel Aubrun and Count de Lesseps were among the leaders.
Nearly every one nowadays is familiar with the story of how
Grahame-White brought out his 100-horsepower Blériot monoplane for
its first trial and made 100 kilometres at an average speed of
61 miles an hour. Soon after that LeBlanc came out with another
100-horsepower Blériot, acknowledged to be one of the swiftest
machines ever made at that time, and started on a race around the
course at a speed such as the world had never seen before. In the
last lap his gasoline gave out, the aeroplane shot downward and
was smashed against a telephone pole. LeBlanc was more angry than
injured, because he had lost the race, although his speed had been 67
miles an hour, or six miles better than Grahame-White's. Brookins,
with the Wright biplane racing machine, started out with high speed,
but the engine soon began to miss fire and he too came to earth.
Consequently Grahame-White carried off the prize.
The next day the aviators were out to contest for the $10,000 offered
by Thomas F. Ryan for the quickest flight from the aviation field
to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, 16 miles away, and
return. Never before was there such a dramatic race. Together Count
de Lesseps and Claude Grahame-White, both in Blériot machines,
started for the Statue. John Moisant, the American aviator, who only
that summer had made the first flight from Paris to London, suddenly
determined to win the prize. It took him about five minutes to buy
LeBlanc's 50-horsepower Blériot monoplane for $10,000, and just
as Grahame-White and de Lesseps were returning from their flight
Moisant started out. Instead of taking the safer roundabout course,
where there were many landing places, this dauntless birdman sailed
directly over the church steeples of Brooklyn, cutting through the
treacherous air currents at terrific speed, circling the Statue at
great altitude and returning by the same route. His time was 43
seconds better than that of Grahame-White, who flew a machine of
double the power. The Americans were wild with delight, thinking
Moisant had won the prize, but the committee finally gave the award
to Count de Lesseps, who made the slowest time, because Grahame-White
had fouled the starting post, or pylon, as it is called by aviators,
and because Moisant in his desperation to get started had failed to
qualify.
But there were other records broken. Ralph Johnstone, flying the
small Wright biplane racer, which was equipped with particularly
large propellers, broke the altitude record of 9,104 feet which had
been set in France by climbing to an altitude of 9,714 feet. The
round trip to and from the clouds took him 1 hour and 43 minutes.
In connection with the altitude trials, the daring of Johnstone and
Hoxsey was particularly notable. Both of these aviators took up their
Wright biplanes when the wind was blowing so fiercely that they could
hardly turn the pylons. When they got to a great altitude, one time
the gale was so terrific that they were carried backward at a speed
of nearly 40 miles an hour, and both of them had to land in open
country; Johnstone at Holtsville, L. I., 55 miles away, and Hoxsey at
Brentwood, half that distance. During these flights both of them had
reached altitudes of more than a mile in the air. But these records
were not destined to stand long, as will be shown by the table on
page 75.
But world's distance and altitude records were being broken in
Europe, too, and during the summer of 1910 the record keepers were
busy putting new names at the heads of their lists, as will be shown
by the table on page 76. The long distance speed race, called the
"Circuit de l'Est," which took in a course 488 miles long, of six
towns around Paris, aroused as much enthusiasm as any. The prize
which was offered by the newspaper _Le Matin_ of Paris was for
100,000 francs. The race started on August 7, with eight contestants,
and ended on August 17 with Alfred LeBlanc, in his Blériot monoplane,
the winner. He had made the distance in six stages at an average
speed of 40 miles an hour, flying through rain, fog and wind. Next
came Aubrun in a Blériot and Weyman in a Farman. Not only was this
race one of the severest tests that the aeroplane had ever had, but
also it was a trial to the aviators that did a great deal to prove
the practicability of the aeroplanes for more serious work than
pleasant day sport.
ALTITUDE FLIGHTS IN 1910[A]
================================================
AVIATOR | ALTITUDE | AEROPLANE |
-------------+-----------+---------------------+
Paulhan | 4,164 feet| Farman biplane |
Olieslaegers | 4,490 " | Blériot monoplane |
Brookins | 4,503 " | Wright biplane |
Latham | 4,658 " | Antoinette monoplane|
Chavez | 5,850 " | Blériot monoplane |
Morane | 6,691 " | Blériot monoplane |
Morane | 8,469 " | Blériot monoplane |
Chavez | 8,790 " | Blériot monoplane |
Drexel, A. | 9,450 " | Blériot monoplane |
Johnstone | 9,714 " | Wright biplane |
Legagneux |10,746 " | Blériot monoplane |
Hoxsey, A. |11,476 " | Wright biplane |
-------------+-----------+---------------------+
===========================================
AVIATOR | PLACE | DATE
-------------+--------------+--------------
Paulhan | Los Angeles |Jan. 12, 1910
Olieslaegers | Brussels |July 30, "
Brookins | Indianapolis |July 16, "
Latham | Rheims |July 7, "
Chavez | Blackpool |Aug. 3, "
Morane | Havre |Aug. 29, "
Morane | Havre |Sept. 2, "
Chavez | Issy, Paris |Sept. 8, "
Drexel, A. | Philadelphia |Oct. 31, "
Johnstone | Belmont Park |Nov. 23, "
Legagneux | Pau |Dec. 9, "
Hoxsey, A. | Los Angeles |Dec. 26, "
-------------+--------------+--------------
[A] These records were broken in 1911 and 1912. The 1912 record
being 16,240 feet, made by Garro, France.
DISTANCE AND ENDURANCE FLIGHTS
========================================================
| | DISTANCE | TIME
AVIATOR | AEROPLANE | MILES |HR. MIN.
----------------+----------------+------------+---------
L. Paulhan | H. Farman bi-p | 108 in all | 2 3
| | |
| | |
Grahame-White | H. Farman bi-p | 83 | 2 5
| | |
L. Paulhan | H. Farman bi-p | 193 | 4 12
| | |
G. H. Curtiss | Curtiss bi-p. | 150 | 2 50
| | |
C. K. Hamilton | Curtiss bi-p. | 86 | 1 43
| | |
R. Labouchere | Antoinette | 211.27 | 4 37
| mono-p |
J. Olieslaegers | Blériot mono-p | 244.43 | 5 3
| | |
A. Leblanc | Blériot mono-p | 485 | 251 55
| | | elapsed
| | | time
| | |
E. Aubrun | Blériot mono-p | 485 | 252 15
| | | elapsed
| | | time
| | |
M. Cattaneo | Blériot mono-p | 141 miles | 3 18
| | 188 yds |
| | in all |
R. Johnstone | Wright bi-p | 101 miles | 3 5
| | 389 feet |
Walter Brookins | Wright bi-p | 192.5 in | 5 49
| | all. |
Arch Hoxsey | Wright bi-p | 109 | 3 33
| | |
M. Tabuteau | H. Farman bi-p | 289.39 | 6 1
| | |
G. H. Curtiss | Curtiss bi-p | 120 |
| | |
J. A. D McCurdy | Curtiss bi-p | 90 | 2
| | |
Capt. Bellenger | | 330 | 8 22
| | |
Lieut. Bague | | 124 | 4 32
| | |
| | |
Hirth | | 330 | 5 41
| | |
Vedrines | | 267 | 3 50
| | |
H. N. Atwood | Burgess-Wright | 462 | 17 12
| bi-p. | |Net fly-
| | | ing time
H. N. Atwood | Burgess-Wright | 1,266 | 28 53
| bi-p. | |Net fly-
| | | ing time
Olieslaegers | Blériot | 388 | 7 18
| | |
Loridan | | 434 | 10 43
| | |
Vassilieff | | 400 |
| | |
Renaux | M. Farman | 428 | 12 12
| | |
Vedrines | Morane | 504 | 8 54
| | |
C. P. | Wright bi-p. | 4,029 | 82 4
Rodgers | | |Total
| | | flying
| | | time
Helen | Nieuportmono-p | 704 | 12 40
| | |
Helen | Nieuportmono-p | 778 | 14 7
| | |
Lieuts. | Curtiss bi-p | 140 | 2 27
Ellyson, | | |
Towers | | |
----------------+----------------+------------+---------
========================================================
| |
AVIATOR | PLACE | DATE
----------------+---------------------------+-----------
L. Paulhan | Chevilly-Arcis-sur-Aube | Apr. 18,
| to Châlons | 1910
| two stages. |
Grahame-White | London to Rugby. | Apr. 23,
| | 1910
L. Paulhan | London to Manchester, | Apr. 28,
| two stages. | 1910
G. H. Curtiss | Albany to New York | May 29,
| | 1910
C. K. Hamilton | New York to Philadelphia. | June 13,
| | 1910
R. Labouchere | Over course Rheims, | July 9,
| France, world's record | 1910
J. Olieslaegers | Rheims, France, | July 10
| world's record. | 1910
A. Leblanc | Circular course, Paris, | Aug. 7-17,
| Troyes, Nancy, Mexziers,| 1910
| Douai, Amiens |
| and back. |
E. Aubrun | Same as above. Won | Aug. 7-17,
| second prize. Arrived | 1910
| only 20 minutes |
| later than Leblanc. |
M. Cattaneo | Lanark, Scotland. | Aug. 13,
| | 1910
| |
R. Johnstone | Boston | Sept. 3,
| | 1910
Walter Brookins | Chicago to Springfield, | Sept. 29,
| Ill., two stops. | 1910
Arch Hoxsey | Springfield, Ill., to St. | Oct. 8,
| Louis, Mo., one stop, | 1910
M. Tabuteau | Buc, France. | Oct. 28,
| | 1910
G. H. Curtiss | Across Lake Erie and | Aug. 31,
| return. | 1910
J. A. D McCurdy | Key West to near Havana | Jan. 30,
| (fell into ocean). | 1911
Capt. Bellenger | Paris to Bordeaux, | Feb. 1,
| France. | 1911
Lieut. Bague | Antibes, Italy, across | March 5,
| Mediterranean to | 1911
| Gorgona Island. |
Hirth | Munich to Berlin, | June 29,
| Germany. | 1911
Vedrines | London to Paris | Aug. 2,
| | 1911
H. N. Atwood | Boston to Washington | June 30,
| | July 11,
| | 1911
H. N. Atwood | St. Louis to New York | Aug.
| | 14-25,
| | 1911
Olieslaegers | Kiewit, Belgium (over | July 17,
| course). | 1911
Loridan | Mourmelon, France | July 21,
| (over course). | 1911
Vassilieff | St. Petersburg to | July 24,
| Moscow. | 1911
Renaux | Chartres, France | Aug. 7,
| (over course). | 1911
Vedrines | Issy, France | Aug. 9,
| (over course). | 1911
C. P. | N. Y. to Long Beach, | Aug. 14,-
Rodgers | Cal., World's | Dec. 6,
| record. | 1911
| |
Helen | Bethany, France (over | Aug. 26,
| course), 3 stops. | 1911
Helen | Etampes, France (over | Sept. 8,
| course), 3 stops. | 1911
Lieuts. | Annapolis to near | Oct. 25,
Ellyson, | Fortress Monroe | 1911
Towers | (over water). |
----------------+---------------------------+---------
Then, too, there was the great London to Manchester race for the
$50,000 offered by Lord Northcliffe, owner of the London _Daily
Mail_. This was one of the most exciting contests of the year, not
only because of the difficulties of the trip, but also because of the
nip and tuck finish between the two contestants.
Claude Grahame-White had just purchased a Farman biplane, and hearing
that Paulhan was hurrying across the Atlantic from the United States
to try for the prize himself, the Englishman announced that he would
start as soon as his machine could be set up. He had had but little
experience with the biplane, as always before that time he had used a
Blériot, but nevertheless, in spite of the advice of his friends to
wait, Grahame-White started on the 183-mile flight on the morning of
April 23d in the teeth of a high wind. According to Grahame-White's
own account of the flight he was buffeted about so unmercifully by
the wind that several times he thought he would have to descend. At
the same time the cold was so intense that he suffered agonies. He
reached his first stop at Rugby in safety, though so cold he had to
be lifted from his seat, but soon after taking the air again the gale
rose to such a pitch that he was forced to land. He went to a hotel
to rest and wait for the wind to abate, but while there the gale
tipped over his biplane, smashing it so badly that the aviator had to
give up and take his machine back to London practically to be rebuilt.
Meanwhile Paulhan had reached England and was rushing his workmen
night and day to get his aeroplane set up before Grahame-White could
complete his repairs and make a fresh start.
Finally, with the wind still blowing a gale, Paulhan started for
Manchester. Grahame-White heard of this at 6:30 in the evening, but
manfully started after his competitor and flew 60 miles, when he
was finally forced to land in the dark. Determined to remain in the
race, he started again about three o'clock in the morning with the
intention of trying to catch up with the daring Frenchman. Besides
the bitter cold, it was so dark that the Englishman could not see
whether he was flying high or low or even toward Manchester. The
danger of this kind of flying he knew was very great, because if his
engine failed him he would have had to come to earth anywhere he
happened to light, as likely on a church steeple or in a lake as on
a level spot. Of this famous flight Grahame-White wrote in his book,
"The Story of the Aeroplane":
"My start was really something in the nature of a confused
jumble. Faint lights swept away on either side as my machine
moved across the ground. I could not judge my ascent at all, on
account of the darkness. But I elevated as quickly as possible,
and got away from the ground smartly.
"Directly I was at a respectable height, I could see the lights
of the railway station very distinctly. I headed toward them.
Looking directly down, I found that I could distinguish nothing
on the ground below me. It was all a black smudge. I flew right
over the lights of the railway station--and as I was doing so my
engine began to miss fire. It was certainly a very uncomfortable
moment--one of the most uncomfortable I have ever experienced.
"But, very fortunately for me, after a momentary spluttering,
the engine picked up again, and fired properly. I had begun to
sink toward the ground, upon which I knew I could have picked
out no landing place in the darkness. As soon as my engine began
to do its work again, however, I rose and continued my flight
smoothly."
With the dawn came a terrific wind which forced the aviator to land
near Polesworth. While waiting for the wind to abate the Englishman
and his friends heard Paulhan had reached Manchester and won the
prize.
Of Paulhan's famous flight, one of the men who was aboard the special
train following Paulhan, according to Mr. Grahame-White, said:
"I do not think I have ever seen a machine roll about in the air as
his did. He was, we could see, incessantly at work. One wind gust
after another struck the machine and it literally reeled under the
shock.
"Up and down it went, and from side to side. Paulhan's pluck and
determination were remarkable. I do not think that any other man
could have kept on with such determination as he displayed. It was a
strange thing to see how the wind got worse and worse as the airman
flew on."
But these feats that startled the world in 1910 would not cause a
ripple of enthusiasm now, since the North American Continent has been
crossed by aeroplane; since the trip from Boston to Washington and
from St. Louis to New York has been made; since a machine has stayed
in the air a whole day, or more than eight and a half hours, since a
dozen passengers have been carried half a dozen miles and since the
development of the hydro-aeroplane.
[Illustration:
Copyright, by Brown Brothers, N. Y.
CHAVEZ ON HIS FATAL FLIGHT ACROSS THE ALPS]
[Illustration: THE LATE CALBRAITH P. RODGERS, TRANS-CONTINENTAL
FLIER
This picture was taken just after Rodgers had picked himself up
after one of the many smash-ups of his aeroplane during his ocean
to ocean flight.]
Of course it hasn't all been the winning of prizes and the cheering
of crowds, for, as we all know, there has been a tragic side to
aviation. Up to the summer of 1912 more than 150 persons had met
death in aeroplane accidents. To analyze all these accidents would
require a whole book, but experts agree that in a great many cases
they were the result of carelessness on the part of the pilot. Of
course there were other causes, such as the collapse of the wings,
the breaking of stays, the overturning by wind gusts, "holes in
the air," the explosion of the motor, the failure of the motor at
a critical time, or the collapse of the aviator, but authorities
declare that many of these can be prevented by the use of proper care
by the designers, manufacturers, and pilots of the air vehicles.
Two of the most tragic of the recent air fatalities were the deaths
of Arch. Hoxsey and Rodgers at Los Angeles, the former in December,
1910, and the latter in April, 1912. Hoxsey had just set a world's
record for altitude in his Wright biplane, while Rodgers only a few
months before his death had completed a transcontinental flight and
made a world's record.
Several women aviators also were killed in 1912, including Miss
Harriet Quimby, one of the first American women to take up flying.
Miss Quimby's machine fell with her in Boston while she was making an
exhibition flight.
The 1911 death roll of American aviators included: Lieutenant Kelly,
U. S. A.; A. Hartle, Los Angeles; Kreamer, Badger and Johnstone,
Chicago; Frisbie, Norton, Kan.; Castellana, Mansfield, Pa.; Miller,
Troy, Ohio; Clarke, Garden City, N. Y.; Dixon, Spokane, Wash.; Ely,
Macon, Ga.; and Professor Montgomery, Santa Clara, Cal., whose early
experiments are held in such high esteem by scientists.
Just as 1910 was the year for record-breaking aeroplane contests,
1911 was the year that proved the aeroplane a machine with a greater
and more important use than that of a very exciting and a very
expensive sport. Probably the most astounding developments in the
world of aviation in 1911 were the experiments of the Wright brothers
at Kitty Hawk, which showed that man has come very near to solving
the problem of true soaring flight. We will look more closely at the
experiments in a later chapter.
Of much greater practical use was the development of the
hydro-aeroplane by Glenn Curtiss. His lead in this was quickly
followed by the Wrights and most of the European makers.
The year 1911 saw the aeroplane employed for the first time in the
world's history in actual warfare. When the revolution was raging in
Mexico in February, 1911, the Diaz Army sent Rene Simon in a Blériot
monoplane to make a scouting trip over the camp of the insurrectos.
A little later on Lieutenant Foulois of the American Signal Service,
whose name will be remembered in connection with the Fort Myer
experiments, sailed over and about the camp of the mobilized American
Army at San Antonio, Texas, while the Mexican revolution was in
progress just across the American boundary line.
Next came the use of the aeroplane for scouting by the Italian Army
in its invasion of Tripoli. All of these expeditions showed that the
aeroplane can be used more successfully in war for scouting than
as a means for dropping explosives. Of course there have been many
experiments conducted by aviators in dropping paper bombs, but army
officers both in the United States and abroad are not agreed as to
the success of such projects.
Another of the important military experiments has been the equipping
of aeroplanes with wireless apparatus so that a wireless operator in
the machine with the aviator could send and receive brief messages
such as would describe the position and strength of an enemy in war
time. Also many aviators have taken up with them photographers who
have taken accurate photographs of both the still and motion variety
of the country over which they were passing. Of course the armies of
the world are building guns which will carry to a great altitude as a
defence from aerial attack.
Although the first country to adopt aeroplanes for use by its
army, the United States is now far behind other nations in its
aviation squads. The United States Signal Corps owns only a few
Wright and Curtiss biplanes, with only a small number of officers
who know how to fly them. France has an extensive fleet of several
hundred aeroplanes and a small army of aviators, while Germany has
established a school for aviation where sixty or seventy officers are
always being instructed in flying the various types of machines.
The German Army has now more than one hundred aeroplanes, besides
many dirigible balloons. The British Government has not gone so
far, but has conducted some interesting experiments in which Claude
Grahame-White was one of the leaders.
The latest things in the aeroplane, however, are always expected to
be brought out at the French Army tests, and several machines that
were first exhibited in this way will be described a little later on.
But not only in war is the aeroplane being developed, but also in
the greater work of peace, because the aeroplane enthusiasts expect
that in the near future the art will be developed to such a degree of
safety that regular systems of passenger traffic can be installed.
Besides this, the aeroplane is the fastest mode of travelling now
known, and it may be used for the carrying of mail. It was only in
the summer of 1911 that the first aeroplane mail route of the United
States was established between the aviation field in Garden City, L.
I., and the United States post-office at Mineola, several miles away.
Daily throughout the meet at Garden City Captain Beck and Earle L.
Ovington carried a sack of officially stamped and sealed mail from
the post-office on the field to the postal station at Mineola. The
first sack was handed to Beck by Postmaster-General Hitchcock. Before
this, mail had been carried by aeroplane in England, but not on a
regularly established route.
Also the aeroplane has been pressed into service by deputy sheriffs
seeking criminals and by searching parties hunting for lost persons.
The former was done in Los Angeles when a gang of desperadoes escaped
into the California desert and an aeroplane soared over the sagebrush
in an effort to locate them, while the latter was done near New
York after duck hunters had got lost in a storm on great South Bay,
and near New Orleans when an aviation student skimmed over Lake
Pontchartrain and located the body of a man drowned there.
These are some of the useful developments of the aeroplane. Of course
there have been many spectacular achievements such as the trip of
Calbraith P. Rodgers, a comparatively inexperienced aviator, from
Sheepshead Bay, N. Y., to Long Beach, Cal., across the whole American
continent; the trips of Harry N. Atwood from Boston to Washington and
from St. Louis to New York via Chicago, Buffalo and Albany; the trip
of Vedrines from Paris to Madrid, across the Pyrenees Mountains, and
the terrific speed of about 155 miles an hour, or more than two and a
half miles a minute, maintained by Vedrines for eighty miles. Just to
think of such a speed would take the ordinary person's breath away,
but the aviators speak of it calmly and say it won't be long before
it will be a common thing for aeroplanes to make a speed of 200
miles an hour, about twice as fast as the fastest automobile has ever
burned up the road. Then, too, there was the winning of the James
Gordon Bennett Cup and prize in England by C. F. Weyman, an American
who flew a Nieuport monoplane equipped with a 100-horsepower Gnome
motor. It would be impossible in our space to give a list of the
contests, races, circuit races and endurance tests of the year. Not
only were aeroplanes seen in the United States, but they were flown
in South America, Africa, Australia, Japan, India and China. The
Sphinx in the Great Sahara Desert, the Panama Canal, Niagara Falls,
the Chinese Wall, the Far Eastern temples to Buddha, and the Islands
of the Antipodes all have been circled by the dauntless birdmen, as
well as the Goddess of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower in
Paris.
Young Atwood started from Boston without much ado on June 30, 1911,
sailed 93 miles to New London, Conn., and the day following reeled
off the 112 miles to New York as easily as he would walk across the
street. The Fourth of July he went to Atlantic City; July 10th he
sailed from there to Baltimore, a distance of 122 miles, which was
made in four hours and a half; and the day after that finished up by
sailing into Washington, D. C.
This young aviator still was not satisfied and shipped his aeroplane
to St. Louis, from where on August 14th he started for New York. His
longest single flight was made from St. Louis to Chicago, 283 miles
in 6 hours and 32 minutes. Flying an average distance of 105-1/2
miles a day for the remaining eleven days, he completed the 1,266
miles on August 25th. His total flying time was 28 hours and 53
minutes, and his average speed 43.9 miles per hour.
Far more exciting was the record-breaking flight of the ill-fated
Rodgers from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He had a number of severe
falls, but his determination carried him through in spite of
everything. His machine was a specially constructed Wright biplane
model Ex, something of a mixture between the regular racing and
passenger carrying types. Starting from Sheepshead Bay, N. Y., on
September 17th, the young giant, who had only learned to fly that
summer, was off on the longest trip ever attempted by a birdman.
After being on the go for forty-nine days, he sailed over the coast
towns to Long Beach on the Pacific Ocean. He was actually in the air
the equivalent of 3 days, 10 hours, 4 minutes; made an average speed
of 51 miles an hour, and his longest single flight was from Sanderson
to Sierra Blanca, Texas, on October 28th, a distance of 231 miles. He
crossed three ranges of mountains, two deserts and the continental
plain; he wrecked and rebuilt his machine four times and replaced
some parts of it eight times; he rode through darkness and wind and
rain and lightning, at the heart of a thunder cloud. Once his engine
blew up while he was 4,000 feet high and he had to glide to earth.
A special train with duplicate parts, a complete repair-shop, and
mechanics followed as he winged his way up the Hudson across New York
State, across the plains of the Middle West, down through Kansas,
Oklahoma and Texas, across the Arizona and California deserts, over
the Pacific range, and finally to the western ocean. His worst
accident came at Compton, Cal., on the last stage of his journey,
when he was so badly injured that he was laid up twenty-eight days.
This occurred on November 12th, but, persevering to the end, Rodgers
arose as soon as he was able and sailed to the ocean on December 10th.
Rodgers remained in California the rest of the winter, giving many
exhibitions of his daring and skill, only to meet his death while
holding the world's record. On April 3, 1912, while 7,000 persons at
Long Beach, near Los Angeles, watched his evolutions, his machine
tipped forward. The crowd cheered, thinking it a daring dive, but
became silent when they saw the aviator had lost control. From a
height of 200 feet the biplane plunged into the surf where the
water was only two feet deep. When the people reached the broken
machine Rodgers was dead--his neck broken. There was nothing to
show the cause of the biplane's dive. The spot where Rodgers was
killed is only a few yards from the one where he completed his
transcontinental flight, and where the citizens of Los Angeles
planned to erect a monument to his achievement.
Most boys are perfectly familiar with the important events of 1912
in aviation, which the scientist and his young friend talked over so
eagerly, for, of course, the papers are full of them, and aviation
meets are a common thing now in nearly every city of the country.
The development of the hydro-aeroplane was probably the chief work of
the inventors for the year, but with it came many devices designed
to prevent the appalling loss of life while the art of flying is
being perfected. One of them is a parachute fixed to the top of the
plane, which the aviator is supposed to open in case his machine gets
beyond control. In tests aviators have descended to earth in these
parachutes without injury. Also a number of automatic balancing and
stabilizing devices have been brought out.
Frank Coffyn's feats in and about New York Bay during the winter of
1912 with his Wright hydro-aeroplane gave that city the best idea of
the success of the aeroplane in and over water it had ever had. He
flew from and alighted on the water and great ice floes in the bay as
easily as aviators would fly from a clear landing ground on a calm
day. It was from Coffyn's machine that the picture of the Statue of
Liberty was taken.
The world saw the first hydro-aeroplane meet in March of 1911 off the
coast of the little European principality of Monaco. Seven aviators
competed for the rich prizes, and, although the Maurice Farman
machine won the greatest number of points, the Curtiss hydros showed
the greatest speed, and alighted with perfect ease in breakers four
feet high.
Far more important than the winning of prize contests is the latest
achievement of Glen Curtiss in perfecting his "flying boat," pictures
of which are shown opposite page 23. Curtiss describes this aeroplane
as a combination between a speed motor boat, a yacht and a flying
machine. Speaking of the new plane, he said recently: "With this
craft the dangers common to land aeroplanes are eliminated and safe
flying is here. It will develop a new and popular sport which will be
known as aerial yachting." The most important factor in this machine
is its safety, but it also is speedy, for in its official tests at
Hammondsport it developed 50 miles an hour as a motor boat and 60
miles an hour as an aeroplane. The boat is 26 feet long and 3 feet
wide. The planes are 30 feet wide and 5-1/2 feet deep. The rudders
are attached to the rear; the propeller, driven by an 80-horsepower
motor, is at the front.
Before we go on to other inventions let us look closely at a few of
the aeroplanes so well known to-day, so that when we see them at the
meets we can distinguish the different makes.