The most popular man in Europe in the year 1783 was still the United
States Minister to France. The figure of plain Benjamin Franklin, his
broad head, with the calm, shrewd eyes peering through the bifocals
of his own invention, invested with a halo of great learning and fame,
entirely captivated the people's imagination.
As one of the American Commissioners busy with the extraordinary
problems of the Peace, Franklin might have been supposed too occupied
for excursions into the paths of science and philosophy. But the
spaciousness and orderly furnishing of his mind provided that no pursuit
of knowledge should be a digression for him. So we find him, naturally,
leaving his desk on several days of that summer and autumn and posting
off to watch the trials of a new invention; nothing less indeed than a
ship to ride the air. He found time also to describe the new invention
in letters to his friends in different parts of the world.
On the 21st of November Franklin set out for the gardens of the King's
hunting lodge in the Bois de Boulogne, on the outskirts of Paris, with
a quickened interest, a thrill of excitement, which made him yearn to be
young again with another long life to live that he might see what should
be after him on the earth. What bold things men would attempt! Today two
daring Frenchmen, Pilatre de Rozier of the Royal Academy and his
friend the Marquis d'Arlandes, would ascend in a balloon freed from the
earth--the first men in history to adventure thus upon the wind. The
crowds gathered to witness the event opened a lane for Franklin to pass
through.
At six minutes to two the aeronauts entered the car of their balloon;
and, at a height of two hundred and seventy feet, doffed their hats
and saluted the applauding spectators. Then the wind carried them away
toward Paris. Over Passy, about half a mile from the starting point, the
balloon began to descend, and the River Seine seemed rising to engulf
them; but when they fed the fire under their sack of hot air with
chopped straw they rose to the elevation of five hundred feet. Safe
across the river they dampened the fire with a sponge and made a gentle
descent beyond the old ramparts of Paris.
At five o'clock that afternoon, at the King's Chateau in the Bois de
Boulogne, the members of the Royal Academy signed a memorial of the
event. One of the spectators accosted Franklin.
"What does Dr. Franklin conceive to be the use of this new invention?"
"What is the use of a new-born child?" was the retort.
A new-born child, a new-born republic, a new invention: alike dim
beginnings of development which none could foretell. The year that
saw the world acknowledge a new nation, freed of its ancient political
bonds, saw also the first successful attempt to break the supposed bonds
that held men down to the ground. Though the invention of the balloon
was only five months old, there were already two types on exhibition:
the original Montgolfier, or fireballoon, inflated with hot air, and
a modification by Charles, inflated with hydrogen gas. The mass of the
French people did not regard these balloons with Franklin's serenity.
Some weeks earlier the danger of attack had necessitated a balloon's
removal from the place of its first moorings to the Champ de Mars at
dead of night. Preceded by flaming torches, with soldiers marching
on either side and guards in front and rear, the great ball was borne
through the darkened streets. The midnight cabby along the route stopped
his nag, or tumbled from sleep on his box, to kneel on the pavement and
cross himself against the evil that might be in that strange monster.
The fear of the people was so great that the Government saw fit to issue
a proclamation, explaining the invention. Any one seeing such a globe,
like the moon in an eclipse, so read the proclamation, should be aware
that it is only a bag made of taffeta or light canvas covered with
paper and "cannot possibly cause any harm and which will some day prove
serviceable to the wants of society."
Franklin wrote a description of the Montgolfier balloon to Sir Joseph
Banks, President of the Royal Society of London:
"Its bottom was open and in the middle of the opening was fixed a kind
of basket grate, in which faggots and sheaves of straw were burnt.
The air, rarefied in passing through this flame, rose in the balloon,
swelled out its sides, and filled it. The persons, who were placed in
the gallery made of wicker and attached to the outside near the bottom,
had each of them a port through which they could pass sheaves of
straw into the grate to keep up the flame and thereby keep the balloon
full.... One of these courageous philosophers, the Marquis d'Arlandes,
did me the honor to call upon me in the evening after the experiment,
with Mr. Montgolfier, the very ingenious inventor. I was happy to see
him safe. He informed me that they lit gently, without the least shock,
and the balloon was very little damaged."
Franklin writes that the competition between Montgolfier and Charles has
already resulted in progress in the construction and management of the
balloon. He sees it as a discovery of great importance, one that "may
possibly give a new turn to human affairs. Convincing sovereigns of
the folly of war may perhaps be one effect of it, since it will be
impracticable for the most potent of them to guard his dominions." The
prophecy may yet be fulfilled. Franklin remarks that a short while ago
the idea of "witches riding through the air upon a broomstick and
that of philosophers upon a bag of smoke would have appeared equally
impossible and ridiculous." Yet in the space of a few months he has
seen the philosopher on his smoke bag, if not the witch on her broom.
He wishes that one of these very ingenious inventors would immediately
devise means of direction for the balloon, a rudder to steer it; because
the malady from which he is suffering is always increased by a jolting
drive in a fourwheeler and he would gladly avail himself of an easier
way of locomotion.
The vision of man on the wing did not, of course, begin with the
invention of the balloon. Perhaps the dream of flying man came first
to some primitive poet of the Stone Age, as he watched, fearfully, the
gyrations of the winged creatures of the air; even as in a later age
it came to Langley and Maxim, who studied the wing motions of birds
and insects, not in fear but in the light and confidence of advancing
science.
Crudely outlined by some ancient Egyptian sculptor, a winged human
figure broods upon the tomb of Rameses III. In the Hebrew parable of
Genesis winged cherubim guarded the gates of Paradise against the man
and woman who had stifled aspiration with sin. Fairies, witches, and
magicians ride the wind in the legends and folklore of all peoples.
The Greeks had gods and goddesses many; and one of these Greek art
represents as moving earthward on great spreading pinions. Victory came
by the air. When Demetrius, King of Macedonia, set up the Winged Victory
of Samothrace to commemorate the naval triumph of the Greeks over the
ships of Egypt, Greek art poetically foreshadowed the relation of the
air service to the fleet in our own day.
Man has always dreamed of flight; but when did men first actually fly?
We smile at the story of Daedalus, the Greek architect, and his son,
Icarus, who made themselves wings and flew from the realm of their foes;
and the tale of Simon, the magician, who pestered the early Christian
Church by exhibitions of flight into the air amid smoke and flame in
mockery of the ascension. But do the many tales of sorcerers in the
Middle Ages, who rose from the ground with their cloaks apparently
filled with wind, to awe the rabble, suggest that they had deduced the
principle of the aerostat from watching the action of smoke as did the
Montgolfiers hundreds of years later? At all events one of these alleged
exhibitions about the year 800 inspired the good Bishop Agobard of Lyons
to write a book against superstition, in which he proved conclusively
that it was impossible for human beings to rise through the air.
Later, Roger Bacon and Leonardo da Vinci, each in his turn ruminated in
manuscript upon the subject of flight. Bacon, the scientist, put forward
a theory of thin copper globes filled with liquid fire, which would
soar. Leonardo, artist, studied the wings of birds. The Jesuit Francisco
Lana, in 1670, working on Bacon's theory sketched an airship made of
four copper balls with a skiff attached; this machine was to soar by
means of the lighter-than-air globes and to be navigated aloft by oars
and sails.
But while philosophers in their libraries were designing airships on
paper and propounding their theories, venturesome men, "crawling, but
pestered with the thought of wings," were making pinions of various
fabrics and trying them upon the wind. Four years after Lana suggested
his airship with balls and oars, Besnier, a French locksmith, made a
flying machine of four collapsible planes like book covers suspended
on rods. With a rod over each shoulder, and moving the two front
planes with his arms and the two back ones by his feet, Besnier gave
exhibitions of gliding from a height to the earth. But his machine could
not soar. What may be called the first patent on a flying machine was
recorded in 1709 when Bartholomeo de Gusmao, a friar, appeared before
the King of Portugal to announce that he had invented a flying machine
and to request an order prohibiting other men from making anything
of the sort. The King decreed pain of death to all infringers; and to
assist the enterprising monk in improving his machine, he appointed him
first professor of mathematics in the University of Coimbra with a fat
stipend. Then the Inquisition stepped in. The inventor's suave reply,
to the effect that to show men how to soar to Heaven was an essentially
religious act, availed him nothing. He was pronounced a sorcerer, his
machine was destroyed, and he was imprisoned till his death. Many other
men fashioned unto themselves wings; but, though some of them might
glide earthward, none could rise upon the wind.
While the principle by which the balloon, father of the dirigible, soars
and floats could be deduced by men of natural powers of observation and
little science from the action of clouds and smoke, the airplane,
the Winged Victory of our day, waited upon two things--the scientific
analysis of the anatomy of bird wings and the internal combustion
engine.
These two things necessary to convert man into a rival of the albatross
did not come at once and together. Not the dream of flying but the need
for quantity and speed in production to take care of the wants of a
modern civilization compelled the invention of the internal combustion
engine. Before it appeared in the realm of mechanics, experimenters were
applying in the construction of flying models the knowledge supplied
by Cayley in 1796, who made an instrument of whalebone, corks, and
feathers, which by the action of two screws of quill feathers, rotating
in opposite directions, would rise to the ceiling; and the full
revelation of the structure and action of bird wings set forth by
Pettigrew in 1867.
"The wing, both when at rest and when in motion," Pettigrew declared,
"may not inaptly be compared to the blade of an ordinary screw propeller
as employed in navigation. Thus the general outline of the wing
corresponds closely with the outline of the propeller, and the track
described by the wing in space IS TWISTED UPON ITSELF propeller
fashion." Numerous attempts to apply the newly discovered principles
to artificial birds failed, yet came so close to success that they fed
instead of killing the hope that a solution of the problem would one day
ere long be reached.
"Nature has solved it, and why not man?"
From his boyhood days Samuel Pierpont Langley, so he tells us, had asked
himself that question, which he was later to answer. Langley, born
in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1834, was another link in the chain of
distinguished inventors who first saw the light of day in Puritan New
England. And, like many of those other inventors, he numbered among his
ancestors for generations two types of men--on the one hand, a line of
skilled artisans and mechanics; on the other, the most intellectual men
of their time such as clergymen and schoolmasters, one of them being
Increase Mather. We see in Langley, as in some of his brother New
England inventors, the later flowering of the Puritan ideal stripped
of its husk of superstition and harshness--a high sense of duty and of
integrity, an intense conviction that the reason for a man's life here
is that he may give service, a reserved deportment which did not mask
from discerning eyes the man's gentle qualities of heart and his keen
love of beauty in art and Nature.
Langley first chose as his profession civil engineering and architecture
and the years between 1857 and 1864 were chiefly spent in prosecuting
these callings in St. Louis and Chicago. Then he abandoned them; for the
bent of his mind was definitely towards scientific inquiry. In 1867 he
was appointed director of the Allegheny Observatory at Pittsburgh.
Here he remained until 1887, when, having made for himself a world-wide
reputation as an astronomer, he became Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institution at Washington.
It was about this time that he began his experiments in "aerodynamics."
But the problem of flight had long been a subject of interested
speculation with him. Ten years later he wrote:
"Nature has made her flying-machine in the bird, which is nearly a
thousand times as heavy as the air its bulk displaces, and only those
who have tried to rival it know how inimitable her work is, for the "way
of a bird in the air" remains as wonderful to us as it was to Solomon,
and the sight of the bird has constantly held this wonder before men's
minds, and kept the flame of hope from utter extinction, in spite of
long disappointment. I well remember how, as a child, when lying in a
New England pasture, h watched a hawk soaring far up in the blue, and
sailing for a long time without any motion of its wings, as though it
needed no work to sustain it, but was kept up there by some miracle.
But, however sustained, I saw it sweep in a few seconds of its leisurely
flight, over a distance that to me was encumbered with every sort of
obstacle, which did not exist for it.... How wonderfully easy, too, was
its flight! There was not a flutter of its pinions as it swept over the
field, in a motion which seemed as effortless as that of its shadow.
After many years and in mature life, I was brought to think of these
things again, and to ask myself whether the problem of artificial
flight was as hopeless and as absurd as it was then thought to be"...
In three or four years Langley made nearly forty models. "The primary
difficulty lay in making the model light enough and sufficiently
strong to support its power," he says. "This difficulty continued to be
fundamental through every later form; but, beside this, the adjustment
of the center of gravity to the center of pressure of the wings, the
disposition of the wings themselves, the size of the propellers, the
inclination and number of the blades, and a great number of other
details, presented themselves for examination."
By 1891 Langley had a model light enough to fly, but proper balancing
had not been attained. He set himself anew to find the practical
conditions of equilibrium and of horizontal flight. His experiments
convinced him that "mechanical sustenation of heavy bodies in the air,
combined with very great speeds, is not only possible, but within the
reach of mechanical means we actually possess."
After many experiments with new models Langley at length fashioned a
steam-driven machine which would fly horizontally. It weighed about
thirty pounds; it was some sixteen feet in length, with two sets of
wings, the pair in front measuring forty feet from tip to tip. On May
6, 1896, this model was launched over the Potomac River. It flew half
a mile in a minute and a half. When its fuel and water gave out, it
descended gently to the river's surface. In November Langley launched
another model which flew for three-quarters of a mile at a speed of
thirty miles an hour. These tests demonstrated the practicability of
artificial flight.
The Spanish-American War found the military observation balloon doing
the limited work which it had done ever since the days of Franklin.
President McKinley was keenly interested in Langley's design to build a
power-driven flying machine which would have innumerable advantages over
the balloon. The Government provided the funds and Langley took up the
problem of a flying machine large enough to carry a man. His initial
difficulty was the engine. It was plain at once that new principles of
engine construction must be adopted before a motor could be designed
of high power yet light enough to be borne in the slender body of an
airplane. The internal combustion engine had now come into use. Langley
went to Europe in 1900, seeking his motor, only to be told that what he
sought was impossible.
His assistant, Charles M. Manly, meanwhile found a builder of engines
in America who was willing to make the attempt. But, after two years of
waiting for it, the engine proved a failure. Manly then had the several
parts of it, which he deemed hopeful, transported to Washington, and
there at the Smithsonian Institution he labored and experimented until
he evolved a light and powerful gasoline motor. In October, 1903, the
test was made, with Manly aboard of the machine. The failure which
resulted was due solely to the clumsy launching apparatus. The airplane
was damaged as it rushed forward before beginning to soar; and, as
it rose, it turned over and plunged into the river. The loyal and
enthusiastic Manly, who was fortunately a good diver and swimmer,
hastily dried himself and gave out a reassuring statement to the
representatives of the press and to the officers of the Board of
Ordnance gathered to witness the flight.
A second failure in December convinced spectators that man was never
intended to fly. The newspapers let loose such a storm of ridicule upon
Langley and his machine, with charges as to the waste of public funds,
that the Government refused to assist him further. Langley, at that time
sixty-nine years of age, took this defeat so keenly to heart that it
hastened his death, which occurred three years later. "Failure in the
aerodrome itself," he wrote, "or its engines there has been none; and
it is believed that it is at the moment of success, and when the
engineering problems have been solved, that a lack of means has
prevented a continuance of the work."
It was truly "at the moment of success" that Langley's work was stopped.
On December 17, 1903, the Wright brothers made the first successful
experiment in which a machine carrying a man rose by its own power,
flew naturally and at even speed, and descended without damage. These
brothers, Wilbur and Orville, who at last opened the long besieged lanes
of the air, were born in Dayton, Ohio. Their father, a clergyman and
later a bishop, spent his leisure in scientific reading and in the
invention of a typewriter which, however, he never perfected. He
inspired an interest in scientific principles in his boys' minds by
giving them toys which would stimulate their curiosity. One of these
toys was a helicopter, or Cayley's Top, which would rise and flutter
awhile in the air.
After several helicopters of their own, the brothers made original
models of kites, and Orville, the younger, attained an exceptional
skill in flying them. Presently Orville and Wilbur were making their
own bicycles and astonishing their neighbors by public appearances on
a specially designed tandem. The first accounts which they read of
experiments with flying machines turned their inventive genius into the
new field. In particular the newspaper accounts at that time of Otto
Lilienthal's exhibitions with his glider stirred their interest and set
them on to search the libraries for literature on the subject of flying.
As they read of the work of Langley and others they concluded that the
secret of flying could not be mastered theoretically in a laboratory;
it must be learned in the air. It struck these young men, trained
by necessity to count pennies at their full value, as "wasteful
extravagance" to mount delicate and costly machinery on wings which no
one knew how to manage. They turned from the records of other inventors'
models to study the one perfect model, the bird. Said Wilbur Wright,
speaking before the Society of Western Engineers, at Chicago:
"The bird's wings are undoubtedly very well designed indeed, but it is
not any extraordinary efficiency that strikes with astonishment, but
rather the marvelous skill with which they are used. It is true that
I have seen birds perform soaring feats of almost incredible nature in
positions where it was not possible to measure the speed and trend
of the wind, but whenever it was possible to determine by actual
measurements the conditions under which the soaring was performed it
was easy to account for it on the basis of the results obtained with
artificial wings. The soaring problem is apparently not so much one of
better wings as of better operators."*
* Cited in Turner, "The Romance of Aeronautics".
When the Wrights determined to fly, two problems which had beset earlier
experimenters had been partially solved. Experience had brought out
certain facts regarding the wings; and invention had supplied an engine.
But the laws governing the balancing and steering of the machine were
unknown. The way of a man in the air had yet to be discovered.
The starting point of their theory of flight seems to have been that
man was endowed with an intelligence at least equal to that of the bird;
and, that with practice he could learn to balance himself in the air as
naturally and instinctively as on the ground. He must and could be, like
the bird, the controlling intelligence of his machine. To quote Wilbur
Wright again:
"It seemed to us that the main reason why the problem had remained
so long unsolved was that no one had been able to obtain any adequate
practice. Lilienthal in five years of time had spent only five hours in
actual gliding through the air. The wonder was not that he had done so
little but that he had accomplished so much. It would not be considered
at all safe for a bicycle rider to attempt to ride through a crowded
city street after only five hours' practice spread out in bits of ten
seconds each over a period of five years, yet Lilienthal with his brief
practice was remarkably successful in meeting the fluctuations and
eddies of wind gusts. We thought that if some method could be found by
which it would be possible to practice by the hour instead of by the
second, there would be a hope of advancing the solution of a very
difficult problem."
The brothers found that winds of the velocity they desired for their
experiments were common on the coast of North Carolina. They pitched
their camp at Kitty Hawk in October, 1900, and made a brief and
successful trial of their gliding machine. Next year, they returned with
a much larger machine; and in 1902 they continued their experiments with
a model still further improved from their first design. Having tested
their theories and become convinced that they were definitely on the
right track, they were no longer satisfied merely to glide. They set
about constructing a power machine. Here a new problem met them. They
had decided on two screw propellers rotating in opposite directions on
the principle of wings in flight; but the proper diameter, pitch, and
area of blade were not easily arrived at.
On December 17, 1903, the first Wright biplane was ready to navigate the
air and made four brief successful flights. Subsequent flights in 1904
demonstrated that the problem of equilibrium had not been fully solved;
but the experiments of 1905 banished this difficulty.
The responsibility which the Wrights placed upon the aviator for
maintaining his equilibrium, and the tailless design of their machine,
caused much headshaking among foreign flying men when Wilbur Wright
appeared at the great aviation meet in France in 1908. But he won the
Michelin Prize of eight hundred pounds by beating previous records for
speed and for the time which any machine had remained in the air. He
gave exhibitions also in Germany and Italy and instructed Italian army
officers in the flying of Wright machines. At this time Orville was
giving similar demonstrations in America. Transverse control, the
warping device invented by the Wright brothers for the preservation of
lateral balance and for artificial inclination in making turns, has
been employed in a similar or modified form in most airplanes since
constructed.
There was no "mine" or "thine" in the diction of the Wright brothers;
only "we" and "ours." They were joint inventors; they shared their fame
equally and all their honors and prizes also until the death of Wilbur
in 1912. They were the first inventors to make the ancient dream of
flying man a reality and to demonstrate that reality to the practical
world.
When the NC flying boats of the United States navy lined up at Trepassey
in May, 1919, for their Atlantic venture, and the press was full of
pictures of them, how many hasty readers, eager only for news of the
start, stopped to think what the initials NC stood for?
The seaplane is the chief contribution of Glenn Hammond Curtiss to
aviation, and the Navy Curtiss Number Four, which made the first
transatlantic flight in history, was designed by him. The spirit of
cooperation, expressed in pooling ideas and fame, which the Wright
brothers exemplified, is seen again in the association of Curtiss with
the navy during the war. NC is a fraternity badge signifying equal
honors.
Curtiss, in 1900, was--like the Wrights--the owner of a small bicycle
shop. It was at Hammondsport, New York. He was an enthusiastic cyclist,
and speed was a mania with him. He evolved a motor cycle with which he
broke all records for speed over the ground. He started a factory and
achieved a reputation for excellent motors. He designed and made the
engine for the dirigible of Captain Thomas S. Baldwin; and for the first
United States army dirigible in 1905.
Curtiss carried on some of his experiments in association with Alexander
Graham Bell, who was trying to evolve a stable flying machine on the
principle of the cellular kite. Bell and Curtiss, with three others,
formed in 1907, the Aerial Experimental Association at Bell's country
house in Canada, which was fruitful of results, and Curtiss scored
several notable triumphs with the craft they designed. But the idea of
a machine which could descend and propel itself on water possessed
his mind, and in 1911 he exhibited at the aviation meet in Chicago the
hydroaeroplane. An incident there set him dreaming of the life-saving
systems on great waters. His hydroaeroplane had just returned to its
hangar, after a series of maneuvers, when a monoplane in flight broke
out of control and plunged into Lake Michigan. The Curtiss machine left
its hangar on the minute, covered the intervening mile, and alighted on
the water to offer aid. The presence of boats made the good offices of
the hydroaeroplane unnecessary on that occasion; but the incident opened
up to the mind of Curtiss new possibilities.
In the first years of the World War Curtiss built airplanes and flying
boats for the Allies. The United States entered the arena and called for
his services. The Navy Department called for the big flying boat; and
the NC type was evolved, which, equipped with four Liberty Motors,
crossed the Atlantic after the close of the war.
The World War, of course, brought about the magical development of all
kinds of air craft. Necessity not only mothered invention but forced it
to cover a normal half century of progress in four years. While Curtiss
worked with the navy, the Dayton-Wright factory turned out the famous
DH fighting planes under the supervision of Orville Wright. The second
initial here stands for Havilland, as the DH was designed by Geoffrey de
Havilland, a British inventor.
The year 1919 saw the first transatlantic flights. The NC4, with
Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read and crew, left Trepassey,
Newfoundland, on the 16th of May and in twelve hours arrived at Horta,
the Azores, more than a thousand miles away. All along the course the
navy had strung a chain of destroyers, with signaling apparatus and
searchlights to guide the aviators. On the twenty-seventh, NC4 took off
from San Miguel, Azores, and in nine hours made Lisbon--Lisbon, capital
of Portugal, which sent out the first bold mariners to explore the
Sea of Darkness, prior to Columbus. On the thirtieth, NC4 took off for
Plymouth, England, and arrived in ten hours and twenty minutes. Perhaps
a phantom ship, with sails set and flags blowing, the name Mayflower on
her hull, rode in Plymouth Harbor that day to greet a New England pilot.
On the 14th of June the Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce biplane, piloted by
John Alcock and with Arthur Whitten Brown as observer-navigator, left
St. John's, Newfoundland, and arrived at Clifden, Ireland, in sixteen
hours twelve minutes, having made the first non-stop transatlantic
flight. Hawker and Grieve meanwhile had made the same gallant attempt in
a single-engined Sopwith machine; and had come down in mid-ocean, after
flying fourteen and a half hours, owing to the failure of their water
circulation. Their rescue by slow Danish Mary completed a fascinating
tale of heroic adventure. The British dirigible R34, with Major G. H.
Scott in command, left East Fortune, Scotland, on the 2d of July, and
arrived at Mineola, New York, on the sixth. The R34 made the return
voyage in seventy-five hours. In November, 1919, Captain Sir Ross Smith
set off from England in a biplane to win a prize of ten thousand pounds
offered by the Australian Commonwealth to the first Australian aviator
to fly from England to Australia in thirty days. Over France, Italy,
Greece, over the Holy Land, perhaps over the Garden of Eden, whence the
winged cherubim drove Adam and Eve, over Persia, India, Siam, the Dutch
East Indies to Port Darwin in northern Australia; and then southeastward
across Australia itself to Sydney, the biplane flew without mishap.
The time from Hounslow, England, to Port Darwin was twenty-seven days,
twenty hours, and twenty minutes. Early in 1920 the Boer airman Captain
Van Ryneveld made the flight from Cairo to the Cape.
Commercial development of the airplane and the airship commenced after
the war. The first air service for United States mails was, in fact,
inaugurated during the war, between New York and Washington. The
transcontinental service was established soon afterwards, and a regular
line between Key West and Havana. French and British companies began
to operate daily between London and Paris carrying passengers and mail.
Airship companies were formed in Australia, South Africa, and India. In
Canada airplanes were soon being used in prospecting the Labrador timber
regions, in making photographs and maps of the northern wilderness, and
by the Northwest Mounted Police.
It is not for history to prophesy. "Emblem of much, and of our Age of
Hope itself," Carlyle called the balloon of his time, born to mount
majestically but "unguidably" only to tumble "whither Fate will."
But the aircraft of our day is guidable, and our Age of Hope is not
rudderless nor at the mercy of Fate.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GENERAL
A clear, non-technical discussion of the basis of all industrial
progress is "Power", by Charles E. Lucke (1911), which discusses the
general principle of the substitution of power for the labor of men.
Many of the references given in "Colonial Folkways", by C. M.
Andrews ("The Chronicles of America", vol. IX), are valuable for an
understanding of early industrial conditions. The general course of
industry and commerce in the United States is briefly told by Carroll D.
Wright in "The Industrial Evolution of the United States" (1907), by E.
L. Bogart in "The Economic History of the United States" (1920), and by
Katharine Coman in "The Industrial History of the United States"
(1911). "A Documentary History of American Industrial Society", 10 vols.
(1910-11), edited by John R. Commons, is a mine of material. See also
Emerson D. Fite, "Social and Industrial Conditions in the North During
the Civil War" (1910). The best account of the inventions of the
nineteenth century is "The Progress of Invention in the Nineteenth
Century" by Edward W. Byrn (1900). George Iles in "Leading American
Inventors" (1912) tells the story of several important inventors and
their work. The same author in "Flame, Electricity and the Camera"
(1900) gives much valuable information.
CHAPTER I
The primary source of information on Benjamin Franklin is contained in
his own writings. These were compiled and edited by Jared Sparks, "The
Works of... Franklin... with Notes and a Life of the Author", 10 vols.
(1836-40); and later by John Bigelow, "The Complete Works of Benjamin
Franklin; including His Private as well as His Official and Scientific
Correspondence, and Numerous Letters and Documents Now for the First
Time Printed, with Many Others not included in Any Former Collection,
also, the Unmutilated and Correct Version of His Autobiography", 10
vols. (1887-88). Consult also James Parton, "The Life and Times of
Benjamin Franklin", 2 vols. (1864); S. G. Fisher, "The True Benjamin
Franklin" (1899); Paul Leicester Ford, "The Many-Sided Franklin" (1899);
John T. Morse, "Benjamin Franklin" (1889) in the "American Statesmen"
series; and Lindsay Swift, "Benjamin Franklin" (1910) in "Beacon
Biographies. On the Patent Office: Henry L. Ellsworth, A Digest of
Patents Issued by the United States from 1790 to January 1, 1839"
(Washington, 1840); also the regular Reports and publications of the
United States Patent Office.
CHAPTER II
The first life of Eli Whitney is the "Memoir" by Denison Olmsted (1846),
and a collection of Whitney's letters about the cotton gin may be found
in "The American Historical Review", vol. III (1897). "Eli Whitney and
His Cotton Gin," by M. F. Foster, is included in the "Transactions of
the New England Cotton Manufacturers' Association", no. 67 (October,
1899). See also Dwight Goddard, "A Short Story of Eli Whitney" (1904);
D. A. Tompkins, "Cotton and Cotton Oil" (1901); James A. B. Scherer,
"Cotton as a World Power" (1916); E. C. Bates, "The Story of the Cotton
Gin" (1899), reprinted from "The New England Magazine", May, 1890; and
Eugene Clyde Brooks, "The Story of Cotton and the Development of the
Cotton States" (1911).
CHAPTER III
For an account of James Watt's achievements, see J. Cleland, "Historical
Account of the Steam Engine" (1825) and John W. Grant, "Watt and the
Steam Age" (1917). On Fulton: R. H. Thurston, "Robert Fulton" (1891) in
the "Makers of America" series; A. C. Sutcliffe, "Robert Fulton and
the 'Clermont'" (1909); H. W. Dickinson, "Robert Fulton, Engineer and
Artist; His Life and Works" (1913). For an account of John Stevens, see
George Iles, "Leading American Inventors" (1912), and Dwight Goddard, "A
Short Story of John Stevens and His Sons in Eminent Engineers" (1905).
See also John Stevens, "Documents Tending to Prove the Superior
Advantages of Rail-Ways and Steam-Carriages over Canal Navigation"
(1819.), reprinted in "The Magazine of History with Notes and Queries",
Extra Number 54 (1917). On Evans: "Oliver Evans and His Inventions," by
Coleman Sellers, in "The Journal of the Franklin Institute", July, 1886,
vol. CXXII.
CHAPTER IV
On the general subject of cotton manufacture and machinery, see: J. L.
Bishop, "History of American Manufactures from 1608 to 1860", 3 vols.
(1864-67); Samuel Batchelder, "Introduction and Early Progress of the
Cotton Manufacture in the United States" (1863); James Montgomery,
"A Practical Detail of the Cotton Manufacture of the United States of
America" (1840); Melvin T. Copeland, "The Cotton Manufacturing Industry
of the United States" (1912); and John L. Hayes, "American Textile
Machinery" (1879). Harriet H. Robinson, "Loom and Spindle" (1898), is a
description of the life of girl workers in the early factories written
by one of them. Charles Dickens, "American Notes", Chapter IV, is a
vivid account of the life in the Lowell mills. See also Nathan Appleton,
"Introduction of the Power Loom and Origin of Lowell" (1858); H. A.
Miles, "Lowell, as It Was, and as It Is" (1845), and G. S. White,
"Memoir of Samuel Slater" (1836). On Elias Howe, see Dwight Goddard, "A
Short Story of Elias Howe in Eminent Engineers" (1905).
CHAPTER V
The story of the reaper is told in: Herbert N. Casson, "Cyrus Hall
McCormick; His Life and Work" (1909), and "The Romance of the Reaper"
(1908), and Merritt F. Miller, "Evolution of Reaping Machines" (1902),
U. S. Experiment Stations Office, Bulletin 103. Other farm inventions
are covered in: William Macdonald, "Makers of Modern Agriculture"
(1913); Emile Guarini, "The Use of Electric Power in Plowing" in The
"Electrical Review", vol. XLIII; A. P. Yerkes, "The Gas Tractor in
Eastern Farming" (1918), U. S. Department of Agriculture, Farmer's
Bulletin 1004; and Herbert N. Casson and others, "Horse, Truck and
Tractor; the Coming of Cheaper Power for City and Farm" (1913).
CHAPTER VI
An account of an early "agent of communication" is given by W. F.
Bailey, article on the "Pony Express" in "The Century Magazine", vol.
XXXIV (1898). For the story of the telegraph and its inventors, see:
S. I. Prime, "Life of Samuel F. B. Morse" (1875); S. F. B. Morse, "The
Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" (1858) and "Examination of the Telegraphic
Apparatus and the Process in Telegraphy" (1869); Guglielmo Marconi, "The
Progress of Wireless Telegraphy" (1912) in the "Transactions of the New
York Electrical Society", no. 15; and Ray Stannard Baker, "Marconi's
Achievement" in McClure's Magazine, vol. XVIII (1902). On the telephone,
see Herbert N. Casson, "History of the Telephone" (1910); and Alexander
Graham Bell, "The Telephone" (1878). On the cable: Charles Bright,
"The Story of the Atlantic Cable" (1903). For facts in the history of
printing and descriptions of printing machines, see: Edmund G. Gress,
"American Handbook of Printing" (1907); Robert Hoe, "A Short History
of the Printing Press and of the Improvements in Printing Machinery"
(1902); and Otto Schoenrich, "Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler and
History of the Linotype" (1898), written under Mr. Mergenthaler's
direction. On the best-known New York newspapers, see: H. Hapgood and
A. B. Maurice, "The Great Newspapers of the United States; the New
York Newspapers," in "The Bookman", vols. XIV and XV (1902). On the
typewriter, see Charles Edward Weller, "The Early History of the
Typewriter" (1918). On the camera, Paul Lewis Anderson, "The Story of
Photography" (1918) in "The Mentor", vol. vi, no. 19.; and on the
motion picture, Colin N. Bennett, "The Handbook of Kinematography";
"The History, Theory and Practice of Motion Photography and Projection",
London: "Kinematograph Weekly" (1911).
CHAPTER VII
For information on the subject of rubber and the life of Charles
Goodyear, see: H. Wickham, "On the Plantation, Cultivation and Curing
of Para Indian Rubber", London (1908); Francis Ernest Lloyd, "Guayule,
a Rubber Plant of the Chihuahuan Desert", Washington (1911), Carnegie
Institute publication no. 139; Charles Goodyear, "Gum Elastic and Its
Varieties" (1853); James Parton, "Famous Americans of Recent Times"
(1867); and "The Rubber Industry, Being the Official Report of the
Proceedings of the International Rubber Congress" (London, 1911), edited
by Joseph Torey and A. Staines Manders.
CHAPTER VIII
J. W. Roe, "English and American Tool Builders" (1916), and J. V.
Woodworth, "American Tool Making and Interchangeable Manufacturing"
(1911), give general accounts of great American mechanics.
For an account of John Stevens and Robert L. and E. A. Stevens, see
George Iles, "Leading American Inventors" (1912); Dwight Goddard, "A
Short Story of John Stevens and His Sons" in "Eminent Engineers" (1905),
and R. H. Thurston, "The Messrs. Stevens, of Hoboken, as Engineers,
Naval Architects and Philanthropists" (1874), "Journal of the Franklin
Institute", October, 1874. For Whitney's contribution to machine shop
methods, see Olmsted's "Memoir" already cited and Roe and Woodworth,
already cited. For Blanchard, see Dwight Goddard, "A Short Story of
Thomas Blanchard" in "Eminent Engineers" (1905), and for Samuel Colt,
see his own "On the Application of Machinery to the Manufacture of
Rotating Chambered-Breech Fire Arms, and Their Peculiarities" (1855),
an excerpt from the "Minutes of Proceedings of the Institute of Civil
Engineers", vol. XI (1853), and Henry Barnard, "Armsmear; the Home, the
Arm, and the Armory of Samuel Colt" (1866).
CHAPTER IX
"The Story of Electricity" (1919) is a popular history edited by T.
C. Martin and S. L. Coles. A more specialized account of electrical
inventions may be found in George Bartlett Prescott's "The Speaking
Telephone, Electric Light, and Other Recent Electrical Inventions"
(1879).
For Joseph Henry's achievements, see his own "Contributions to
Electricity and Galvanism" (1835-42) and "On the Application of the
Principle of the Galvanic Multiplier to Electromagnetic Apparatus"
(1831), and the accounts of others in Henry C. Cameron's "Reminiscences
of Joseph Henry" and W. B. Taylor's "Historical Sketch of Henry's
Contribution to the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph" (1879), Smithsonian
Report, 1878.
"A List of References on the Life and Inventions of Thomas A. Edison"
may be found in the Division of Bibliography, U. S. Library of Congress
(1916). See also F. L. Dyer and T. C. Martin, "Edison; His Life and
Inventions" (1910), and "Mr. Edison's Reminiscences of the First Central
Station" in "The Electrical Review", vol. XXXVIII. On other
special topics see: F. E. Leupp, "George Westinghouse, His Life and
Achievements" (1918); Elihu Thomson, "Induction of Electric Currents and
Induction Coils" (1891), "Journal of the Franklin Institute", August,
1891; and Alex Dow, "The Production of Electricity by Steam Power"
(1917).
CHAPTER X
Charles C. Turner, "The Romance of Aeronautics" (1912); "The Curtiss
Aviation Book", by Glenn H. Curtiss and Augustus Post (1912); Samuel
Pierpont Langley and Charles M. Manly, "Langley Memoir on Mechanical
Flight" (Smithsonian Institution, 1911); "Our Atlantic Attempt", by
H. G. Hawker and K. Mackenzie Grieve (1919); "Flying the Atlantic
in Sixteen Hours", by Sir Arthur Whitten Brown (1920); "Practical
Aeronautics", by Charles B. Hayward, with an Introduction by Orville
Wright (1912); "Aircraft; Its Development in War and Peace", by Evan J.
David (1919). Accounts of the flights across the Atlantic are given in
"The Aerial Year Book and Who's Who in the Air" (1920), and the story
of NC4 is told in "The Flight Across the Atlantic", issued by the
Department of Education, Curtiss Aeroplane and Motor Corporation (1919).
End of Project Gutenberg's The Age of Invention, by Holland Thompson