Chapter IX: Part 9

The telegraph and cable companies did their best to ignore the claims of the wireless systems, but they have been compelled to acknowledge them at last. Rival companies have sprung up, using slightly different varieties of apparatus. Each of the big companies that were ready to compete with the Marconi Company by 1906, the German Telefunken Company, the American National Electric Signaling Company, the American De Forest Company, and the British Lodge-Muirhead Wireless Syndicate, had certain peculiar advantages over the others. The laws relating to the uses of wireless, and especially the rights of governments to the sole use of the systems in case of war, are in a confused condition, but eventually order must come from this chaos as it did in the history of the telephone and telegraph.

Wireless has brought the possibility of communication between any two individuals, no matter where they may be situated, within the realm of fact. A severing of communication with any part of the world will be impossible. Storms and earthquakes that destroy telegraph systems, enemies that cut submarine cables, cannot prevent the sending of Marconigrams. The African explorer and the Polar adventurer can each talk with his countrymen. The use of this agency is still in its earliest youth, but it has already done so much that it is impossible to say to what a stature it may grow. It should cut down the rates for using wire and cable systems, and ultimately place the means of communicating directly with any one on land or sea within the reach of every man. All the world’s information will be at the instant disposal of whomsoever needs it, and all this is due to those electro-magnetic waves that permeate the ether, waiting to be put into service at the touch of man.

XVI

THE WRIGHTS AND THE AIRSHIP

Wilbur Wright 1867-

Orville Wright 1871-

Men have always wanted to be able to fly. So long as there have been birds to watch, so long have men of speculative minds wondered at the secret of their flight. Early in recorded history men built ships to sail across the seas, but the problem of air navigation has always baffled them. The balloon came into being, but the balloon for years was only a toy, dependent on the wind’s whim, and of the least possible service to men. The problem of aerial navigation was to master the currents of the air as the sailing-vessel and the steamship had overcome the waves and tides at sea.

The history of invention often shows that some great thinker, or school of thinkers, has stated a scientific conclusion that generations of later men have never dared to question. The laws of Aristotle in regard to falling bodies were never doubted until Galileo began to wonder if they could be true. Sir Isaac Newton had stated, and mathematical computations had proved his words, that a mechanical flying-machine was an impossibility. Any such machine must be heavier than the air it flew in. The weight of Newton’s authority and the weight of figures were compelling facts, such as scientists had no mind to doubt. But in spite of these facts men could see that birds flew, although they were often a thousand times heavier than the air they went through. And that sight kept men speculating, in spite of all the figures and scientific dicta of the ages.

It was known for centuries that if a kite was held in position by a string reaching to the ground the wind blowing against it would keep it supported in the air. Now if the kite, instead of being stationary in moving air, were to be moved constantly through quiet air it would also stay up. The motive power might be supplied by a motor and propellers, but in order to do away with the string which holds the kite in position the aeroplane, which is only a big kite in principle, must have some way of balancing itself so that it will stay in the proper position in the air.

A German engineer, Otto Lilienthal, made a study of the mechanics of birds’ flights, and determined to learn their secret by actual trial. He built wings that were similar to those of the hawk and buzzard, the great soaring birds, and in 1891 he began to throw himself from the tops of hills, supported by these wings, and glided through the air into the valleys. In this way he learned new laws of flight, contradicting many theories of the scientists, and opening a new world of speculation. But in August, 1896, his wings broke in a sudden gust of wind, he fell fifty feet, and died of a broken back.

It was this problem of balancing that had cost Lilienthal his life. He had tried to balance himself by throwing his weight quickly from side to side as he held to his “gliding machine.” His pupil, Percy S. Pilcher, an Englishman, continued his experiments, trying the same method of balancing, but in September, 1899, his wings broke, and he met the same fate as his teacher. It seemed that men could not shift their weight quickly enough to meet the gusts of wind.

Meantime new theories of flight were being worked out in the United States. Professor S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, had made experiments with plates of metal moved through the air at various rates of speed and at different angles, and had published his new conclusions in regard to the support the air would furnish flying-planes in 1891. In 1896 he built a small steam-aeroplane that flew a distance of three-quarters of a mile down the Potomac River. And in the same year Octave Chanute, of Chicago, with the aid of A. M. Herring, built a multiple-wing machine and tried it successfully on the banks of Lake Michigan. But the problem of balancing was not yet solved, and here Wilbur and Orville Wright entered upon the scene.

The Wrights’ home was in Dayton, Ohio, and there they had spent their boyhood, in no way distinguished from their neighbors. Their father had been a teacher, an editor, and a bishop of the United Brethren Church. He had traveled a great deal, and was an unusually well-educated man. Their mother had been to college. Their two older brothers and their sister were college graduates, and the younger boys would have had the same education had their mother not died and they decided to stay at home and look after affairs for their father, who was often away. In telling the story of their invention in _The Century_ for September, 1908, they said, “Late in the autumn of 1878 our father came into the house one evening with some object concealed in his hands and, before we could see what it was, tossed it into the air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across the room and struck the ceiling, where it fluttered a while and finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy known to scientists as a helicoptere, but which we, with sublime disregard for science, dubbed a ‘bat.’ ... It lasted only a short time, but its memory was abiding.” At that time Wilbur was eleven and Orville seven years old.

These two brothers, scientifically minded, started a bicycle shop, and bade fair to become ordinarily prosperous citizens of Dayton, much like their neighbors. They were, however, deeply interested in news from the world of science and invention, and when they read in 1896 that Lilienthal had been killed by a fall from his glider they began to wonder what were the real difficulties that must be overcome in flying. Further reading awakened a deep interest in the problem of the airship, and they worked upon it, at first as a scientific pastime, but soon in all seriousness. They built models in their workshop, and experimented with them. Then, in 1900, Wilbur wrote to his father that he was going on a holiday to a place in North Carolina called Kitty Hawk, to try a glider.

The Wrights realized in 1900 that the only problem to be solved was that of equilibrium. Men had made aeroplanes that would support them in motion, and also engines that were light enough to drive the planes and carry their own weight and that of the aviator. But when the wind blew the aeroplane was as likely as not to capsize. Their study was how to keep the machine from turning over.

The air does not blow in regular currents. Instead, near the earth, it is continually tossing up and down, and often whirling about in rotary masses. There is constant atmospheric turmoil, and the question is how to maintain a balance in these currents that bear the machine. Put in technical form it is how to make the centre of gravity coincide with the centre of air-pressure.

The shifting of the air-currents means that the centre of air-pressure moves. The aeroplane is sailed at a slight angle to the direction in which it is heading, and the centre of air-pressure is on the forward surfaces of the machine. The wind strikes the front, but rarely touches the back of the plane, and so gains a great leverage that adds materially to its power to overturn the machine. As the wind veers continually it is easy to see the aviator’s difficulty in keeping track of this centre of pressure.

Both Lilienthal and Chanute had tried to balance by shifting their weight, but this was extremely exhausting, and often could not be done in time to meet the changing currents. The Wrights realized that a more automatic method of meeting these changes must be found, and they worked it out by shifting the rudder and the surfaces of the airship as it met the air-currents.

The earlier aviators had found that two planes, or “double-deckers,” gave the best results. The Wrights adopted this type, believing that it was the strongest form, and could be made more compact and be more easily managed than the single plane, or the many-winged type. They built their gliding-machine of cloth and spruce and steel wire. But instead of the aviator hanging below the wings, as in the other planes, he lay flat across the centre of the lower wing. A horizontal rudder extended in front of the plane instead of behind it. This not only guided the flight of the machine, but counterbalanced the changes of the centre of air-pressure. To steer, the wings were moved by cords controlled by the aviator’s body. They considered that the shiftings of the air were too rapid to be followed by conscious thought, and so their plan was to have a plane that would balance automatically, or by reflex action, as a bicycle is balanced.

Langley had adopted wings that slanted upward from the point at which they joined, copying the wings of a soaring buzzard. The Wrights doubted whether this was the best form for shifting weather, and built theirs more on the pattern of the gull’s wings, curving slightly at the tips. They were made of cloth, arched over ribs to imitate the curved surfaces of bird’s wings, and were fastened to two rectangular wooden frames, fixed one above the other by braces of wood and wire.

Their next step was to try to find some method by which they might keep their gliding-machine continuously in the air, so that they might gain an automatic balance. The old method of launching the plane from a hill gave little chance for a real test. Study taught them that birds are really aeroplanes, and that buzzards and hawks and gulls stay in the air by balancing on or sliding down rising currents of air. They looked for a place where there should be winds of proper strength to balance their machine for a considerable time as it slid downward, and decided to make their experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on the stretch of sand-dunes that divided Albemarle Sound from the Atlantic Ocean. They calculated that their gliding-machine, with 165 square feet of surface, should be held up by a wind blowing twenty-one miles an hour. The machine was to be raised like a kite, with men holding ropes fastened to the end of each wing. When the ropes were freed the aviator would glide slowly to the ground, having time to test the principle of equilibrium. This plan would also do away with the former need of carrying the plane up to the top of a hill before each flight.

They found in practice that their plan of raising the plane like a kite was impracticable, and that the wind was not strong enough to support it at a proper angle. They had to glide from hills as others had done, but they discovered that their theory of steering and balancing by automatically shifting surfaces worked very much better than the old method of shifting the aviator’s weight.

In 1901 and 1902 the Wrights continued their gliding experiments at Kitty Hawk. Their new machines were much larger, and they added a vertical tail in order to secure better lateral balance. Sometimes the wind was strong enough to lift the aviator above the point from which he had started and hold him motionless in the air for half a minute. They made new tables of calculation for aerial flight, and found that a wind of eighteen miles an hour would keep their plane and its operator in the air.

Their next step was to place a gas-engine on their aeroplane and attempt actual mechanical flight. After many experiments they succeeded, and on December 17, 1903, the first airship made four flights at Kitty Hawk. In the longest flight it stayed in the air fifty-nine seconds, and flew against a twenty-mile wind. It weighed, with the aviator, about 745 pounds, and was propelled by a gas-engine weighing 240 pounds, and having twelve or thirteen horse-power. That test assured them that mechanical flight was possible.

The Wrights had now solved the real problem of aviation, equilibrium. They were ready to try mechanical flights in places where the wind-conditions were less favorable than at Kitty Hawk. They secured a swampy meadow eight miles east of Dayton, and, using that secrecy which they have always believed was necessary to the protection of their interests, began to fly there. Their airship flew well in a straight course, but there was difficulty in turning corners. Sometimes it could be done, but occasionally the plane would lose its balance as it turned, and have to be brought to the ground. In time they remedied this, and on September 20, 1904, they were able to make a complete circle. Later in that same year they made two flights of three miles each around a circular course.

The Wrights’ system of balance, the great original feature of their invention, is attained by what is called the warping of the wings. When they are flying, and some cause, such as a change in their position, or a sudden gust of wind, makes the airship tip, a lever is moved, and the two planes warp down on the end that is canting toward the earth. Simultaneously the two opposite ends of the planes warp up. The lower ends at once gain greater lifting power, the upper ends less. Therefore the airship stops tilting and comes back to an even flight. The lever is instantly moved to keep the machine from tipping to the other side.

WILBUR WRIGHT
ORVILLE WRIGHT

CABLE ADDRESS:
WRIGHTS, DAYTON

WRIGHT BROTHERS

1127 W. THIRD STREET
DAYTON, OHIO

July 22, 1911.

George W. Jacobs & Co.,

Philadelphia.

Gentlemen:--

Replying to yours of June 26th we are herewith enclosing a
photograph of our first flight made at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, on December 17, 1903.

Yours truly,

[Signature: Wright Brothers.]

When the airship came to turn a corner it was apt to “skid.” It slid from its balance, owing to the change in its course against the currents of air. The Wrights overcame this by having the planes of their machine warp at the same instant that the rudder shifts the course, by this raising one wing and lowering the other, so that the aeroplane cants over and makes the circle leaning against the wind, on the same principle that a bicycler takes a curve on an angle instead of riding upright. The problems of balance and of turning corners were therefore both met and solved by warping the planes to meet the conditions of the airship’s contact with the wind.

One of the chief reasons for the Wrights’ success was that they had studied their subject long and faithfully before they tried to fly. They had worked with their gliders several years, and had made new calculations of the changing angles and currents of air. They had been in no hurry, and when they built their first real airship they made use of all the principles of aerodynamics that they had discovered. They knew that their machine would fly before they tried it, because they knew exactly what its various surfaces would do in the air. The propeller was the only part of their airship they had not studied when they began to build. When they found that they could not use the figures that had governed the construction of marine propellers they set to work to solve this problem in the same thoroughgoing way. They mastered it, and their success with their propeller is the feature of their airship in which they take the greatest pride.

The first official statement of their progress in flying was made in letters of the Wrights in the _Aerophile_ in 1905, and to the Aero Club of America in 1906. These declared that they had begun actual flight with a motor-driven aeroplane on December 17, 1903, had then spent the year 1904 in experimenting with flights in circular courses, and had so learned the proper methods of control of the planes by 1905 that they had at last made continuous flights of eleven, twelve, fifteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-four miles, at a speed of about thirty-eight miles an hour, and had been able to alight safely in each instance, ready to fly again as soon as their fuel was replenished.

Until that date the inventors had been singularly successful in keeping their experiments from public knowledge. They had reached agreements with the farmers who lived near their field outside Dayton, and with the local newspapers, that no notice should be taken of their flights. But finally one of their flights attracted so much attention that a score of men appeared with cameras, and the Wrights decided that it was time to stop their experiments. They dismantled their machines, made public statements of what they had accomplished, and started to negotiate with various governments for the purchase of their aeroplanes for use in war.

In December, 1907, the Signal Corps of the United States army invited proposals for furnishing a “heavier than air flying machine.” The Wrights submitted a bid, proposing to deliver a machine that would meet the specifications for $25,000. Their offer, with those of two others, was accepted. By now their names and something of what they had accomplished were very generally known, and when they began the preliminary tests of their machines at their old grounds at Kitty Hawk, near Kill Devil Hills, a legion of reporters was on hand. The Wrights still tried to preserve as much secrecy as possible, and the newspaper men to furnish as much publicity. The flights could not be concealed and the trials were announced as thoroughly satisfactory. On May 10, 1908, ten ascensions in the government airship were made, the longest being over a mile and a half. On succeeding days longer flights were made, one of two miles at a speed of forty-six miles an hour. Orville Wright made a flight with a passenger on board, and a little later Wilbur flew eight miles, at a rate of forty-five miles an hour. The reporters assured the world that the Wrights had proved the success of the “heavier than air” machine. As one of them wrote, “Then, bedraggled and very sunburned they tramped up to the little weather bureau and informed the world, waiting on the other side of various sounds and continents and oceans, that it was all right, the rumors true, and there was no doubt that a man could fly.”

Kitty Hawk, the place the Wrights had chosen because the Weather Bureau had told them the winds were strongest and steadiest there, now became one of the chief foci of the world’s attention. The Wrights, still quiet and unassuming, suddenly jumped into fame. The public could not understand how these two men, bicycle-makers of Dayton, had learned so much about airships. They did not appreciate that the brothers had mastered every detail of flight long before, that they had learned the fundamental principles of soaring and floating, diving and rising, circling and gliding, before they attached the first motor to their planes. They had been far more thorough and more resourceful than those Europeans who had for some time experimented with aviation. Henri Farman, who had caused a sensation in Europe by flying a kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) over a circular course on January 13, 1908, came to this country, and heard what the United States government was requiring in the tests. “I have done some flying,” said he, “but I do not try to do what your inventors must do at Fort Myer. I never fly in winds. Once I had a spill in France when I attempted it.”

The government trials were held at Fort Myer, outside Washington. Here the Wrights took their machines when they were satisfied that they were in shape for the tests. Mr. Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero Club of America, has graphically described in _The World’s Work_ for October, 1909, his impression of Orville Wright’s flying in 1908. He says that Mr. Wright and he left Washington about six o’clock on a clear, still morning, bound for the flying field. “The conditions for flight were perfect,” he continues. “Mr. Taylor, Mr. Wright’s mechanic, got out the machine and it was placed on the starting-rail. The weights were raised, and Mr. Wright took his place. None of us expected anything more than a short flight down the field, with possibly a circle. The machine was released, and away he went, rising higher and higher, circling when he came to the end of the field and continuing round. I had taken the time of starting and marked on the back of an envelope each circle of the field. From a position of strained attention and fixed gaze, Mr. Wright gradually became more confident and comfortable; round and round he went for fully twenty minutes, and then we began to realize that something wonderful was taking place. Thirty minutes passed; we could hardly believe it. Mr. Taylor came up and said: ‘Don’t make a motion; if you do, he’ll come down’; and we all stood like statues, watching the flying man, every nerve as tense in our bodies as though we were running the machine ourselves. Mark after mark I made on the back of the old envelope--so many that I had lost track of the number; it seemed an age since the machine started, and it appeared to be fixed in the sky. We were impressed that it could circle on forever, or sail like a bird over the country, so positive and assuring and complete was this demonstration. We knew that the problem of flight by an aeroplane had been solved.”

An accident caused the flights to be suspended for a time, but a year later the Wrights were ready for the official endurance test, a flight of one hour, carrying a passenger. President Taft and a great audience were present. Lieutenant Lahm was the passenger. Signal Corps men raised the weight and fastened the end of the starting rope to the aeroplane. Wilbur Wright, at the rear, turned the propellers and started the motor. Orville Wright adjusted the spark, and took his seat. He grasped the levers, spoke a few words of instruction to his passenger, seated beside him, and gave the word to release the machine. It glided down the track, gathering speed until it left the rails. Then the forward planes rose, and the plane soared into the air, flying swiftly. It circled around and around, each circle taking about one minute. For the first ten minutes the motor did not move smoothly, but after that it settled to perfection. The great audience, watches in hand, kept their eyes on the airship. The hour mark was passed, and there were wild shouts of applause and encouragement. Then the plane broke the world’s record of one hour, nine minutes, and forty seconds, that Wilbur Wright had made earlier in the year. Wilbur Wright led in a cheer to those circling above. Then the airship began to descend, taking the circles easily, and finally skimming down to the ground. The motor was shut off, and the test was ended, the machine having flown for one hour, twelve minutes, and forty seconds. President Taft crossed the field and shook Orville Wright’s hand. “I am glad to congratulate you on your achievement,” said he; “you came down as gracefully and as much like a bird as you went up. I hope your passenger behaved himself and did not talk to the motorman. It was a wonderful performance; I would not have missed it.” Then he turned to shake hands with Wilbur Wright. “Your brother has broken your record.” “Yes,” said the other, smiling, “but it’s all in the family.”

Lieutenant Lahm said, “The machine was under perfect control at all times. He apparently had given no conscious thought either to his hands or to the levers. His actions all seemed involuntary. It had hardly started on one of its dips before his hands were moved in the proper direction to restore the balance. It seemed impossible for anything to go wrong. I never knew an hour to pass so quickly as that one up in the air. The first half seemed like ten minutes, and the second scarcely longer. I hardly felt the vibrations of the engine, but at first the rising and dipping were hard to get used to. The only disagreeable sensation I experienced was a deafness from the whirring motor. Sometimes the undulating movement was noticeable, but that was all. The sensation of riding the air in an aeroplane is indescribable.”

The speed test came on the day following the endurance flight. This was to be made over a measured course of five miles from Fort Myer to Alexandria, and back, making a total flight of ten miles over trees, railroads, and rough country. Aviators declared this a more difficult course than the crossing of the English Channel, owing to the great rises and drops of the land, which made it almost impossible to maintain a level course. Speed was a very important factor in the government’s specifications for a successful airship, and the price to be paid depended on this, which had been calculated to be forty miles an hour. The government was to pay the Wrights $25,000 for the airship, and a bonus of ten per cent., or $2,500, for every mile made above the forty. For every mile less, to the minimum limit of thirty-six miles an hour, the government was to deduct the same percentage.

The machine that was making these tests was very similar to the one that had been used at Fort Myer the year before. The amount of supporting surface had been reduced by about eighty square feet, and a change had been made in the lever that turned the rudder and controlled the equilibrating device. This had originally consisted of two levers, placed side by side. Now the top of one lever was jointed, so that a sideways movement of the wrist was sufficient to move the rudder for steering in the horizontal plane. Simultaneously the lever could be pushed forward and pulled back to lift or lower the opposite tips of the wings. In this way one hand could control both the steering and the balancing of the planes.

In spite of the fact that the wind conditions were not exactly as he wished Orville Wright decided to make the flight for speed on that day. He made a good ascension, carrying Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois with him as passenger. Twice he circled the field in order to get up speed and reach sufficient elevation. Then, amid cheers of encouragement from the immense throng that was watching, he turned sharply past the starting-tower and flew between the flags that marked the starting-line. Two captive balloons had been floated to show the course and also to give an indication of the proper altitude to maintain. The wind tended to carry the aeroplane to the east, but Orville Wright was able to hold it on a fairly even course, and to reach the balloon at Shuter’s Hill that marked the turning point. Here the official time was taken by officers of the Signal Corps. On the return the airship met with strong downward currents of air that bore it groundward until it was hidden by the tops of trees. Mr. Wright said afterward, “I had to climb like forty all the way back.” But he managed to send his aeroplane higher and higher, and to bring it back over the heads of the crowds at the finish line. There it swept about in a circle, and landed easily near the aeroplane shed. What aeronautical authorities declared to be the greatest feat in the history of aviation had been successfully accomplished. The elapsed time of the flight was fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, which meant that the airship had attained a speed of a little more than forty-two miles an hour. The conditions of the Wrights’ contract with the government had been in every respect more than fulfilled.

The Wrights carried Europe by storm, being received there with even greater acclamations than in America. The French, as a nation, had for some time been more interested in aviation than any other people. France was the home of Montgolfier, Santos-Dumont, and Farman. At first France looked with incredulity and suspicion on the Wrights’ claims. The French papers accused them of playing _le bluff_, and said that “they argued a great deal and experimented very little,” which, as a matter of fact, was exactly the opposite of the Wrights’ whole history. But as soon as Wilbur Wright showed what he could actually do, all this changed, and the French could not say enough that was good about him. Delagrange, his nearest competitor, acknowledged frankly that Wilbur Wright was his superior as an aviator. But he could not understand the American’s quiet methods, and plan of pursuing his own way regardless of public opinion. He found that Wilbur Wright actually preferred to fly without an audience, and thought nothing of disappointing the crowds that gathered to watch him. On one such occasion, when Wilbur Wright found the weather conditions unsatisfactory, he declined to fly. “If it had been I,” said Delagrange, “I would have made a flight if I had been likely to smash up at three hundred meters rather than disappoint those ten thousand people.”

This novel charm of simplicity caught the French fancy. The Wrights wanted to do everything for themselves. At Kitty Hawk they had lived in a small shack, and cooked their own meals. Wilbur Wright had a similar shack built on his flying-field in France, and planned to do his own cooking. But this was too extreme for the French mind. When he went to his shack he found a native cook installed there, and had to submit to the hospitality of his hosts.

The Wrights were organizing companies in the different countries of Europe, and wanted to attend strictly to their business. But wherever they went they were fêted. They met the French President, the Kaiser, the King of England, and the King of Spain, and they were dined and publicly honored in all the great capitals. Germany turned from its native hero, Count Zeppelin, to admire them. But everywhere they kept that same quiet tone. They showed that they cared nothing to perform hazardous feats simply because of the hazard, nor to establish records. Wilbur Wright was asked if he would not try for the prize offered to the first man to fly across the English Channel. He said he would not at that time, because it “would be risky and would not prove anything more than a journey over land.” And the public knew that this was sensible caution, and not lack of courage.

Daring aviators sprang into fame at once. Most of these built their machines according to their individual ideas, and there was a great trying-out of different patterns. Blériot, a Frenchman, flew across the English Channel in a monoplane in thirty-eight minutes. Instantly he became the French idol. When he reached Paris at five in the morning an enormous crowd welcomed him, and the cries of “Vive Blériot!” could be heard for squares. He was dined at the Hôtel de Ville, given the Legion of Honor, and money was subscribed for a monument to mark the place near Calais where he commenced his flight. Shortly after Roger Sommer rose in the country outside Paris on a moonlight night, and flew for two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and fifteen seconds, the longest flight made to that time. The world recognized that the actual invention of the airship was one of the greatest achievements of the ages. Said the _London Times_, “It is no wonder that there should be great enthusiasm in France over the cross-Channel flight of M. Blériot, and that the French papers should talk of nothing else. Further enthusiasm will doubtless greet the gallant attempt, which was all but successful, of M. Latham yesterday, to repeat the achievement. Since the discovery of the New World no material event has happened on this earth so impressive to the imagination as the conquest of the air which is now half achieved. Indeed, the conquest of the air is likely to be more vast and bewildering in its results than even the discovery of the New World, and one is inclined to wonder that men should take it as calmly as they do.”

A great aviation week was held at Rheims, and almost all the world’s famous aviators, except the Wrights, were there. Control of the airships was shown to a remarkable degree. On one of the preparatory days three heavier than air machines were manœuvring in the great aerodrome at the same time. They were flying at high speed, when suddenly Glenn H. Curtiss, an American, saw an Antoinette aeroplane approaching him at right angles, and flying upon the same level. Instantly he elevated the planes of his machine, and his aeroplane obeyed his touch, shot upward, and flew over the Antoinette. There was great applause from those who had been watching him. The manœuvre showed how easily the airships were controlled.

Germany meantime was intensely interested in Count Zeppelin’s dirigible balloons, which, although as long as a battle-ship, had flown with great success. The German government paid $1,250,000 into the Zeppelin fund for experiments, and contributed a large sum in addition to the maintenance of a balloon corps. The German people showed themselves as proud of Count Zeppelin as the French were of Blériot, and the Americans of the Wrights.

The aviation week at Rheims was followed by other great airship meets in other countries. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York in the autumn of 1909 was the occasion of new records in flying, and served to awaken Americans to a more intense interest in navigation of the air. That meeting was followed by others in all parts of the United States, and competitions for height and city-to-city flights became matters of weekly occurrence. Yet America has not so far reached the intense enthusiasm over flying that fills the lands of Europe.

The airship is on the market, ready to be purchased by whomsoever will pay the price. The London daily papers advertise an agency that will supply buyers with either the Blériot monoplane of the type Calais-Dover, the Latham or Antoinette monoplane, or the Wright and Voisin biplanes. Moreover the art of handling the aeroplane does not seem unusually difficult to master, provided one has the taste for it. Roger Sommer first sat in an airship on July 3d, yet on August 7th following he made a world’s record flight outside Paris. “It is easier to learn to fly than it is to walk,” Wilbur Wright has said.

The only American machines besides the Wrights’ biplanes which have made a name for themselves are the Curtiss biplanes. Mr. Curtiss is one of the most daring aviators in the world, and his flight down the Hudson River attracted the widest attention. But there are questions as to whether his aeroplanes do not infringe on certain patent claims of the Wrights, and his flight was made under a bond that should protect the Wrights in case it proved later that his biplane did infringe on their title. Here it should be said that the Wrights are as excellent business men as they are inventors, and intend to receive due compensation for their years of work. At one time they offered to sell their invention outright for $100,000, but since then their patents have been upheld by the courts, and those patents cover a very large area of the field of airship manufacture. The American market is largely in their hands.

Every year lighter and lighter gas-engines are being made, and this means that the surplus carrying power of the aeroplane can be increased. Fuel can be carried for flights of greater and greater distances, and rapid increases of speed can be attained. With improvements in safety there seems no limit to the possibilities of flight. So far a long train of casualties has marked the airship’s progress. This was inevitable when men came to imitate the birds, and trust themselves to the fickle currents of the air. But many aviators have been drawn from a reckless class, and many accidents have been due to a desire to thrill an audience rather than to learn more about the laws of flight. The Wrights have held to the wise course. They care nothing for spectacular performances or establishing new records for their own glory. Their work is in the shops, devising improvements that will make the airship safer and better fitted for commercial uses. They are men of remarkable balance, and it was their quality of unremitting care that made them the wonder of Europe, used above all things else to the dramatic in men’s flights through air.

End of Project Gutenberg's Historic Inventions, by Rupert S. Holland