Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-12-14

first to invent an instrument to take th'
| place of the incomplete means used by ST.
| William Herschel in order to see the SUI
| by reflection. The rays come to the focus
Of the telescope in binding brightness. pro
| ducing heat sufficient to melt iron, but
| these rays have sides to them, and by mir
| rors placed at different angles they can be
| so reflected that there is no more heat and
| light than l choose to have / have gaZed
| at the sun for five hours at a stretch with
| this instrument, and have felt no more ia
| tigue than would have felt from reading
| book;
| The SUMS Enormous Heat Force.
| How about the heat of the sun, Mr.
| Langley? Can you give me some idea of
| it?"
| Putting it briefly, it is enormous beyond
| conception. for there Is enough to warm two
| thousand million worlds like ours, and every
| minute there is enough of the suns heat
| falling on the earth to raise to boiling thr-
| ty-seven thousand million tons of water
| But this heat which falls on the earth is not
| thousandth part of one per cOnt of what
| the sun sends elsewhere, and all the cbal
| beds of Pennsylvania, for instance, though
| they can supply the country for hundreds of
years would not keep up this heat during
| the one-thousandth part of a second. Now,
| when you think that these enormous figures
| are not exaggera tions. but within the
| truth, you have to give up the idea of grasp
| ceivable."
viii we, ever be able to use this heat
| E1echanicaIly?"
That remains to be seen The force is
| there The method of preserving and ap-
| plying 1t economically has yet to he in
| vented. My experiments on Mt Whitney,
IN the Sierra Nevadas, showed that IF we
| could save 1t all and use 1t for our steam
| engines 1T would give about horse power
| Tor every square yard of ground. We hear
| a great deal about the immense power from
the recent utilization of Niagara. but the
sun power which is, so to speak. wasted
| daily on this little District of Columbia is
| hundl eds and hundreds of times as great
| The heat on the surface of the Island of
| could at noontide drive all the steam en-
| gines of the world. So far there have been
no practical inventions for utilization of
| this enormous power. At the Paris exposi-
ton G. 1878 there was a reflector which
| drove a steam engine which worked a
printing press. Ericsson made a solar en-
CINE which it was thought might be used
| In the pumping up of the waters on desert
lands. The probability is that the day will
come when we will use all this force When
l. does the deserts of the world, with their
enormous sun power. may become the
q eat centers of manufacture and of civili-
| cation"
Aerial Navigation.
| l next asked Mr.. Langley some questions
as to aerial navigation. He was disinclined
to ia about the subject and he gave me
TO understand that the statements made by
the press concerning him in this connec-
| ton had been made without his authority.
II is we'll known however that in his pub
| lished scientific writings on aerodynamics
| Mr.. Langley has described his discovery of
| facts which greatly alter our former sup
posed knowledge on this subject and that
| Trough he has not there undertaken to de-
| scribe any flying machine as he is popu-
| larry supposed to have done. he has made
experiments which show that mechanical
| flight is far from impossible. Thus, by a
proper application and direction of the
| force and the speed. he has sustained solid
brass plates upon the air with an incredibly
small display of energy. He did this many
| years ago. ard at PittSburg he made thouS-
| ands of experiments which show that there
are certain shapes in which matter can be
| disposed so that the more rapidly it moves
| through the air, in one sense, the less pow er
| it takes TO move it. and that solid models
can be thus made to skim, it were,
along the air. a skater skins along
the surface Of thin ice; the faster you go
in either case, the less danger there being
| of falling down. AS far as 1 could judge
from my talk with him, his experiments
show that the soaring birds have an intui-
tive Knowledge of certain properties of the
air. which have been only recently develop
ed through these experiments, and that by
these they navigate the air almost without
effort in a way which there is no reason to
think that 1t is impossible we can do, if not
by our unaided strength. at any rate by
means of such engines recently be-
ing built. With regard to this he spoke of
the fact that such birds even about Wash
ing up and sailing down, and moving in
circles without any Tapping of their wings.
The Miracles of the Birds.
Said he: Did you ever think what a
physical miracle it is for such bird as one
of our common turkey buzzards to fly in
the way it does? You may see them any
day along the Potomac, floating in the air
with hardly the movement of a feather.
| These birds weigh from five to ten pounds:
fpr
displace; they are absolutely heavier than
many flatirons. L suppose if men saw
cannon balls floating through the air like
soap bubbles they would look on it as sur
prising. If not as a miracle. The only rea-
son that We are not surprised at the soar
ing bird is that we have seen it from our
childhood. Perhaps if we had seen cannon
balls floating in the air from our childhood
we should not stop to inquire how they did
1t any more than we do how the buzZards
do it. l am speaking now, of course, not of
birds which fly by tapping their wings, but
of those which fly without Tapping their
wings. or very rarely, and with almost no
visible expenditure of force.
He Tells of His Discoveries.
"There is good deal of misapprehension
about my Investigations in this re-
spect." Secretary Langley went on, "but
what l have at least demonstrated is that
heavy machines, not balloons. can be made
which VIII produce enough mechanical power
| 10 support themselves III tne ar. ana 10 ny,
though this is not saying that we have yet
got the skill to manage this power so as to
rise, advance and descend safely. What is
actually demonstrated rests on actual ex-
perments, repeated hundreds of times in
the laboratory, but under conditions not so
easily repeated in the open air.
These experiments are In the nature of
an engineers measurements, giving things
In pounds, feet and horse power, and by
tam 1 have shown that an expenditure of
one horse power df we can only regulate 1t
so as to make the flight horizontaD will sup
port about 200 pounds, and at the same time
carry it at the rate of fifty miles an hour
through the air.
Now, there have recently been built
steam engines which. with fuel and water
for a short flight. will give a good deal more
than a morse power and weigh a good deal
less than twenty pounds, SO that We have a
very large margin
The Control and Direction of Flying
| Machines.
| "What I am trying to do is to establish by
direct experiment the underlying principles
of this future art science, and. having
found the exact amount Of force required, If
possible, to learn next how it is to be ex-