Evening star., 1896-12-12

creased in proportion to the irreguiari.y"
Ten Years Search for a Principle.
cit must have been interesting, Mr..
Langley" said I.
ut was interesting" y, replied Mr. Lang
ley, but so far 1t had been conducive to
no practical results. had been working
now for years, seeking, to learn the prin-
ciples involved In flight. 1 thought / dis
covered some of them. The question was
how to apply them. The field, YOU know
was entirely new. / hid to make and to
a large extent invent, the machinery
used. My experiments-showed me that
must have a very light engine. but they
did not tell me how te get it. They did
not show me how to hssp. the flight hori-
such machine as l might construct could
be made to start and light in safety. There
We're a number of othsr things whicn
should have liked to know, and some of
which still hoped to learn which were en-
tirely in the dark. As, the result of my
work l had some extremely important and
valuable facts. but my experiments so far
had not told me how to apply those facts
to the making of machines for flying. 1
had only the conviction that what had
hitherto been an impossible fancy might
In the future become mechanical fact.
l could see, at any rate. from what l had
learned, that the subject was worth a new
and scientific investigation"
His Experiments With Rubber Motors.
"How did you go about the work of ap-
plying your facts?" said I.
II next began very different kind of
experiments" replied Mr.. Langley. 1.-The
average man might have looked upon my
next work as somewhat childish 1 spent
many hours in experimenting upon little
toys which l tried to make actually fly. l
had my facts. you Know, and l wanted to
see how they would work out in actual
practice. The only thing that had yet been
done In making toys or anything that
would fly was by an ingenious Frenchman
named Penaud, who decade or more ago
had made flying toy by twisting strands
of rubber, which in untwistng turned a
little propeller wheel made of a couple of
feathers. The propellers moved the toy
forward. They kept 1t in the air for a
number of seconds, ena bling it to fly from
fifty to one hundred feet. Simple as this
toy looked. it was the father of a future
flying machine, and France ought to have
the credit of it. l tried the same thing
again and again on larger scale, my OBJ
ject being to learn what the conditions
were by which could secure horizon
tai flight in free air."
What did you find?"
Il did not find out a great deal The rub
ber models flew irreguiarly and for so
short time that 1 could not learn much
from them. l soon saw that l must have
better motive power l must have some
thing that would make 4 machine fly long
enough for me to observe how it flew. In
other words. in order to learn how to make
flying machine, | must have flying ma
chine 10 begin with.
How the Steam Engine Was Built.
Il examined and experimental on every
kind of a motor" Mr.. Langley went on. Il
tried compressed air, carbonic acid gas, the
storage battery, the primary battery and
many other things. including the gas en-
gne. The last was the most promising, and
it may some day prove to be the best but
like everything else | found it too heavy,
for you see the engine had to be exceeding
ly light in proportion to the power. After
much experiment of this kind | concluded
that the only immediate nope was in the
steam engine. and that it could only ne
used provided it could beabuilt to a degree
of lightness which had hitherto never been
attained. / had to have nearly one horse
power to give good chance for any
practical experiment. Now, it is only a
few years since an engine developing this
amount of power weighed as much a
horse himself In other words, it weighed
some thing like 900 pounds. l had to have
a one horse power engine and boiler which
together would weigh less than ten pounds,
or one-hundredth the weight of a horse,
and l at once went to work 10 make it. Il
took me yea- to construct it, and l hau
the best of mechanics to help me. 1 re-
duced the weight atom by atom building
and rebuilding. until BOW / have what be-
Heve to be the smallest one horse power
.,
l told you. weigh justytwenty-siX ounces, or
less tnan two pounds, AS it was with the
engine, SO it has been with every part of
the machine. Every part, of it mas had to
be made over and over again. until, .asthe
result of the greater part of my leisure for
the past fifteen years, l have accomplished
what you haye seen today"
The Flying Mnchines of the Future.
Yes Mr.. Langley" said l. that is true,
you have worked, but you have succeeded"
Yes, replied Mr.. Langley, Il have sue
ceeded. L have proved both theoretically
and practically that machines can be made
which will travel through the air. The
question of the development of the fact is
one of the future. My motive and interest
i'll the work up TO this time have been
purely scientific ones, but if I had the time
and money to spend upon the construction
of a large machine. | believe I could make
one on "a scale such as would demonstrate
to the world that a large passenger carry
ing flying machine be commercial as
well as scientific success. There are
many things yet to be learned concerning
it. but I have no doubt that they will be
discovered in the future. The moment that
men see that such machines are not only
practicable. but that they may be made
commercially profitable. there will be a
thousand inventors working upon the prob
lem where there is now one. / believe
however, that the flying machine will first
come into national use in the arts of war
ra ther than those of peace. In an event
of a great by means of an aerial ma
chine the armies of one nation will be able
to know exactly what those of the enemy
are doing. thus radically changing present
military strategy and. tactics, to say moth
ing of their power of dropping down bombs
out of the sky. | believe, however. that
such inventions will finally be of even
greater advantage in the arts of peace. l
have faith that the swiftest and perhaps
the most luxurious, if not the safest, trav-
cling in the future may be through the
air. ~.
But will it not be impossible to induce
people to risk their lives in the first expert
ments oh such machines?"
q think not, replied Mr.. Langley. "1f
L had a large aerodrome constructed on
the principles of the one you have seen to-
day. though the danger of the initial ex-
pertinent would undoubtedly be great, l
am sure l should have to turn away any
number of men who would be anxious to
risk flight upon it,"
FRANK c. CARPENTER.