The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1896-07-01

| we have yet got skill enough TO manage
this power so as to rise and fly about in
] the air and descend safely" What is
actually demonstrated, repeated hun
dreds of times in the laboratory and
finally with the successful machine
which Professor Langley built is that
the flying machine is possible. All that
now remains is to perfect it and learn
how to manage it.
The experiments which Professor
Langley carried on resulted in showing
that an expenditure of one horsepower
in horizontal fight will support about
200 pounds, and at the same time carry
this burden at a rate of so miles an
hour through the air Now, there have
recently been built steam engines which,
with fuel and water for a short flight,
weigh a good deal less than 20 pounds
The relative weight of an engine de-
creases with the number Of its horse
power, so that there seems no reason to
doubt that what Professor Langley has
done on a small scale may be done ON a
large one, and very shortly at that
Professor Langley S machine measures
but IA feet from tip to tip, weighs COM
plete "a pounds, is solidly built of steel,
and compared with the air which sup
ports it, has weight of /, 900 to l. 1t
has no balloon arrangements of any sort,
and instead of trying to build vessel
lighter than the air and filing it with
gases to make it rise, Professor Langley
has practically built machine as heavy
as he likes and relied upon its shape
and power for successful flights.
This is just the opposite Of what al
most every other experimenter in this
field has tried to do, although it was
apparent to every one that flying ma
chine to be of any commercial or prac-
tical value whatever would have to be
heavy enough and powerful enough to
drive straight against or across and in
and out of the stoutest gale that blows
Otherwise it would forever be at the
mercy of the element. What was neces-
sary was a ship which would ride
storm in the air as a great ocean liner
rides a storm at sea.
Professor Langley has been very care
full to say that he never expressed his
opinion that man could fly by his own
strength. But he has demonstrated that
powerful machines, thousands of times
as heavy as the air itself, can be built
to navigate the air. AS to just the
measure of his present success the score
tary of the Smithsonian is exceedingly
reticent-as reticent, in fact, as Profes-
sor Bell is enthusiastic. The latter says
that he entertains no doubt whatever
that practical airship for use in war
is but very short way off.
Indeed, Professor Bell inclines to the
idea that within five years his friend
Langley's invention will have absolute
ly changed the face of warfare, will
have made armies an impertinence and
our 81, 600, 900 prize battleships so much
useless junk. Just so soon, he thinks,
as it is possible to build a machine that
will carry half ton or ton of dyna-
mite through the air and be easily man
ageable nobody will want to fight. An
army will not care to rest under the
constant apprehension of having ton
of high Explosive, sufficient to blot it
out in a second, dropped down upon it.
Nor will battleship be of any avail
against similar attacking force.
1t is agreed now that it is practically
impossible to hit a swiftly moving war
ship with the speed of 20 knots or more
with land gun-that is, at any consid
cradle distance. How much more i'm
possible will it be to hit compact mass
of steel lowering so high overhead as to
seem dwarfed to a speck and circling at
a rate of 80 or so miles an hour
Literally Professor Bell believes that
we shall soon realize Tennyson's poetic
fancy of the warships of the world:
Graphing in the central blue.
Interesting as he has now become by
reason of his great epoch making achieve
ment, Professor Langley was still an in
teresting figure when his fame rested
chiefly upon his eminence in the field OF
astronomy. That he is not known widely
to the public has been due to his innate
modesty and his indisposition to seek
popular applause in any way, and like
wise to the fact that his work has been
hitherto of so strictly scientific a char
acter
His greatest work has been in the
study Of the sun and of the sun spots,
measuring the heat of the great orb of
light and in the stellar photography. 1t
was he who invented an instrument for
measuring, with the nearest approxima-
ton possible, the heat of the sun, and
this instrument. which he called a bo-
lometer. is so sensitive that the temper