The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1901-11-17

"a u ciSnb a may SCELl " OclAdCl
mans boosted superiority that animals far
beneath him in intelligence can soar in
midair while he has to content himself
with making his slow and laborious way on
the ground. If nature did not give him
wings. why should not the genius which
has produced the telegraph and the tele-
phone succeed in making wings for him?
We may be sure he will not be satisfied
till he has solved this problem or found
out that no solution can be reached.
There are some considerations which
may lessen his dissatisfaction with what
nature mas denied him. The bird is itself
a flying machine requiring nothing but a
brain to direct it. Man cannot transform
himself into a mechanism for soaring above
the earth because for his upper limbs
nature has given him arms instead of
wings. / am sure he would not be willing
to exchange these limbs for those of the
bird. especially as his legs would have to
be largely reduced in weight TO enable him
to perform the aerial evolutions of his
brother in feathers. What he really wants
is to have arms. legs and wings, all three,
making a geological monstrosity which
nature would never produce if left to her
self. Perhaps. according to one theory of
the evolutionists, If the desire is main-
tanned long enough and with sufficient in
tensity. wings may bud in the dim future,
and a million or so generations from now
mar may flap his wings, clap his hands,
spring upon his legs and soar into the
ether! But at present we find that when
he wishes to supply himself with artificial
wings he is averse to amputating his legs
and arms, consequently the very blessings
which nature has showered upon him prove
a drawback when he sets out to emulate
the poor bird that he is ready to shoot on
sigh When he asks to walk, shoot and
fly all three at once he demands more
than nature is ready to grant at this
stage in the history of the race, and the
question Is whether his brains can do for
him what nature as yet denies.
PROBLEMS INVOLVED.
In an imperfect way they can. He is able
to mount in a balloon above the highest
flight OF a bird. This is something to be
proud of, but when he does it he cannot
progress with the speed of the bird because
his balloon must be so large as to offer
great resistance to the air. When NJ. San
tos-DumOnt recently flew round the Eiffel
tower he achieved a success which may
lead us to hope for something yet better.
But to improve on this we must have more
powerful machinery, and this if carried
much farther will require greater weight
and a larger balloon to keep it a1oat. So
as we gain in one direction we lose in an
other. 1t is hopeless to look for a balloon
that can be propelled with the speed Of d
railway train. If man would fly with the
speed of a bird he must supply himself
with wings Of some sort.
What he can do with wings is limited by
memorable and w~ell-established physical
laws. By a profound investigation of the
laws of aerial flight Langley was enabled
to construct a machine which rose into the
air and flew half a mile over the Potomac
river. But he did not allow any one to ride
on the machine. so the latter had to be left
to take a direction which soon after the
start became its own.
The physical laws to which I have re-
ferred show that there is nothing inher-
emily impossible in aerial flight, as there
is, for instance, in such a problem as squar-
ing the circle. Upon one of these laws
all hope of solving the problem must be
based; it is therefore Of sufficient impor-
lance to be explained.
We know that If a man In falling through
the air hangs by a parachute his fall will
be slowed the larger the spread of the
supporting surface. We have also learned
that a spread of a few square yards will
suffice to make the fall so slow that one
may drop with impunity even from a bal
loon at any height. The law to which 1
allude is this-if the parachute is a fiat
surface, and if it is forced edgewise
through the air at the same time that it is
falling. then the more rapidly it moves
edgewise the slower will be its descent.
BY giving a sufficiently rapid motion the
fall may be made as slow as we desire.
This is the great secret of the soaring
bird, which must change soaring to flying
as soon as its speed slackens Seat a man
on a horizontal fat surface, like a stiG
sail or a thin, rigid plane. and start him
flying forward with a speed of a few hun
dred feet per second and his fall will be
slow indeed.
THE FLYING MACHINE.
Upon this principle is based the idea o
flight. But a difficulty arises at the outset
if the journey Is TO be a long one. How
ever slow the fall, the man must of neces
sity come to the ground sooner or later. To
evade this result the aeroplane, as il is
called, must be inclined to the horizon and
propelled forward in a direction the oppo-
site Of it's inclination; that is to say, the
higher edge must be the forward one. 1t
was for this reason that Langley attache
a propeller to his aeroplane with the result
1 have mentioned.
Langley also claims. and 1 think he is
right, that If we leave out of consideration