Omaha daily bee., 1908-09-06
7renchmen at Last View the Long Expected Flight of the Aeroplan

-ILBUR Wright mas proved to the
VAY satisfaction Of hundreds Of per
Wv sons in France that the pre-
- tensions Of the Wright brothers
IH@lZSSA that they had an aeroplane
49, capable Of flying were founded
on fact, but for a long time they were
under suspicion. They merely kept on say
ing that their aeroplane had solved the fly
Ing problem, but they never showed the
machine and they never discussed its make
up or plans. This reticence had the effect
naturally Of making the French and others
say, That's just a bluff"
The Wright, Wilbur tad orville. al
ways have been very secretive about
their Invention. As is most generally
known they took up the flying industry
about eight years ago. As is the case with
many folks all sorts Of explanations. foolish
ana otherwise, were made Of the way in
which they happened to become interested.
from the start, however, these Dayton
bicycle manufacturers were keen for aero
planes. They believed that the soaring
and flying Of birds could best be initiated
by aeroplanes.
The manner In which birds kept on mile
AFTER mile after vessels at sea. merely
moving their wings now and again. inter-
ested these brothers, as 1t has Interested
thousands OF persons who are not wrapped
up in aeroplanes. The brothers knew or
learned that the birds occasionally flapped
their wings In the midst Of soaring because
they had to mount another or different
air current.
AIT resistance is a harder thing to
TACKLE than water resistance. There
are more quirks and twists to the stream
nf nNR Nka- IT,
water. All these things made dirigible
balloon flying hard, and it had killed abso-
lutely aeroplane endeavor up to the time
the Wright brothers began. The earlier
aeroplanists had not been able to work
out a scheme whereby the air resistance
could be accommodated so that 1t would
help the flying machine instead of dashing
II to the ground.
The Wrlghts, too, believed that a man
could make a much better wing than Ma
ture has done. The resistance Of feathers
would not be present in a wing made Of
silk. Furthermore. because a bird some
times has to allght, nature has fixed the
wings so that they may be folded. with
an aeroplant that has nothing to do but
fly there need be no device for collapsing
the wings. They may stay extended all the
time.
The earlier attempts at aeroplanes,
LAllienthals, Pitchers. Langley's and
Chanute's all lent something to the idea
OF the Wrights. They studied aeroplanes
for years before they evolved the idea.
1t was in 1903 that after framing the ma
chine of parallel box kites sthey got the
idea OF putting in a gasoline engine to
run the machine and to force those changes
OF plane that would be inevitable in un-
favorable windage.
They had a machine then Ahat was
merely a glider. 1t was picked up at either
extremity by two men who ran with 1t for
a distance until finally 1t caught the air
and started off on its gliding. It was about
this time that reports came east that there
were two men in Ohio who had a flying
machine that would fly. The Wright
aeroplane had glided for a distance over
ground, how great no one knew but the
brothers and certain chosen friends.
That started the controversy over them, a
controversy that never was even partly
settled until last month, when the public
flights began in France. The brothers
made It a point that no unfriendly persons
should see the aeroplanes, and many sue
cesEful models were destroyed because the
brothers didn't want to risk having any
one steal their ideas.
They started off to France, which has
been and is the formost in aviation, and
tried there to enlist funds for their enter
prise. They apparently wanted the French
government TO take their aeroplane mostly
on trust. As a Frenchman remarked long
afterward: "If It were a fraudulent gold
mine every one would have been willing to
subscribe. But this turns out to be an