New-York tribune., 1908-09-13
THE ELECTRIC LEG.
Future Historian Finds 1t Displaced
AeropIanes IN 1918.

The gaze for flying Twrote the future hfstorfan1
seems to have eliminated in the year 1s17-corre-
spending to 5S9 Before Smith. In that year
the aeroplane "a word of unknown derivation) was
almost the sole means by which the ancients went
from where they were to where they were
not These flying machines SO simple and
cheap that who had not spare half
hour in which to make could afford to pur-
ehase The price for machine was
ABOUT 2-one-tenth Of a goobIe Double seated
ones were OF course little more costly No
other kinds were allowed by law for as was
quantity explained by chronicer of the period
a man has right to break his own neck and
that or his WIFE but not those of his children and
Irends. 1t had been learned by experiment that
Tor transportation of goods and for use In war the
aeroplane was without utility (Of balloons d,rig-
loie ana lndir1s1ble we hear nothing after 1910;
the price Of gas controlled by a single ,nterna-
tional corporation made them impossible)
From extant fragments of Jopplecopper's His
tory or invention 1t appears that in America
alone there were fewer than twenty million
aeroplanes In In and about the great cities
the air was crowded with them and collisions
resulting in falls frequent that prudent
persons neither ventured to them dared
to go out of cover. AS poet of the time
pressed it:
with falling fools so thick the sky Is filed
That wise men walk abroad but 10 be killed.
Small comfort that the fool, too, dies in falling,
For he'd have starved betimes In any calling
The earth is spattered red with their remains:
brains'
The reaction from this disagreeable state Of af-
fairs seems to have been brought about by a
combination of causes. First the fierce anmosi-
ties engendered by the perils to pedestrians and
motorists word of disputed meaning. So saw
age did this hostility become that firing at aero
planes in flight, with the newly invented silent
rifle. grew to the character of a national custom
Dimshouck has found authority for the statement
that in a single day 1900 aeronauts fell from the
haat- into Tha Of NaINra
tai of Chicago, victims of popular dsfavor; and
a writer of that time relates. not altogether
luCidly. the finding a roof in Ohio Of the bodies
of 'the Wright brothers each pierced with bull
lets from hip to shoulder. and without other
. marks of Identification
Second in Importance of these adverse conditions
the natural disposition of the ancients tire
of whatever had engaged their enthusasm-the
hckleness that had led to abandonment of the
bicycle. of republican government. of baseball. and
of respect for In the instance of the aero
plane this tired feeling" 1t called,
probably somewhat intensified by the rifle practice
mentioned.
Third. invention of the electrical leg. AS
means of going from place to place the ancients
had from the earliest ages history relied largely
on the wheel Just how they applied IT, in
stationary machinery. we do ourselves but an
aid TO locomotton. we cannot hope to know
for all the literature OF the subject has pershed.
but 1t was evidently a crude and clumsy device
giving a speed OF less than two hundred miles
Uour ana har praStams) an hour, road
ways specially provided with rails for it's rapid
revolution. We know, too, that wheels produced
an intolerable jolting of the body, whereby many
died of disease known therapeutics Indeed
certain class of persons who probably travelled
faster than others came to be called rough rid
ers,' and for their sufferings compensated
by appointment to the most lucrative offices In
the gift of the sovereign. Small wonder that the
men of that day hailed the aeropane with ntem-
perate enthusiasm and used it with insupportable
immoderation!
But when In 1918 Oh. s. 368) the younger Eddy
invented that supreme space conquering device.
the electrical leg. and within six months perfected
1t to virtually what it Is to-day. the necessity
flight no longer existed The aeroplane ended It's
brief and bloody reign, a discredited and dis
carled toy-was "sent TO the scrap heap" one
of our brightest and most original modern wits
has expressed it. The wheel followed 1t into
oblivion whittier the horse had preceded It, and
civilization lifted her virgin fires dawn IN
Eden and like Cytherea leading her moonrise
troop of nylnphs and graces, literally legged =
DER the land!-Ambrose Bierce in The Cosmopoi-
tan