The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-10-04
THE AGE OF FLIGHT
By Frederic ]. Haskin.
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L-F MAN SHOULD FLY

E3H n3b A4ih a4ihA1ih The age of flight seems to be at
 hand. Although one of the aeroplanes
 of the Wright Brothers lies a wreck
 at Fort Myer, Virginia, its duplicate Is flying successfully at Le Mans France. The inventors are not dis
 couraged. They claim Ahe accident at Fort Myer was a fault of mechanism rather than a mistake in principle. Aft ar fifty centuries of effort, man seems
 at least to have conquered t,a air, and on the principle on which the Wright Brothers have built their queer craft
 they and other aviators will build. and build again, until man shall fly some day as easily as the birds that he has envted and longed to emulate since the days of the Cave Dwellers.
 At Fort Myer an aerodrome nine- tenths of a mile around was circled by Orville Wright nearly 390 times in the fourteen flights he made, q, beginning with the flight on September 3 and closing with the disastrious one of September IT. Taken altogether, he was in the air six hours. eleven minutes and forty-seven seconds. and must have travelled approximately 307 miles. Herring is expected to begin his aero plane experiments at Fort Myer this week. Delagrange has made another record at Issy, and Congressman But
 
 seventy pound airship which he claims will add another proof to mans mastery of the air.
 This conquest of the air will doubt less come some day. just as has come the conquest of the two other great ele- ments-hre and water-and we of this generation may live to see. 1t A man with kite and a brass door key chained lightning and gave us the greatest, motive power of all the cen- turies. Another man with bit of wire strung on a pole sent out metallic tick-tack representing words, and bound all the world together. one- time newsboy with bit of soap spread or a cylinder has imprisoned the nu- man voice until words of our great opera singers and orators will go on forever in the hearing of man. A tow headed English boy watched kettle lid bob up and down with the impris- oned power. and straightway made slave of that great force to drive the countless wheels of industry.
 Where once we of this nation sat as 50 many doubting Thomases when a scientist told us we could talk by wire to our friends miles away: where once we hooted at the idea that messages could travel without wires on waves of ether: where once we believd it falry tale that we might press button on the wall and flood our homes with light; where once we derided the thought that a pole on the top or a car could push 1t along on rails; where once nothing could have made us pc. lieve that an evil-smellinP oil could propel our carriages; where once we secuted the theory that machinery could do the work of women in the the homes and of men in the fields; we now scofr no longer. Every point has been demonstrated. and We expectant- ly await new proofs. new ideas new of the elements.
 Where the skin-covered boats of good Saint Brandan swung clumsilv west ward with a handful of men thousand years ago the Lusitania with thousands on board sails swiftly today. touching perchance, the very Paradise he sought Even as the conquest of the sea mas been accomplished in this wise, so In this age of invention and enterprise may come the greatest of all inVen. tions, .-the complete airship, with the mastery of the winds and the chartlng of the skies in the hands of the aVia-
 Suppose the flying machine is a pos sibility-do you realize what It meahsE Do you know that If man snouio ny It would mean the practical revision of the political creeds Of the Worlo' Inc Ok OANAA RAS iaries as river and mountain, the wiping away of limitations set by di- Varsified languages, and the apotheosls of arbitration, as the greatest argu- nent for peace? Do you know It would bring a new warfare, a new commerce. new manufacturing industries, new | ,ducation, new sciences. new literature | new laws?
 One hundred and twenty-five years Lgo one Montgoificr stood In open nouthed astonishment as a gust or warm air seized a. petttcoat from ia wfYe's cloth es line near the fire | inflated 1t and swept it up the chim- ley, He set to thinking. He was paper bags for living nd with one of these bags and hot ir generated by burning rags and traw, he demonstrated the idea of alloon. Since then most of the world as stood open-mouthed wStchins hese queer craft sail the skies. CIV, like Montgolher, have closed heir mouths and gone to work to on the, idea Many people ave gone up into the air since then. hey have made the great bag olrigl' le and adapted 1t to the uses Of war; nd have planned to send 1t on voyages f discovery that would rival the ex- eriences of the Pinta and Nina and anLa MarlA or . AhOASSe | eet The balloon has great possibii" ies, but 1t is on the heaVier-than-alr aeroplane. the orthopter nd the heliocopeter-that the nations { the world are pinning their faith. nd with which they expect to 1ake 1e greatest and most sweeping revo- itions the political and social history [ the world has ever known.
 Tied to earth for fifty centuries or ,ore, man has studied the things of ,e earth, the ground under his feet, le waters that wash his shores. He as studied the skies from afar off, and yen as his early commerce seeking of Phoenicia and his con- uest-seeking ancestors of Norway .udied the stars for guidance in their sa a-rovings, so has he studied them. ut what do we know of the air It. ,lf. beyond what the weather bureau the Government has taught us. leaned from its meteorological Sur ey? What do we know of the winds syond the fact that they blow so many lies an hour from this or that direc- on? What do we know of the thous- nds of little currents that ever chop nd change, wave above wave. stratum 3ove stratum, making the navigation