The citizen. (Frederick City, Md.) 1895-1923, 1908-09-18
Flying as a Sport
---ItS Possibilities
BY wILBUR wRIGHT.


Up to the present time men nave
taken up flying partly from scientific
interest, partly from sport, and part.
ly from business reasons, but time
is rapidly approaching when the art
Will have reached state of develop
ment such that men can practice it
without the necessity of maintaining
a private laboratory or a manufac.
turing plant
Considered as a sport. flying pos
sesses attractions which will appeal to
many persons with force beyond
that exercised by any of the similar
sports, such as boating, cycling or
automobiling. There is a sense of
exhilaration in flying through the free
air. an intensity of enjoyment. which
possibly may be due to the satisfac-
tion of an Unborn longing transmitted
to US from the days when our early
ancestors gazed wonderingly at the
free flight of birds and contrasted it
with their own slow and toilsome
progress through the unbroken will
derness. Though methods of travel
have been greatly improved in the
many centuries preceding our own,
men have never ceased to envy the
birds and long for the day when they
too might rise above the dust or mud
of the highways and fly through the
clean air of the heavens.
Once above the tree tops, the mar
row roads no longer arbitrarily fix
the course. The earth is spread out
before the eye with richness OF color
and beauty of pattern never mag
ined by those who have gazed at the
landscape edgewise only. The view
of the ordinary traveller is as made
quate as that OF an ant crawling over
a magnificent rug. The rich brown of
freshly-turned earth, the lighter
shades of dry ground, the still lighter
browns and yellows of ripening crops,
the almost innumerable shades of
green produced by grasses and for
ests, together present sight whose
beauty has been confined to balloon
lists alone in the past With the COM
ing of the flyer. the pleasures of ball
looming are joined with those of auto
MODELLING to form a supreme COM
bination.
The sport will not be without some
element of danger, but with a good
machine this danger need not be ex-
cessive. 1t will be safer than auto
mobile racing, and not much more
dangerous than football The motor
flyers will always be somewhat ex-
pensive, as the best of materials and
workmanship will be required in their
construction; but there is possibility
that men will eventually learn to fly
without motors, after the manner of
the soaring birds, which sail for hours
on motionless wings. In such case
the flyer would be so small and SIM
pie that the original cost would be
very moderate, and the fuel expense
done away with entirely. Then flying
will become an everyday sport for
thousands. We may not live to see
that day, but with thousands of buzz
yards, eagles, hawks and sea birds
giving demonstration of the POSSIBLE
ity of soaring flight every day of the
year, no good reason exists for assert
ing that human flight without motors
is entirely visionary. Meanwhile the
motor-driven flyers will become suf-
ficiently numerous to afford great
sport, not only to the amateur avia-
tors, but also indirectly to the general |
public, for the flying-machine races
of the future will surpass anything
the world has yet seen as spectacular
performances.
In ballooning, few glorious hours
in the air are usually followed by a
tiresome walk to some village, an un-
comfortable night at poor hotel and |
a return home by slow local trains.
With flyer, which returns the sports
man to his starting point, thus elm
mating the uncomfortable features of
the balloon trip, aerial sport will APP
peal to a wider class than has here
tofore been the case.-Scientific
American.
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