The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1911-11-29
SECRET EXPERIMENTS OF
WRIGHT BROTHER

So many eXtravagant stories have
been printed concerning the interest
ing experiments with a new glider,
which the Wright brothers have been
making of late at Kill Devil Hills, N
c., that Popular Mechanics Magazine
sent an acknowledged authority on
aviation to North Carolina to write
an accurate and complete description
of the machine and of results secur-
ed, together with an expert analysis
of the technical significance of the
work. This article, profusely illus
trated appears in the December num-
Der of the Magazine. 1t states:
" To those who were so fortunate
as to see the flights with the glider,
even to the technical experts who
have some idea how they are accom-
plished, it was nevertheless little
short of miraculous to observe the
| Wright structure of wood, wire and
canvas, apparently under the abso-
, lutte control of the operator, with no
visible source of power, perform it's
amazing feats. To see it 'poise it.
self for seconds, even minutes, at a
time, apparently in defiance of the
law of gravitation, then advance
steadily into the teeth of a driving
sonable, should have driven it back
ward again, finally to see it lose
ground, back up, and settle with
hardly tremor, at the starting
point, had all the seeming of some
thing miraculous.
At other times in the course of
the trials, most pretty sight was the
extreme manipulation of the wing
warping to balance the frail craft as
1t hung suspended in the invisible
medium that so securely supported
it. And, again, there were graceful,
swooping maneuvers and hair-rais-
ing dives, by which the younger
Wright brother exhibited his SEEM
ingly complete mastery over the ele-
ment that from the beginning of time
has been regarded as the particular
realm of the creatures of the air,
with whose dominion of the atmos-
pheric ocean it was so long supposed
mankind could not hope to dispute.
The glider mas been tested by re-
leasing it from a hilltop into winds
ranging up to so miles an hour,
every condition being especially Sc
lected to secure the utmost possible
advantage from the strongly-rising
wind, as it is DETECTED upward by
the slope of the hill. 1t is we'll
understood effect of sloping ground
that it upwardly defects wind flow
ing over it.
The results secured were what
would be expected. At times, when
the balance between the normal glid-
ing speed of the machine and the
velocity of the wind happened to be
just right, the aeroplane would poise
itself in a maintained position over
the ground, without advancing or
receding. On the occasion it thus
hovered for about ten minutes. At
other times it would rise or fall
without horizontal displacement, and
then again it would drift back or
glide ahead, as fluctuations in the
wind facilitated these maneuvers.
At all times it exhibited the positive
ness and certainty of control, for
steering, balancing, and landing,
which is a feature of the Wright
power machines-and, indeed, of
many others. Yet that the perform
ance was not as wholly new as it has
been heralded except in the degree
of its accomplishment is attested in
the Wrights' own reports of their /
first gliding experiments, communi- 7
Gated to the Smithsonian Institute
and to the Western Society of Engin-
eers, in which here is mention of
brief lowering and gain of height in .
winds blowing up sloping ground"