The Miller press. [volume] (Miller, S.D.) 190?-current, 1911-09-28
Z HE navigation of the air! How
the very idea of it thrills! To
rise above the earth and fit
from city to city and from con-
- m, ..,-~l

E8 49, - > ANS" ~ 4 "a 80 =
III rise above the earth and fit
81 from city to city and from con-
tinent to continent! To travel
free and untrammeled as do the birds!
This has been the dream of mankind
for ages.
Impossible of accomplishment? Do
not be too sure. Tremendous strides
toward this splendid, this alluring
goal have been made within the past
three years. Already have daring
men Of the air pierced the blue vault
Of heaven to astonishing attitudes, al
ready have they dashed from metrop-
oils to metropolis with a speed rival
ing the fastest express train, already
have they leaped over mountain
ranges and crossed bodies Of water
which separate nations. If the prog
ress is to be as great during the next
three years, then, indeed, will marvels
have been accomplished beyond any
thing of which today we permit our
selves to dream.
Much depends upon the attitude and
activity of those daring and ingenious
men who already have elevated the
science of aviation from the purely
experimental and speculative to N
thing at least approaching the prac-
teal. If their talents and the talents
Of such scientific men as now are or
hereafter may be attracted to the
problem of aerial flight are devoted
to the making Of aviation more nearly
safe and therefore more useful,
rather than toward OUTGOING the mar
velOus records already made in alti-
tude, distance. speed and duration,
then will the world be the gamer and
travel and commerce be helped
through this new means of COmmuni-
cation.
Safety! That is now the thing to be
aimed at. Not till a full measure of
it is reached can the conquest of the
air really be claimed or aviation be
lifted from the spectacular to the
unitarian.
Considering what has already been
accomplished in aerial navigation, is
it too much to say that even greater
discoveries will be made and applied
in the near future? Where shall we
place the limit upon an age which
has produced a machine that talks
and sings, which propels loaded cars
up and down hill by means of an in
visible fluid, which takes Photographs
through solid substances. which has
instant communication by wire be-
tween the most widely separated con
tinents, which has made conversation
possible between New York ard
Chicago and which thinks nothing of
sending wireless messages from land
to vessels hundreds of miles away at
sea? After all, is a certain and safe
passenger and freight service through
the air more improbable to our near
future than was the automobile and
the electric express train to the future
Of the man of the ox-cart and the
pole propelled fatboat?
The Drifting Balloon.
The balloon Is the elder brother
of the a~eroplane and it's discovery was
the cause of fully as great a sensation.
Compared, however. with the later air
craft. 1t is very simple and it's posi-.
bilities are limited.
To Stephen and Joseph M~ontgolfer
belong the distinction of making the
first balloon. They were papermakers
of Annonay, France, and they expert.
mented for years before they succeed.
ed in causing a silk bag to rise to the
ceiling of their workshop. The first
men to make a balloon ascension were
Pilatre des Rosters and the MARQUIS
d'Arlandes. They went up from Paris
on November 81. 1888 and remained
aloft % minutes.
The efforts to construct an airship
subject to control has been a long and
persistent one. but the necessarily
enormous bulk of gas balloons has