Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-02-05

so obviously sounder thing theoreti-
cally than the dirigible- which after all is
merely an old fashioned gasbag of altered
shape fitted with an engine-that it is the
aeroplane that bulks most largely in the
public mind. We have had balloons for
good hundred years, and dirigible balloons
have long ago ceased to have any more nov
city about them than motor omnibus or
turbine steamer. They have advanced re-
Gently, it is true; but the advances are slow
less than those with motor buses, for
instance.
Mainly intended for war purposes, it is
not to the interests of most of those con-
cerned with dirigibles to attract more at
tention than they can help. Now and again
fiasco like that of the Zeppelin passenger
airship focuses attention on them for
moment, now and again some dreamer gets
his fanciful projects into cold print. But
mostly dirigible progress is quiet and slow.
One day, perhaps, we shall suddenly awake
to the fact that vast aerial Dreadnoughts
exist, creations that will be as safe in the air
as a whale in the sea.
Those days are not yet; but we are per-
haps nearer the threshold of this era than
some would believe. The airship proper,
the dirigible balloon, is hampered to-day
mainly by being too small. Ships of the sea
are limited in size not by human ability to
build, but by the depth of harbors and the
size of docks. No such limitations interfere
with the airship. We have recently reached
the stage of realizing that nautical linita-
tons do not apply to the air, and that dirigi-
BILE safety lies in bulk. This realization of
to-day will be the accomplished full result
of tomorrow. Just as submarines yearly
advance toward the whale stage, so does the
dirgible. But neither will loom in the public
eye till some event suddenly shows where
the Flooding people who work at them have
arrived. Then we shall all set to and over
estimate, as we now underestimate, their
possibilities.
Early Experiments
THE aeroplane is the antithesis of the diri-
gible. Unlike the latter, it makes no
attempt to reproduce in air what fish does
in water. 1t seeks to do in the air what
bird does. At present it has advanced
step, in that its present practical exposition
is no longer an imitation bird. 1t has got to
adapting certain bird characteristics instead.
Twenty years ago any man who even
thought that heavier than air flying might
become possible was regarded as lunatic.
Ten years ago anyone who tried to make
such thing was regarded with gravest sus-
picion. Early experiments we're regarded as
pure folly.
Then came the boxkite, able to lift men,
1t was obvious that if an engine could be
made to do the essential work of boxkite
string kite would need no string, and be a
flying machine. Santos umont, the first
man to fly on heavier than air machine,
did so on series of boxdtes which subse-
quently developed into the we'll known Vol
sin type of acceptance. Henry Farman in
one of the Voisin machines proved that
controlled flight in a heavier than air ma
chine was possible.
In America, the Wright brothers, Orville
and Wilbur, working independently of
French experiments, produced the same
thing on different lines. Wilbur Wright went
to France, and about couple of years ago
proved that mechanical flight was something
more than hop in the air. In 1908 he
remained aloft for two hours. This, coupled
with what Farman had done, put out of
court all those who argued that mechanical
flight was merely the reproduction of feas
hop. Wilbur Wright was hailed as bird
man, and the public lost its head.
The Flying Fish Stage
A S a matter of fact, he was not a bird
man" nor did he or any flier that has
come since, to date, reach the bird stage.
But he did get to the flying fish stage; and
there, with minor advances, we have re-
x,aI