The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-08-22
HONOR INVENTOR OF THE
 FIRST FLYING MACHINE.

4 memorial tablet to Prof. Samuel Pierpont Langley, inventor of the first heavier than air flying machine, erected I'm the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. will pay tardy honor to thes great physicist and astronomer Whose birthday all aviators will. cele- lbrate today. Prof. Langley. after a lifetime devoted to the cause of science-which is the cause of hu- rnanitE-died six years ago broken hearted man, as the result of the lridicufe and abuse heaped upon him iby the public and press after his un- Succeegful attempts to navigate the air. Of highly sensitive disposition, Prot Langley felt keenly the shafts of wit aimed in his direction. A prnan America's greatest scientific institu- tion, it breke his heart to see life of devotion to intellectual and ma terial progress go for nothing, and to be classed by his countrynen, whom he had sought to benefit as a cfer- latau, a crank and a fool. -% Prof. Langley discovered the principle of heavier than air flying machines, and 1t was only the mechanical applica- ton of those principles that was at fault. Had the gods of chance favor ed him, he might have been hailed by the populace as the greatest man of the century. Fate was against him, and so the mob only jeered and hooted.
 Prof. Langley was born at Rox- bury, Mass, Sseventy-eight years ago today, Aug. 22, 1884. First an as- slstant in Harvard Observatory, he was soon appointed a professor of mathematics at the Annapolis Naval Academy. He spent twenty years as director of the Allegheny Observatory lat Pittsburgh. In 1887 he was chos- len as secretary of Smithsonian. In- etitution. a position he held until his death in 1908.
 He early became interested in aeronautics. and made long and tire- Hess investigations of the flight of various kinds of birds and fowls. "A fbird can fly, SO why can't I?" he asked, and answered the question in the affirmative. Then he sought to prove his theories by practical ap- plicstion, and built number of fly- ing machines, trying in turn steam, compressed air and carbonic acid gas as motive powers.
 Tn 1898 he had produced a ma chine which he thought would fulfill the required conditions of being and in the face of any breeze that might be blowing. A spot on the Potomac, about twenty-five miles be- low Washington, was chosen as the site of the experiment. The first att tempts were utter failures, and it was not until late in 1894 that a launch ing apparatus that would work prop @rly was completed. Next the wings proved faulty, and many improve ments had to be made in these. On May 6, 1896. Langley's "aerodrome' made two trips over the Potomac, each half mile in distance, and the problem of aviation was solved, in Theory. The first machine was a mere model, weighing about thirty pounds. Seven years later Prof. Langley had completed a machine large enough to carry a man and to be controlled in it's flight, but acci- dent after accident, as we'll as lack of funds, prevented Prof. Langley From carrying the epoch-marking in- rention to completion. The machine for which he had hoped so much was consigned to the scrap heap, and it remained for the Wrights and others to prove that Langley was right
 After thts failure, the world broke Into a howl of derision. It screamed and hooted at the aged inventor, call ed him a fakir, coupled his name with perpetual motion fakirs and other madmea and charlatans, and made his name a by-word, until he found peace in the grave. Today, on his birthday, the world puts wreaths pn his tomb.