The St. Charles herald. [volume] (Hahnville, La.) 1873-1993, 1917-10-06

WORK on the problem. But people must not be
impatient If at first progress seems slow. Only
men who have tried 1t know the difficulties OF
building high power airplane motor"
In the matter Of personnel, 1t may be noted, our
aircraft promoters believe have great supe-
ror1ty over the rest Of the world for this reason:
1t takes an exceptional sort Of man to make
good flyer. He must be quick-witted and have the
steadiest sort of nerves. Otherwise, he comes to
grief and smashes expensive machine Men OF
this type volunteered extensively In Britain and
Canada early in the war. They constituted the
armies that went into the battle line without
adequate artillery protection and largely
destroyed. The same forces operated to destroy
the strong and vigorous young men of France and
Germany who would have made good aviators.
So today America is the greatest reservoir in the
world of the right sort OF material for the per-
sonnet of the aircraft service While the other
countries having difficulty in getting proper
men for fyers-Engand has invited TO send
men to her aviation schools because she cannot
keep them tilled-our problem Is merely to train
them and provide them with equipment.
/ asked Mr.. Wright what speed plane we might
expect to develop.
1T is complicated problem, the limit of useful
speed" he replied. "a good many reckless state
ments are made the subject by persons with
vivid imaginatiOnS. It Is safe to say there are
machines on the western front that make 100
miles hour. So far as speed Is concerned there
inherent impossibilites In developing
plane that might make high two hundred
miles hour. The difficulty Is In the landing.
"A machines landing speed is about half its
maximum speed. That is, II plane Is designed
to make speed Of fifty miles hour It's wings
will not sustain II In the air If 1t travels slower
than twenty-five miles It must be moving at q
epeed Of at least twenty-five miles an hour to
make a successful landing. So plane with a
speed Of 100 miles an hour cannot land at a speed
Of much less than sixty-fve miles"
From the field we drove to the laboratory. 1t
Is simply q development Of the crude shop In
which he and his brother together worked out the
problem Of air flight. The airpane no lucky
find. 1t not developed by rule Of thumb.
Wilbur and Orville Wright. Of a Dayton
United Brethren bishop, after getting through high
school. set up bicycle repair shop. They had
natural taste for mechanics and for sports Twen-
ty-one years ago they became interested in the ex
periments Of Lilienthal the German experimenter
in glider. His death attracted their attention to
his work. For two years they worked on data
and laws that other investigators had produced
only to find that the work far done
worthless
So in their own shop in Dayton they devised
wind tunnei'-a chute through which an air
blast driven by electric fan and set to
work measuring the resstances of curved sur
faces by wonderfully ingenious method of their
own devising. By long series of exact measure
ments and elaborate mathematical calculations in
volving sines and cosines and such, they worked
out the problem Of the curvature Of the planes
and of the propellers.
The problems Of balance enormously in
tricate. But these, too, they solved. They were
pioneers. They had TO discover the difficulties
and then find the way out. SO they had 10 de-
wise the methods. 1t took unlimited patience,
and hard thinking TO win success.
Both the brothers primarily scientific men.
They impatient to devote themselves to the