The Idaho Springs siftings-news., 1917-09-14

work 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 highpower arplane motor"
In the matter of personnel ii may be noted, our
aircraft promoters believe we have great supe-
riority over the Of the world for this
1t takes an exceptional sort Of man to make a
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 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 avators.
SO today America is the greatest reservoir In the
world Of the right sort OF material for the per-
sonnel of the aircraft service While the other
countries are having difficulty in getting proper
men for hyers-En9and has invited us send
men to her aviation schools because she cannot
keep them fled-our problem is merely to train
them and provide them with equipment.
asked Mr.. Wright what speed plane might
expect to develop.
1T is a complicated problem, the limit of useful
speed" he replied "a good many reckless state
ments are made on the subject by persons with
vivid imagnatons 1t is safe to say there are
machines the western front that make 100
inherent impossbilities In developing a
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, If plane is designed
to make a speed of fifty miles an hour Its wings
will not sustain 1t in the air If 1t travels slower
than twenty-five miles. 1t must be moving at a
~peed of at least twenty-five miles hour to
make successful landing So plane with
speed of 13o miles an hour cannot land at speed
Of much less than sxty-hve miles,
From the field we drove to the laboratory. It
Is simply a development Of the crude shop in
which he and his brother together worked out the
problem of air flight. The airplane lucky
find. 1t not developed by rule Of thumb.
Wilbur and Orville Wright, Of n Dayton
United Brethren bishop. after getting through high
school, set up bicycle repair shop. They had a
natural taste for mechanics and for sports. Twen-
ty-one years ago they became interested In the ex-
perments of Lentha 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 so far done
worthless.
So in their own shop in Dayton they devised a
wind tunnel"-a chute through which air
blast driven by electric fan, and set to
work measuring the resIstances of curved sur
faces by wonderfully ingenious method Of their
own devsing. By long series Of exact measure
ments and elaborate mathematical calculations in
volving slnes 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 to de-
wise the methods. 1t took unlimited patience,
resourcefulness and hard thinking to win success.
Both the brothers were primarily scientific men.
They We're impatient to devote themselves to the
do of furt fDQ