Evening Star Newspaper, December 16, 1928, Page 83

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, 1928—PART 4. 0 DECEMBER 16, t e e e e T e e 8O £SO 40 KILL DEVIL HILL FLIGHT OF WRIGHT BROTHERS | OPENED FIRST CHAPTER OF AVIATION HISTORY AT KITTY HAWK 25 YEARS AGO TOMORROW AIR MAIL RADIO PHONE DESCRIBED Veteran Pilot Shows Effi- ciency of New Control Sys- tem by Outline of Talk. ‘The way the new radio telephone control of United States air mail planes operates is vividly described by E. T. Allen, veteran pilot on the transconti- nental route of Boeing Air Transport and one of the first flyers in the coun- try to use the new communications ystem in actual service. Allen was an Army test pilot over- geas during the war and later was test pilot in this city for the national ad- | visory committee for aeronautics. He represented the United States in France and Germany in 1922 in flying and gliding tests. Since 1925 he has | flown the transcontinental air mail, mostly over the Rocky Mountains, a to- tal of 4,800 hours, 700 of which were night flying. He now is engaged in test flying 1n connection with telephons ex- periment werk. Describes Conversation. He describes one of his flight con- | versations follows: “Hello, Ed!" (It was the voice of the local superintendent in my ear phones). “We have 1,100-foot ceiling over the air- | port. Visibility five miles, barometer | slightly below normal, but steady, no | change in 30 minutes. Where are you?” “Thirty miles out and making about 100 miles per hour ground speed. How's the weather half-way between here and there?” *‘Same as here,; he answers. begins at summit and ceiling rises mountains drop away. You are about 5 miles south of the course. We will send up, a yellow parachute flare when you arrive within 3 miles of us.| What is the altitude at the top of the cloud layer?’ “Eighty-eight hundred,” I tell him. | “That gives 1,500 feet thickness. Will arrive about 9:13. Shoot rocket at 9:11. Send it vertical to give me exact loca- tion. I will jazz my motor on the way down. Listen for it and tell me if I am overshooting. Even if your ceiling re- port is 100 per cent in error it will be | perfectly safe, but I would like to come down direcily above the field. Where is the second section?” Camp on North Carolina Seashore Recalled on Anniversary. DEFIED 27-MILE WIND Coast Guard Life-Savers Gave Aid When Aero Was Ready to Hop. The history of 1 -dern aviation began 25 years ago tomorrow on a chill, wind- | swept. sandy waste on the North Caro- | na coast near Kitty Hawk, where two oung Ohio bicycle manufacturers had | established a camp to experiment in | the virgin field of human flight. | During the night of December 16, | 1903, a strong, cold wind blew from the | North, and on the morning of the 17th ! the puddles of water standing in hollows | around the camp from recent rains| were covered with ice. Two wooden | shacks, braced against the wiads with | wooden shoring, one of them forming the first airplane hangar in history, stcod alone in the wide expanse of the Carolin sand dune country. | From one of the shacks the two young men—the Wright brothers, Or- ville and Wilbur, of Dayton, Ohio— stepped out into the chill of the morn- ing and peered at the skies anxiously. | With their instruments they checked the velocity of the wind, and found it | blowing from 22 to 27 miles per hour. | eciding it would die down, they again went inside. At 10 o'clock, however, finding the| wind had not abated, they hung out a signal, as agreed upon, to noufy the| men of a nearby Ccast Guard life-| saving station of their intention to attempt what no man in history had achieved—a flight in a man-carrying, heavier-than-air, power-driven air- plane. The brothers dragged out a peculiar wooden track, which they laid on a smooth stretch of ground about 100 feet eed New Aerial. | “‘John is 70 utes behind you and | is still talking with the other ierminal. | First section of westbound is due about | same time as you are, but we have in- | structed him to slow down and stay | away from the airport until you are ! down and we tell him to come n. You | are still a little south of the course. | Five degrees more to the left ought to bring you right over us.’” “Preparatory to this sort of aeronau- | tical perfection we are under the neces- | sity of tracking out the little radio wavelets to their haun's at midnight and noonday, behind hills and Jown | narrow canyons. It is not partteutarly enjoyable to snake a long antenna around high voltage towers at wight, but in order to map the atmosphere for radio shadows, skip distances, blind spots, holes and what-not, we do scme queer maneuvering. Such little prob- lems as the construction cf an efficient fixed antenna to get rid of the long trailing wire underneath, and the elixi- nation of interference by the 13 little all-frequency transmitters known as spark plugs—these are knotty questions that must be unraveled. To find out which wave lengths are best adapted to the work is not the least of our worrles. But we have hopes of succe: | FIRST AIRPORT HELD UNSAFE FOR PLANES Soft Sand From Which Wrights| ' Flew Unsuited for Modern Craft With High Landing Speeds. By the Associated Press. KITTY HAWK, N. C,, December 15.— The sandy fleld from which the world's | first airplane flight was made has been | deemed unsafe s a landing field for | modern airplanes. | Although the Wright brothers selected | the sands of Kitty Hawk near Kill Devil | Hill for their first “flying field” and suc- eessfully flew their plane from this field, modern pilots, who have ercssed conti~ nents and spanned oceans, have been advised not to use it when the twenty- fifth anniversary of the first flight is celebrated here Monday. Field Held Dangerous. ‘Tom Carroll, chief test pilot of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Labora- tories at Langley Field, Va., was asked to fly here to make a survey of the fa- cilities for land and sea planes. He re- | ported, after a flight over the area in eompany of other experienced pilots, | $hat it would be dangerous for aviators to fly to Kitty Hawk to attempt a land- g 3 | The report checked plans of a number of pilots who visioned the spectacular possibilities of flying to the scene of the | | 1ad been joined by five men, attracted | north of the hangar. The winds were bitter, and they stopped at intervals to go into their living shack and warm up cver a hot fire burning in an impro- vised stove made of a large carbide can. Five Others Join Them. By the time they had the track laid to their satisfaction the two brothers | by their signal—John T. Daniels, W. S. | Dough and A. D. Etheridge, members f the Kill Devil Life-Saving Station; W. C. Brinkley of Mantee and Uohn Ward, a boy from Nags Head, N. C. A/ general invitation had been extended to | the people of the vicinity, but these five | ‘were the only ones who responded and | witnessed the beginning of man's con- | quest of the air. With their hand ansmometer the | ‘Wrigh) brothers again measured the | veloeity of the wind, which by now was | blowing 24 to 27 miles per hour. The records of the United States Weather Bureau station at Killy Hawk between | 10:30 and 12 o'clock that morning, when | the first flights were made, showed a | wird velocity averaging 27 miles per | hour when the first flight was made | and 24 miles at the time of the final | flight of the day. “With all the knowledge and skill acquired in thousands of flights in the | last 10 years," said Orville Wright in | his own account of that flight, first| published in December, 1913, in Flying, “I. would hardly.think today of making my first flight on a strangs machine in a 27-mile wind, even if I knew that the | machine had already been flown and | was safe. After these years of experi- | ence I look with amazement upon our audacity in attempting flights with a new and untried machine under such circumstances, “Yet faith in our calculations and the | design of the first machine, based upon | our tables of air pressures, secured by months of careful laboratory work, and confidence in our system of control, de- veloped by three years of actual experi- ences in balancing gliders in the air, | had convinced us that the machine was capable of lifting and maintaining it- | self in the air, and that with a little | practice it could be safely flown.” | The brothers had tossed a coin to| decide who was to have the honor of | the first attempt. Wilbur, having won and used his turn in an unsuccessful attempt on December 14, Orville took h': place in their “crate.” He ran the little 12-horsepower gasoline motor a few minutes to warm it up and then cut the wire holding the machine to the track. The plane lurched and moved for- ward on the track into the wind. Wi bur ran at the side of the machine, holding it by the wing to balance it on | the track, and because of the strong head wind was able to stay with it] until it lifted from the track after a 40-foot run. One of the life-saving | crew snapped a camera just as the | machine reached the end of the track ard rose to a height of about 2 feet. ‘The plane, now in full flight, moved rapidly forward into enduring fame.| The course of the flight was exceed- | ingly erratic, partly because of™ the! | wrote, | as quickly as possible. | possibility of further flights with it for T This photograph was made by a member of the Kitty Hawk Coast Guard In‘l"pc:_lusl ::’s (heg Wright plane, with Orville at the controls, took ofi_un the first flight made by man with a motor-driven airplane, December 17, 1 3. | o = one of the most advanced types constructed by the Wright | Wrights became personally' acquainted | Botiom—This glider wa brothers and of the flights ol Kill Devil Hills, Kitty as the basis for their airplane of 1903, Hawk, N. C, in 1902, - | v s, rst, represented by | led them to the discovery that the then | luctantly entered upon the scientific | first propellers, built entirely from cal- 233:.“3,’.‘2%‘ uTg;arfl. l.snz,i’ey and sli‘, known tables of air pressures were in- | side of the matter. There began a culme:m, gave in useful :m;}x 't;:: spl:r:; Hiram Maxim, gave chief attention to | correct. period of countless measurements, ex- | did total of 66 per cen! . e ;1'7" power flight; the second, represented| “We then turned to gliding—Ccoasting | periments and conning over results. | expended, about o?‘;-;hlr tm?h"p “"::\ by Lillenthal, *foulllard snd Chanute. ({down hill on the air—as the only | They tested wings of every possible style | any others had realized up to the time. to soaring flight. Our sympathies were | method of getting the desired practice | and the effect of wind pressure upon | =With the motor, also, they expert- with the Tatter school, partly from im- | in balancing a machine.” the Wrights | each of them at every conceivable | enced the most discoutaging dificulics. patience at the wasteful extravagancs| said in their Century Meagazine article angle. They wrote to a number NG (et of mounting delicate and costly mas| of 1908. “After a few minutes’ prac- They struggled with formulae and and motor buuderr& expl .otor' -t chinery on wings which no one knew |'tice we were able to make glides of over | tables all through the Winter, Spring | plan and asking ol;, a mo A Tiot how to manage, and partly, no doubt,| 300 feet, and in a few days were safely | and early Summer of 1902 and then, | Would develop eight horsepowep y:x" from the extraordinary charm and en- | operating in 27-mile winds. In these | building a new machine to fit their | weigh more than 200 p‘o\lmds tnanp'ho: thusiasm with which the apostles of | experiments we met with several unex- new discoveries, in September and Their search was f"):‘e»“ ':{_‘ thvmt soaring flight set forth the beauties of | pected phenomena. We found that, | October, 1902, they made nearly 1,000 undertock to build t e"mo B, sailing through the air on fixed wings, | contrary to the teachings of the books, | gliding flights, several of which cover- | selves and completed it =within six deriving thé motive power from the| tha center of pressure on a curved sur- | ed distances of more than 600 feet. Weeks. When comp! ete:i. the mom‘ o 1~ wind itself.” face traveled backward when the sur- | Some, made against winds of as high a | ceeded their expectations. giving 16 They t explained the tremendous | face was inclined, at smali angles, more | velocity as 36 miles per hour, effective- d‘“}.-‘l‘l*‘"‘" or "m"“ SECOIN g difficuitios. which they faced in de-| and more edgewise to the wind. e TRty St ot |vigning a glider which would balance | also discovered that in free flight, when | same machine, in the Autumn of 1903, | TA®Y Ceeided 1o use Ivo propiit |and which could g, controlled both in | the wing on one side of the machine | they made a numbe g (i rG o e Lolyitie W R - | | wi the wind at a greater | they remained in the air for more than , i |calm weather and”in & wifl. They| was presented to \ ider- | rections, to neutralize the gyroscopic e eth- | angle than the cne on the other side, a minute, often soaring for a consider- | I o o e ‘Eiif.“faigé’é e s | the wing. with tne grester angle de- | able time in one spot without sny e e e e and designed the arched type of wing | scended, and the machine turned in a | descent at all. Do Heil S e S AT Bl | which characterized their craft. They | direction just the reverse of what We | ‘with accurate data for making cal-| by o Glonge: the motr would not fall also discarded the plan of Lilienthal | were led to expect when flying the ma- culations end a system of batance ef- | on him. |and Chanute of balancing and steering | chine as a kite. The larger angle gave | fective in winds as vell as in calms,” | “"Fiither disappointments awaited | their gliders by shifting the weight of | more resistance to forward motion, and | they wrote, “Wwe are now in a Position, | inem. The propelier shafts broks re- | the operator's body, ‘and devised a | reduced the speed of the wing on' that | we thought, to bulld a successful Power | peatedly under the chocke of the motor method of warping the wings and using | side. The decrease in speed more than | fiyer. The first designs provided for & | Vitn"§:X lighi fiywheol, — Their hangar, rudders, | counterbalanced the efTect of the larg- | (otal weight of 600 pounds, in“luding | they found. had been biown down and a | The period from 1885 to 1900 was one | r angle. The addition of a fixed ver- tie operator and an eight-horsepower | torrific storm came up. Three weeks | of great activity in aeronautics. Maxim, | tical vane in the rear incroased the | motor. - But, upon completion. the | yere spent in assembig the machine | however., after spending $100,000, aban- | trouble, and made the machine abso- | motor gave more power than had been | and there were heartbreaking delavs | doned the work he liad undeftaken; | lutely dengerous. It was some time | estimated and this allowed 150 pounds | hecguse of the breaking of tne shafis, [the Ader machine, built at the expense | before a remedy was discovered. Thi | to be added for strengthening the Wings | the failure of sprockets to . remain of the French government, was a_fail- | consisted of movable rudders working | and other parts.” | locked on the shafts and bad weather. lure: Lilienthal and Pilcher were killed | in conjunction with the twisting of the | Then began the baffling problem of | "4 first attempt was made to fly the |in_experiments, and Chanute and many | Wings. designing an air propeller, in the total | machine on December 14, but the ma- lothers had relaxed their efforts.| “The experiments of 1901 were far | 8bsence of any data along this line, | chine twisted in leaving . the rails, | Though it became snown that Langley | from encouraging. Although Mr. | What had at first seemed a simple mat- | stalled and settled to the ground, break- |was at work secretly, the public was| Chanute assured us that, both in con- | tfT became more complex the longer ing several parts which required” two | discouraged by the failures and dis-| trol and in weight carried per horse- | they studied it. With the machine days to repair. Then came December missed flying ‘as beyond the reach of | power, the results obtained were bet- | moving forward, the air flying back-| 17 and lasting fame. man. ter than those of any of our predeces- | Ward, the propellers turning sidewise | At the close of this gloomy period | sors, yet we saw that the calculations | and nothing standing still, it seemed | for the air enthusiast the Wright| upon which all flying machines had | impossible to find a starting point | brothers began their experiments in| peen based were unreliable, and that | from which to trace the various simul- | Has Moved to {as a kite, with & man on board, in| the existing scientific data, we were | thcy confessad. “After long argumenis winds of from 15 to 20 miles an hour. | driven to.doubt onc thing after an- | We oiten found purselves in the ludi- | {on trial it was found that much | other, till finally, after two crous position of each having been con- | stronger winds were required to Mft it. | periment, we cast it all verted to the other’s side, with no more and such winds not being plentiful they | cided to rely entirely upon our own in | Agreement than when the discussion found it necessary in order to test their | vestigations. Truth and error were | bgan. | {new balancing system to fly the ma- | everywhere so intimately mixed as to be | "It Was not till several months had | | chine as a kite without a man aboard. | yndistinguishable. ~ Nevertheless, the Passed and every phase of the prob- | operating the controls by ‘means of | time expended in preliminary study of | 1em had been thrashed over and over | cords from the ground. They gained pooks was not misspent, for they gave | that the various reactions began to un- | confidence by this means in the cor-| ys a good general understanding of the | !angle themselves. When once a clear | | rectness of their theories. | subject, and enabled us at the outset to | Undeistanding had been obtained there During_the following Summer the | ;0hiq o, TN 48 o one i mhich vas o rd“\l:'fz‘;:% rxox;) deslgning :m:;&l; St voul v el » | propellers wi 21 o This picture shows one| witl Chanute, Who gave them much | 63Ut Would have been hopele | and arca of blade to mect the require- encouragement and who spent several | Take Up Scientific Side. |but the distance flown was nearly 195 | us with their own unquenchable enthus- | cet. | “Twenty minutes later.” he third flight started. This | one was steadier than the first one an hour before. I was proceeding along pretty well when a sudden gust !ron‘ the right lifted the machine up 12 t&0 15 feet and turned it up sidewise in an alarming manner. It began a lively sidling off to the left. I warped up the wings to try to recover the lateral balance and at the same time pointed the machine down to reach the ground The lateral control was more effective than I had imagined and before I reached the ground the right wing was lower than the left and struck first. The time of this flight was 15 seconds and the dis- tance over the ground a little over 200 feet. “Wilbur started the fourth and last flight at just 12 o'clock. The first few hundred feet were up and down, as be- fore, but by the time 300 feet had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The course of the next 400 or 500 feet had but little undula- tion. However, when out about 800 feet the machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward, struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured and found to be 852 feet; the time of flight, 59 seconds. The frame supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but thes main part of the machine was not in- jured at all. We estimated that the machine could be put in condition for flight again in a day or two. Machine Overturned. “While we were standing about dis- cussing this last flight, a sudden strong | gust of wind struck the machine and began to turn it over. Everybody made a rush for it. Wilbur, who was at on2 end, seized it in front, Mr. Daniels and I who were behind, tried to stop it by holding to tke rear uprights. All our efforts were in vain. The machine rolled over and over. Daniels, who | had retained his grip, was carried along | with it, and was thrown about head over heels inside of the machine. For- tunately he was not seriously injured, though bady bruised in falling about against the motor, chain guides, etc. The ribs in the surface.of the machinz were broken, the motor injured and the chain guides badly bent, so that all that year were at an end.” Four flights, with a total time in the air of but little more than a minute and a half; but it opensd a new era to the human race. Wilbur and Orville Wright were jubilant. They knew that their engineering principles were sound and that they had accomplished what the engineers and scientists of all ages had attempted and failed to real- ize. On that cold December day, 25 years ago, they looked into a future when man would fly and would attain finally what, next to immortality, has seemed the one thing that psople of all time have sought and dreamed of at- taining, The story of the Wright brothers' success, however, is a narrative of per- severance in the face of almost insur- mountable obstacles. It is, too, a tale | of an attachment between brothers as remarkable in character as it was il- lumined by the sacrifices they made not only for their great experiment, but Orville | into the active zeal of workers. | October, 1900, at Kitty Hawk. Their | all were simply groping in the dark. | taneous reactions 1529 14th St. N.W. | first machine was designed to be flown | Having set out with absolute faith in “Contemplation of it was confusing,” Decatur 3320 ments of the fiye | weeks with them at Kill Devil Hill dur- | They found that there was no such ing their experiment that year and the | They plunged into the maze of prob- | two_succeeding years. lems opened to them, and the young thing as a “best” propeller, but that each had to be designed to meet the Their second machine, of 1901, also' men who had taken up aeronautics and merely ort found themselves re JRN SROTLE CRTIRCORT L LB civ oty particular conditions of the machine n the field-of aviation there wers fell far short of their calculation: to which it was to be applied. Their that keep on giving Choose a Buick/ 4 Let your gift to your family be a gift of inspiring beauty—a gift of genuine usefulness—a gift that will last for weeks, months, even years to come! Choose a Buick! ' lities - | irregularity of the air and partly be- | firfl“fllg*}‘ in fast modern planss. ity | €USe Of lack of experience in nmfmmg : Sers_ple;nnmg to 80 to Kitty |{ha machine. The control of the front Hawk by air for the celebration all|rydder was difficult, Orville explained. | Would use planes of the Vintage used by [because it was balanced too near the | ths Wrights it might be possible for | center, which gave it & tendency to | them to make a safe landing on the | turn itself when once staried, so that | sand there,” Carroll comments in_his it turned too far on one side | report, “but it is impossible for modern | ann 100 far on the others. | planes with higher landing speeds to at- | As a result the machine would rise tempt a landing. The Wrights flew |suddenly to about 10 feet and then as| about 35 miles an hour against a 27-mile | suddenly dart for the ground. One of wind. so that their ianding speed was |these downward darts, when the ma. to the United States Government. about 8 miles an hour. Landing speeds | chine was a litile more than 100 feet| “Late in the Autumn of 1878," they of modern planes are around 50 miles | from the end of the track, or 120 feet | WrOte, “our father came into the house an hour. | from where it rose into the air, abruptly | One evening with some object partly Take Off Would Be Risky. | ended the flight. icuncealed in his hands and, before we “If the wind should happen to be g i could sce what it was, he tossed it int i First Flight in History. | the air. Instead of falling to t?:c“n;;rn. blowing in the right direction when the | The filght had lasted but 12 seconds, | 85 We expected, it flew across the room fiyers arrive it might be possible for |but it was the first in the history of | till it struck the ceiling, where it flute | them to land safely, but it is doubtful | the world in which a machine carrying | tered awhile, and finally sank to the whether they would be able to get™out |a man had raised itself by its own | floor. It was a little toy, known to again. | power nto the air in full flight, sailed | scientists as a ‘helicoptere.” but which Wilbur and Orville Wright selected | forward without reduction of speed and | we, with sublime disregard for science, Kity Hawk as the scenc of their ex- |landed again at a point as high as that | at once dubbed a ‘bat’ It was a light periments because the United States | from which it had started. it was t] frame of cork and bamhoo, covered with Weather Bureau had told them that | biith of aviation. | paper, which formed two screws, driven they would be assured a stff wind in| The machine was undamaged, and | in opposite directions by rubber bands which to do their gliding at all times. | With the aid of the little handful of | under torslon. A toy so delicate lasted They did not have the same problems | spectators the elated brothers carried | only a short time in the hands of small to face in selection of a suitable “flying” | it back ta the track and prepared for | boys, but its memory was abiding, field as those considered important by | another flight. The party, howev “Several years later we began build- fiyers today. | was chilled by the wind, and before!ing these ~helicopters for —ourselves The “first flying field” | attempting another flight all went into | making each cne larger than that pre- waste stretch now covered | the building to warm up. | ceding. But to our astonishment we Jike grass. “Johnny Ward, ceeing under the | found that the larger the ‘bat’ the less there was no grass on the feld. It was | (2ble & box filled with cggs” Orville|it flow. We did not know that a mas a long stretch of shifting sands tossed | Wrole In his description of the events | chine having only twice the linear di- about 2t the will of stfl winds off the | ©f that memorable day, “asked one of |mensions of another would require Atiantic. | the station men where We got so many | eight times the power. We finally be. | Seaplanes could effect a landing just | °f them. The people of the neighbor- | came discouraged and returned to kite off the shore, but the pilots who made | 120d eke out a bare existence by catch- | flying. a sport to which we had devoted | the survey reported facilities inadequat2 | to insure the safety of planes or flying | boats landing on the water. ing fish during the short fishing season, | so ngich attention that we were re. | NEW CANADA AIR LINE. for each other. Orville and Wilbur Wright had been interested in aviation since childhood. Thelr minds were turned to the con- quest of the air as early as 1878. This experience, in relation to later events, is of interest. The brothers described the moment in a magazine article pub- lished in 1908, at the time when they were ready to begin trials with a ma- chine they had contracted to deliver No other gift so practical —none so luxurious—none so thrilling—none so rich in enduring benefits. You can bhy this new Buick easily and conveniently, by trading in your present car and purchasing on the extremely liberal G. M. A. C. Time Payment Plan. Make this Christmas the mostwonderful your family has ever known! Choose the gift that keeps on giving—a magnificent new Buick with Masterpiece Body by Fisher! Anni Buick offers 18 luxurious body-types, ranging in price from $1195 to $2145, f-0.b. factory—each an unrivaled value— each a magnificent gift for the family. WITH MASTERPIECE BODIES BY FISHER Buick Moter Co. Dick Murphy, Inec. (Division General Motors Corporation) 1835 14th St. N.W. & 604 H St. N.E. 14th at L Rushe Motor Co. Emerson & Orme Hyattsville, Md. 17th & M Sts. N.W. Fred N. Windridge - C. C. Waters & Sons Gaithersburg, Md. Rosslyn, Va. e |ilver is a sandy th a brush- When the Wrights knew ft | Stanley H. Horner 1015-1017 14th St. Bury Moter Co. Anacostia, D. C. Bowdoin Motor Co. , Alexandria, Va. ;l::,dr are limited. He had m‘oh!nhly older we had to give up this fascinating er seen £0 mal ©ggs at cne Um-|sport as unbecoming to boy: 3 |in, m.sl \Ahollc life. The one addresssd!ng?s. - i Jjokingly asked him whether he hadn't | noticed the small hen running about Authioriies Studieh. the outside of the building. “It was not till the news of the sad ““That chicken lays 8 {o 10 eggs a | death of Lilienthal reached America, in the Summer of 1896, that we again gave more than passing attention to n ard their supplies of other ariicles u!‘gurdg as experts. But as we became Mail Route Parallels U. 8. Trans- continental Service. A Canada is observing aviation's twenty- fifth birthday by paralleling the United Btates transcontinental airmail route with a 3,300-mile route from Ottawa to | Vancouver, several hundreds of miles north of the New York-San Francisco line. Farle Godfrey. Canadian pilot, recent- completed the first airmail flight across Canada over the new route in 32 hours' fiying time, identical with the rgular rchedule over the United States route, Ward, having just seen a piece | j of machinery lift itself from the gronnd 1and fly, a thing at that ume considered | the subject of flying, We then studied impossible as perpetual motion, was ‘ with great interest Chanute's ‘Progress ready to believe nearly anything. But|in Flying Machines,’ Langley's ‘Experi- after going out and having a good look | ments in Aerodynamics,’ the ‘Aero- at the wonderful fowl he returred with | nautical Annals’ and several pamphlets the remark, ‘It's only a common-look- | published by the Smithsonian Institu- ing chicken.’ " tion, especially aiticles by Lilienthal At 11:20 am. Wilbur started the end extracts from Mouillard’s ‘Empire | plane on its second flight. The course |of the Air’ The larger works gave us | was much like that of the first—up|a good understanding of the nature of |and down erratically—but the speed |the flying problem and the difficulties was greater, owing to a decreased wind. [ in past attempts to solve it, while The duration of the flight was less | Mouillard and Lilienthal, the great mis & second longer than the fust, sionaries of the fiying cause, infected 2 N I T ’%““%_fl\\\ 035 A