SCIENCE AND INVENTION 235 



horizontal flight at a rate of about forty-five miles an 

 hour. Langley had in fact furnished experimental 

 proof that the aerial locomotion of bodies many times 

 heavier than air was possible. He reserved for fur- 

 ther experimentation the question of aerodromics, the 

 form, ascent, maintenance in horizontal position, and 

 descent of an aerodrome (aepoSpd/jios, traversing the 

 air), as he called the prospective flying machine. He 

 believed, however, that the time had come for seriously 

 considering these things, and intelligent physicists, 

 who before the publication of Langley 's experiments 

 had regarded all plans of aerial navigation as uto- 

 pian, soon came to share his belief. According to Oc- 

 tave Chanute there was in Europe in 1889 utter 

 disagreement and confusion in reference to fun- 

 damental questions of aerodynamics. He thought 

 Langley had given firm ground to stand upon con- 

 cerning air resistances and reactions, and that the 

 beginning of the solution of the problem of aerial 

 navigation would date from the American scientist's 

 experiments in aerodynamics. 



Very early in his investigations Langley thought 

 he received through watching the anemometer a clue 

 to the mystery of flight. Observations, begun at Pitts- 

 burgh in 1887 and continued at Washington in 1893, 

 convinced him that the course of the wind is " a se- 

 ries of complex and little-known phenomena," and 

 that a wind to which we may assign a mean velocity 

 of twenty or thirty miles an hour, even disregarding 

 the question of strata and currents, is far from being 

 a mere mass movement, and consists of pulsations 

 varying both in rate and direction from second to sec- 

 ond. If this complexity is revealed by the stationary 



