130 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[January i, 1910. 



Professor \V. H. Pickering. 



[President New England Aero Club.] 



Augu 



[Secretary Aer 



tilling exactly how the great airship was made ready, how it 

 was trimmed and balanced and safely gotten away. His de- 

 scription of the landscape, over which they floated, of villages, 

 railroads, rivers, and wooded sections, was so well done and 

 so graphic that one almost felt as if a summer's afternoon 

 balloon journey had been one of their own experiences. 



The next speaker was Professor Robert W. Wood, of 

 Johns Hopkins. Although a young man, as a physicist, ex- 

 perimenter, and solver of difficult problems, and a winner 

 of scores of prizes given by scientific societies, Professoi 

 Wood is known the world over. To all of the above he adds 

 a remarkable faculty as an after dinner speaker. He acknowl- 

 edged that his personal touch with the subject of aeroplanes 

 was not of especial note. Some years ago in Germany he 

 had done some experimenting witli Lilienthal, and as a 

 purely physical problem had followed the evolution of the 

 monoplane and the biplane to the present time. He likened 

 the heavier-than-air machine to-day to the "dug out" canoe of 



prehistoric man. when first he dis- 

 covered he could acid a sail to it. He 

 predicted that before many years 

 knowledge in acroplaning and safety 

 devices would so multiply that the 

 flying machine would be relatively as 

 safe as the present sailbi >at. 



Mr. Edgar Beecher Hronson, who 

 was the next speaker, is one whose 

 name has of late appeared in the lead- 

 ing magazines in connection with 

 exceedingly graphic hunting, ranch- 

 ing, and exploring stories. There is 

 almost no form of adventure in which 

 Mr. Hronson is not past master. Years 

 ago he started by ballon from New 

 York City and landed in the Adiron- 

 dack's after being in the air for 26 

 hours, which was the record up to the 

 time of the recent St. Louis races. As 

 a big game hunter his story of "In 

 Closed Territory" and his wonderful 

 collection of trophies now on exhibi- 

 tion in Xew York make him one of 

 the great American Nimrods. Inci- 

 dentally .Mr. Bronson is a delightful 

 raconteur, and as a preliminary to his speech he told a good 

 story and did it exceedingly well, and the audience was so 

 appreciative that they kept him at it until he felt that his 

 time had elapsed and he put a finis to a rarely witty series 

 of anecdotes. 



By this time the listeners were ready for the moving pic- 

 tures which embraced dirigible balloons, leaving and entering 

 their huge sheds, navigating the air, close at hand and far in 

 the distance, giving really a better idea of these huge vessels 

 and how they are manipulated than could be gotten by at- 

 tending scores of ascensions. The really thrilling series of 

 pictures, however, were those that covered aeroplanes in flight, 

 particularly that which showed the Curtiss machine winning 

 the Scientific American prize at Hammondsport. This showed 

 the great machine starting on the roadway in a cloud of dust 

 like an automobile, then suddenly rising in the air, sailing over 

 the fences, then over the trees, and circling the race course 

 again and again like some huge mechanical bird. These mov- 



stus Post. 



o Club of America.] 



Professor Robert W. Wood. 



[Johns Hopkins University.] 



A Lawrence Rotch. 



[Professor of Meteorology at Harvard.] 



Edgar Beecher Bronson. 



[Author and Traveler.] 



