312 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[April 1. 1912. 



AVIATION AND RUBBER. 



TO the popular fancy aviation is still only a circus 

 enterprise — spectacular not commercial. The 

 present mental picture of the public is of scores of in- 

 ventors working over their plans while the actual 

 flights are experimental under governmental super- 

 vision or in the interest of county fairs and boom 

 towns. And also when we speak of the commercial 

 development of a proposition it is apt to conjure up 

 an elaborate picture of freight and traffic uses, and 

 here, of course, the flying machine can hardly hope to 

 enter, as an economic factor. Kipling's skilful story 

 of "The Night Mail," where a flying machine has 

 developed all the capabilities of the present great ocean 

 steamers is not a likely probability. The roadbed and 

 right of way for heavy traffic furnished by the solid — 

 or liquid — earth will always retain their functions ; yet 

 it is idle to hold that the mastery of the third great 

 natural element should not contain as great a com- 

 mercial potentiality as the other two. Its function will 

 be different but equally valuable to our economic 

 existence. 



The mastery of the air is so new that its possibilities 

 and method of exploitation are even yet hardlv emerg- 

 ing from the speculation of the purely imaginative 

 writer. With the first accomplished flight the world 

 held its breath. Man can fly — splendid ! We will have 

 an aviator out in the new suburbs, draw a crowd and 

 sell some "own-your-own-home" lots. Next — what a 

 splendid weapon ! Now we can drop a few bombs on 

 our fellowman from a point he cannot guard against ; 

 thereupon a few millions are tossed into the war- 

 budget for the purpose of devising a heavy shot-gun 

 that will pot the aviator in the act ; or, should he be 

 operating a dirigible, that will explode his gas bag and 

 consume him in its hot flame before the earth is 

 reached. It is inconceivable that man's final conquest 

 of flight holds no more than this for the world. 



We are still in amazement that it is actually possible 

 for a man to fly at will and almost under any condi- 

 tions. The automobile has developed so logically, by 

 the processes of adding two and two together, that 

 when the final achievement was reached a thousand 

 uses were prepared and ready to take advantage of it. 

 But the field of aviation shows no such parallel. 

 From the daj'S of Icarus to the even better known 

 Darius Green human flight was looked upon as a sub- 

 ject for the hardly plausible imaginings of literarv 

 fancy and its actual and practical attainment as- re- 

 served for angels. 



The death of Lillienthal in Germany during his 

 experiments with gliders is within the memory of 

 young men whose recent shaving days were begun 

 with a safety razor. Octave Chanute, who worked along 

 the same lines in this country is still among us, a 

 young-old man ; and Professor Langley's epoch-mak- 

 ing, automatic flying contrivance that was fished out 



of the Potomac after its proving achievement is a 

 memory of less than two decades. Yet in none of 

 these really very recent efforts was there actual prac- 

 tical flight. 



And then came the Wright brothers, the men who 

 first actually flew and who at last accomplished the 

 impossible while operating in the unknown. From 

 that date only does the real history of flying begin. 

 There were boys in school in those days who read 

 about and scanned the rough newspaper photographs 

 of the machine who are only now just entering college. 

 It is all so very recent. 



Thus it was that on one day less than a decade ago 

 the air was an unconquered domain, and the next day 

 human flight was an accomplished fact. The ele- 

 mental problem had been solved, practically overnight, 

 and the rapid march of practical and commercial de- 

 velopment had commenced. Compare it with the slow 

 development of the steamship, the railroad or the sub- 

 marine. In 1903 Wright flew for fifty-nine seconds — 

 mar\elous. Only eight years later Fourney flew for 

 over eleven hours — an achievement over sis hundred and 

 sixty times greater! In those early days Sant<JS-Dumont 

 flew eighty yards and France was deafened with the noisy 

 acclaim. In 1911 Gobe flew over four luimlred and 

 fiftv-nine miles, or over ten thousand ti/ues as far! 



It was a mar\-elous fact that a man, one single man 

 could flv at all in a heavier-than-air machine: yet since 

 that initial achievement of Wright's of sustaining him- 

 self in flight for fifty-nine seconds an aviator has re- 

 mained in the air with three passengeTs for over one 

 hour. Such progress is along practical, commercial 

 lines and points unmistakably to a commercialized 

 future rather than to the earlier, conservative views of 

 a sport or circus "stunt," and the limited field of the 

 purely- spectacular. 



In comparison with the ordinary crusted slowness 

 with wdiich governments officially interest themselves 

 in new and radical inventions is the avidity with which 

 the aeroplane has been seized upon. England and the 

 United States alone among the great powers seem to 

 be working slowly and with an unprogressive caution. 



The great amount of attention that France is giving 

 to this new branch of warfare, is indicated in the re- 

 marks made in a recent discussion of the national war 

 policy in the French senate by Senator Alexander 

 ]Millerand who outlined the aviation program of 

 the government, for which from $4,500,000 to $5,000,000 

 yearly is asked. Fifteen dirigibles, he said, would be 

 constructed, but the special arm of France was the 

 aeroplane. This year the army could mobilize 334 

 aeroplanes, divided into 27 squadrons and manned by 

 344 officer pilots and 344 observers. An aeronautic 

 regiment is also to be constituted. 



Russia has started in with a fleet of 300, and has ap- 

 propriated 4,500,000 dollars for the purpose of further 

 developing military aviation. Germany has apparently 



