314 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[April 1, 1912. 



facture rubber bumpers or shock absorbers for flying 

 machines. These are the more obvious and immediate 

 phases that connect the field of aviation with the rub- 

 ber interests. 



But in another direction there are marked signs of 

 an important and new development ; this is in regard 

 to the fabrics used in covering the wings of the aero- 

 planes and in the covering envelope for the gas bag of 

 the dirigibles. Heretofore these fabrics, usually of 

 silk, were carefully treated with certain varnislies until 

 they became as gas-tight as it was possible for human 

 skill to make them. Each balloon manufacturing plant 

 had its own carefully-guarded formulas for these var- 

 nishes and treatments, and for a long time this branch 

 of the industry was more closely connected with the 

 paint and varnish trade than elsewhere. In fact, the 

 five manufacturers of varnishes and compounds for 

 treating the fabrics of aviation are, with one 

 exception, all closely allied or identified with the 

 paint and varnish industry. This exception is a rub- 

 ber company which manufactures varnish for an 

 "aero cloth." 



This tendency is more strongly emphasized by 

 the fact that four rubber companies are manufacturing 

 a fabric for aeroplanes and balloons, and one importer 

 advertises a "rubberized" fabric for similar purposes. 

 From England comes a booklet from a great rubber 

 company in which they call attention to their two lines 

 of rubber-proofed cloth, one an aeroplane fabric, and 

 the other a balloon cloth. They cite a number of avi- 

 ators and balloonists, headed by Mr. Grahame-White, 

 who have used this rubber-proofed fabric, with the 

 most satisfactory results. After its use for a week in 

 a dirigible, that remained inflated during that time, it 

 was stated that the loss of gas was but one-half of 

 that which had occurred during a similar period in a 

 previous dirigible of diiiferent fabric. The actual loss 

 of gas was but one-half, although the capacity of the 

 dirigible was one-third greater. Certainh^ a most sat- 

 isfactory improvement and one that indicates that 

 rubber and rubber products are in the field of commer- 

 cial aviation to stay. 



Mr. Grahame-White was similarly pleased with the 

 use of the rubber-proofed fabric in his aeroplanes and 

 plans to have it used on a number of new machines 

 which he is designing. 



The Continental Caoutchouc & Gutta Percha Com- 

 jiany, of Hanover, Germany, also are in the market 

 with a Continental Balloon Sheeting for which they 

 claim the highest degree of gas tightness and breaking 

 strength. Captain Thomas S. Baldwin is also out with 

 a vulcanized proof material which he claims to be the 

 first rubberized aeroplane material on the market. For 

 this fabric he claims the greatest advantages for avia- 

 tion use. Heat and cold have no efifect upon it and it 

 is not open to the dangers that attend stretching. 



shrinking or cracking. Glenn H. Curtiss now uses a 

 rubberized fabric on all his aeroplanes, while our 

 government has also used and is using it in the 

 governmental dirigible and spherical balloons of the 

 U. S. Signal Corps. Despite the weight of rubber as 

 compared with other substances used in earlier days 

 the weight of the cloth can be kept down and such a 

 cloth can be made in a weight of only three ounces to 

 the yard. Of course, wdiere conditions permit, the 

 weight can be increased for harder usage. 



Such has been the progress of aviation in the com- 

 mercial field. Less than ten years ago it was a non- 

 existent factor, or at the very best was commercial 

 only to the extent of laboratory experiment and the 

 slight needs of scattered inventors and experimenters ; 

 now it is a manufacturing business covering a wide 

 field in the w-orld of trade. The conquest of the air 

 was among the things unknowable and impossible. 

 Then the heavier-than-air machine was a mechanical 

 impossibility while the dirigible, an advance upon the 

 helpless, drifting balloon, was still in a state of fragile 

 helplessness whenever there was the slightest atmos- 

 pheric disturbance. In those same recent days a few 

 small factories were ample to supply balloonists with 

 their gas bags for ascensions at county fairs and subur- 

 ban lot sales. The only mechanical problem before 

 which man stood helpless lay in the atmosphere above 

 us. Steamships had reached the stage where succes- 

 sive improvements lay onlj' in adding size and luxu- 

 rious equipment ; submarines were a regular part of 

 every first class naval power — and many of lesser 

 dignity. They had even reached an approximation of 

 Jules \'eme's imaginary "Nautilus," and only the air 

 remained as virgin a field as it was in the Biblical 

 days — "Yea, four things I know not: The way of an 

 eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the 

 way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of 

 a man with a maiden." 



Long since the naturalists had solved the way of the 

 serpent on the rock; engineers had mastered the 

 problem of ocean navigation ; and the way of a man 

 with a maiden, while it maj' not have reduced itself 

 to terms of a general philosophical formula, yet had 

 apparently resulted in some kind of practical arrange- 

 ment eminently satisfactory to all parties ; only the 

 eagle in the air remained as the insoluble factor. And 

 a few years passed, less than a decade, and the flight of 

 the eagle in the air has become numbered among man's 

 practical achievements. And out of this latter is al- 

 ready growing, in fact has grown, a great industry 

 which in its turn has reached out and stimulated and 

 extended other activities. It is growing faster than its 

 records can be set down and tabulated. The compiled 

 statistics of to-day are absolete or conservative almost 

 before they are read in the published page of to- 

 morrow, and yet, with all this growth, it is even now 

 only in the nursery of its career. 



