EXPERIMENTS WITH THE LAXGLEY AERODROME. 



By S. P. Langley. 



The experiments undertaken by the Smithsonian Institution upon 

 an aerodrome, or flying macliine, capable of carrying a man have 

 been suspended from lack of funds to repair defects in the launching 

 apparatus without the machine ever having been in the air at all. As 

 these experiments have been popularly, and of late repeatedly, rep- 

 resented as having failed on the contrary, because the aerodrome could 

 uot sustain itself in the air I have decided to give this brief though 

 late account, which may be accepted as the first authoritative state- 

 ment of them. 



It Avill be remembered that in 1896 wholly successful flights of 

 between one-half and one mile by large steam-driven models, unsup- 

 l^orted except by the mechanical effects of steam engines, had 

 been made by me. In all these the machine Avas flrst launched into 

 the air from " ways," somewhat as a ship is launched into the 

 Avater, the machine resting on a car that ran forward on these ways, 

 which fell down at the extremity of the car's motion, releasing the 

 aerodrome for its free flight. I mention these details because they 

 are essential to an understanding of what follows, and partly because 

 their success led me to undertake the experiments on a much larger 

 scale I now describe. 



In the early part of 1898 a boaixl, composed of officers of the 

 Army and Navy, was appointed to investigate these past experi- 

 ments w^ith a view to determining just what had been accomplished 

 and what the possibilities were of developing a large-size man- 

 carrying machine for war purposes. The report of this board being 

 favorable, the Board of Ordnance and Fortification of the War 

 Department decided to take up the matter, and I having agreed to 

 give without compensation what time I could spare from official 

 duties, the Board allotted $50,000 for the development, construction, 

 and test of a large aerodrome, half of which sum was to be available 

 immediately and the renrainder when required. The whole matter 

 had previously been laid before the Board of Regents of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, who had authorized me to take up the work and 

 SM 1904 S " Uo 



