1901.] 



History and Progress of Aerial Locomotion. 



487 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, February 8, 1901. 



Sir William Crookes, F.R.S., Honorary Secreta 

 Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Professor G. H. Bryan, Sc.D. F.E.S. 



History and Progress of Aerial Locomotion. 



The early history of artificial flight — or, more generally, of attempts 

 to solve the problem of directed locomotion through the air — takes us 

 back to the Egyptian figures of men with wings, closely resembling 

 those of a modern gliding machine, and the legend of Daedalus, who, 

 as the inventor of sailing ships, was accredited with having attached 

 wings to himself. In succeeding ages we have numerous records — 

 some of purely fantastic and visionary ideas — of flying-machines, such 

 as the design of the French eighteenth century novelist, Retif de la 

 Bretonne, and that of the Portuguese Lourenco ; others, of machines 

 constructed, but which proved unsuccessful, such as those of Besnier 

 and the Marquis de Bacqueville ; and last, but not least, several de- 

 scriptions of early attempts at gliding from a height, such as the 

 experiments of Dante of Perugia, and of the Turk described by 

 Busbequius, which so closely resemble modern gliding experiments 

 as to be worthy of credence. Montgolfier's discovery of the balloon, 

 by rendering it possible to ascend in the air, diverted attention to 

 another method by which to seek the solution of the problem of 

 directed aerial locomotion, namely, by adopting the principle of the 

 fish rather than that of the bird, and experimenting with machines 

 which, by the addition of a gas-bag, are made lighter than the air 

 they displace. Now, the difficulty of propelling a balloon through 

 the air is due to the fact that, in order to rise in the air, the balloon 

 and its load must be lighter than the volume of air they displace ; and 

 since air is, in round numbers, one-thousandth of the density of water, 

 it follows that if a balloon and a ship are to carry the same total 

 weight, the balloon must displace one thousand times the volume of 

 air that the ship does of water. The large size of balloons renders 

 it very difficult to propel them through the air at the speed necessary 

 for travelling in the face of a wind such as is commonly blowing in 

 fair weather. There can be no doubt that Count Zeppelin's experi- 

 ments do actually furnish a solution of the problem of directed loco- 

 motion through the air ; the relative velocity attained, viz. 17 miles 



