216 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



CONCLUSION 



Is the development from the Wright "Kitty Hawk" to the airplane 

 of today likely to continue, to bring about as great a change in the 

 airplane of tomorrow ? With supersonic flight there is the problem 

 of the generation of heat which will vitally affect the structure of 

 aircraft. 



Many scientific developments in the fields of electronics and gyro- 

 scopics that have affected our progress in aeronautics will continue 

 to grow in importance. Automatic devices will supplant the human 

 skills now required of aviators, and will reduce the fastest and most 

 difficult flying to such simplicity that a less highly trained operator 

 can handle an airplane as efficiently as the most expert stunt flyer of 

 today. The autopilot and automatic stability machinery can fly a 

 plane far more accurately than even the best human pilot can. 



We now recognize two objectives in aviation — the short takeoff and 

 landing at reduced speed and the highest possible flying speed. With 

 the development of vertical rising of aircraft, the need for increasingly 

 large and expensive landing fields is done away with. 



One item that has been more or less ignored during the past 50 

 years, but which has become a serious problem today, is the outrageous 

 noisiness of modern aircraft. The piston-engine airplanes are bad 

 enough, but the present jet configurations are even worse. Unless 

 something can be done to overcome this, the future development of 

 aviation, particularly in the private-vehicle field — will be greatly 

 restricted. 



The concept of the Wrights has grown to full stature. It has en- 

 dowed mankind with a mobility that was undreamed of. To be sure, 

 it has not changed human nature, but it gives promise — by virtue of 

 its very terrible potentialities in war — of forcing the peoples of the 

 world to find peaceful means of getting along together. In the end, 

 the Wrights' hope that this invention might not always be dedicated 

 to war may be realized, and the value of their contribution to man's 

 progress proved by ever-increasing use of aircraft for peacetime 

 pursuits. 



