NO. 8 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANCLEY — ABBOT 37 



" Schemes for mechanical flight have been so generally associated 

 in the past with other methods than those of science, that it is com- 

 monly supposed the long record of failures has left such practical 

 demonstration of the futility of all such hopes for the future that no 

 one of scientific training will be found to give them countenance. 

 While recognizing that this view is a natural one, I have, however, 

 during some years, devoted nearly all the time at my command for 

 research, if not directly to this purpose, yet to one cognate to it, with 

 a result which I feel ought now to be made public. 



" Further than this, these new experiments, (and theory also when 

 reviewed in their light,) show that if in such aerial motion, there be 

 given a plane of fixed size and weight, inclined at such an angle, and 

 moved forward at such a speed, that it shall be sustained in horizontal 

 flight, then the more rapid the motion is, the less will be the power 

 required to support and advance it. This statement may, I am aware, 

 present an appearance so paradoxical that the reader may ask himself 

 if he has rightly understood it. To make the meaning quite indubi- 

 table, let me repeat it in another form, and say that these experiments 

 show that a definite amount of power so expended at any constant 

 rate, will attain more economical results at high speeds than at low 

 ones — e. g., one horse-power thus employed, will transport a larger 

 weight at 20 miles an hour than at 10, a still larger at 40 miles than 

 at 20, and so on, with an increasing economy of power with each 

 higher speed, up to some remote limit not yet attained in experiment, 

 but probably represented by higher speeds than have as yet been 

 reached in any other mode of transport — a statement which demands 

 and will receive the amplest confirmation later in these pages. 



" The reader, especially if he be himself skilled in observation, 

 may perhaps be willing to agree that since there is here so little 

 yet established, so great a variety of tentative experiments must be 

 made, that it is impossible to give each of them at the outset all 

 the degree of accuracy which is ultimately desirable, and that he may 

 yet find all trustworthy within the limits of their present application. 



" I do not, then, ofifer here a treatise on aerodynamics, but an experi- 

 mental demonstration that we already possess in the steam-engine as 

 now constructed, or in other heat engines, more than the requisite 

 power to urge a system of rigid planes through the air at a great 

 velocity, making them not only self-sustaining, but capable of carrying 

 other than their own weight. This is not asserting that they can be 



