46 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



will ever be able to dispense altogether with the ability to rely at inter- 

 vals on some internal source of power, it will not be indispensable 

 that this aerodrome of the future shall, in order to go any distance — 

 even to circumnavigate the globe without alighting, — need to carry a 

 weight of fuel which would enable it to perform this journey under 

 conditions analogous to those of a steamship, but that the fuel and 

 weight need only be such as to enable it to take care of itself in 

 exceptional moments of calm." 



How plainly here does Langley foreshadow the achievements of 

 gliding a third of a century later. 



After completing the two papers just referred to, Langley pro- 

 ceeded to use the data gained in a serious attempt to obtain mechanical 

 flight with large heavier-than-air machines. After several years of 

 experimentation in which not only the difficulties of light construc- 

 tion and automatic balance but also of the invention of a very light 

 steam engine were overcome, Langley on May 6, 1896, in the presence 

 of Alexander Graham Bell and others, successfully catapulted from a 

 houseboat on the Potomac a 13-foot steam-powered model which flew 

 over one-half mile and landed softly unharmed upon the water. In 

 November of the same year, another large model made an even longer 

 flight of three-quarters of a mile. Of these experiments Langley 

 said ^^ : 



" I have thus far had only a purely scientific interest in the results 

 of these labors. Perhaps if it could have been foreseen at the outset 

 how much labor there was to be, how much of life would be given to 

 it, and how much care, I might have hesitated to enter upon it at all. 

 And now reward must be looked for, if reward there be, in the knowl- 

 edge that I have done the best I could in a difficult task, with results 

 which it may be hoped will be useful to others. I have brought to 

 a close the portion of the work which seemed to be specially mine — 

 the demonstration of the practicability of mechanical flight — and for 

 the next stage, which is the commercial and practical development of 

 the idea, it is probable that the world may look to others. The world, 

 indeed, will be supine if it do not realize that a new possibility has 

 come to it, and that the great universal highway overhead is now soon 

 to be opened." 



"EXPERIMENTS WITH THE LANGLEY AERODROME" 



" The experiments undertaken by the Smithsonian Institution upon 

 an aerodrome, or flying machine, capable of carrying a man have been 



" The Langley Aerodrome, Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst., 1900, p. 197, 1901. 



