NO. 8 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY ABBOT 5I 



respective frames and tests of them and their power-transmission 

 appliances were begun. 



" The engines themselves were successfully completed before the 

 close of 1901, and were of much more power than those originally 

 designed ; but nearly a year and a half had been spent not only in their 

 completion, but in properly coordinating the various parts of the 

 frame carrying them, repairing the various breakages, assembling, dis- 

 mounting, and reassembling the various parts of the appliances, and 

 in general rebuilding the frame and appurtenances to correspond in 

 strength to the new engines. 



" There are innumerable other details, for the whole question is one 

 of details 



" It is impossible for anyone who has not had experience with such 

 matters to appreciate the great amount of delay which experience 

 has shown is to be expected in such experiments. Only in the spring 

 of 1903, and after two unforeseen years of assiduous labor, were 

 these new engines and their appurtenances, weighing altogether less 

 than 5 pounds to the horsepower and far lighter than any known to 

 be then existing, so coordinated and adjusted that successive shop 

 tests could be made without causing injury to the frame, its bearings, 

 shafts, or propellers. 



"And now everything seemed to be as nearly ready for an experi- 

 ment as could be, until the aerodrome was at the location at which 

 the experiments were to take place. The large machine and its 

 quarter-size counterpart were accordingly placed on board the large 

 house boat, which had been completed some time before and had been 

 kept in Washington as an auxiliary shop for use in the construction 

 work, and the whole outfit was towed to a point in the Potomac 

 River, here 3 miles wide, directly opposite Widewater, Va., and 

 about 40 miles below Washington and midway between the Mary- 

 land and Virginia shores, where the boat was made fast to moorings 

 which had previously been placed in readiness for it. 



"Although extreme delays had already occurred, yet they were not 

 so trying as the ones which began immediately after the work was 

 thus transferred to the lower Potomac. 



" In order to test the quarter-size model it was necessary to remove 

 its launching track from the top of the small house boat and place it 

 upon the deck of the large boat, in order to have all the work go on 

 at one place, as it was impossible, on account of its unseaworthiness, 

 to moor the small house boat in the middle of the river. 



