PROCEEDINGS 



OF THE 



WASHINGTON ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 



Vol. VIII, pp. 407-448. pls. IX-XX March 4, 1907. 



AERIAL LOCOMOTION. 



With a Fe<v Notes of Progress in the Construction 

 of an Aerodrome. 1 



By Alexander Graham Bell. 



The history of aerial locomotion is full of tragedies ; and 

 this is specially true where flying machines are concerned. 

 Men have gone up in balloons and most of them have come 

 down safely. Men have launched themselves into the air on 

 wings, and most have met with disaster to life or limb. There 

 have been centuries of effort to produce a machine that should 

 fly like a bird, and carry a man whithersoever he willed through 

 the air; and previously to 1783, the year sacred to the memory 

 of the brothers Montgolfier, all experiments at aerial locomo- 

 tion had this end exclusively in view\ 



Then came a period when the conquest of the air was sought 

 through the agency of balloons. For more than one hundred 

 years the efforts of experimenters were chiefly directed to the 

 problem of rendering the balloon dirigible ; and the earlier 

 experiments with gliding machines, and artificial wings — and 

 the proiects of men to drive heavy bodies through the air by 

 means of propellers, were largerly forgotten. The balloon was 

 changed from its original spherical form to a shape better 

 adapted for propulsion ; and at last through the efforts of San- 

 tos Dumont we have arrived at the dirigible balloon of to-day. 

 But in spite of the dirigibility of the modern balloon, it has so 



1 An address presented before the Washington Academy of Sciences, Decem- 

 ber 13, 1906. 



Proc. Wash. Acad. Sci., March, 1907. 407 



