AERIAL LOCOMOTION 4O9 



Then, upon jumping into the air, he found himself supported 

 by his apparatus, and glided down hill at an elevation of a few 

 feet from the ground, landing safely at a considerable distance 

 from his point of departure. This exhibition of gliding ilight 

 fairly startled the world, and henceforth the experiments of 

 Lihenthal were conducted in the public eye. He made hun- 

 dreds of successful flights with his gliding machine, varying its 

 construction from time to time, and communicating to the world 

 the results of his experiments with practical directions how to 

 manage the machine under circumstances of difficulty. So 

 that, when at last he met with the usual fate of his predecessors 

 in this line, the experiments were not abandoned. They were 

 continued in America by Chanute of Chicago, Herring, arid 

 other Americans, including the Wright brothers of Dayton, 

 Ohio. (See Plate IX.) 



Hargrave, of Australia, attacked the flying machine problem 

 from the standpoint of a kite, communicating his results to the 

 Royal Society of New South Wales. It is to him we owe the 

 modern form of kite known as the " Hargrave Box Kite," which 

 surpasses in stability all previous forms of kites. He also con- 

 structed successful flying machine models on a small scale using 

 a store of compressed air as his motive power. He did not at- 

 tempt to construct a large sized apparatus, or to go up into the 

 air himself — so he still lives, to carry on researches that are of 

 interest and value to the world. 



No one has contributed more to the modern revival of interest 

 in flying machines of the heavier-than-air type than our own 

 Professor Langley, the late Secretary of the Smithsonian In- 

 stitution. The constant failures and disasters of the past had 

 brought into disrepute the whole subject of aerial flight by man ; 

 and the would-be inventor, or experimenter, had to face — not 

 only the natural difficulties of his subject, but the ridicule of a 

 sceptical world. To Professor Langley is due the chief credit 

 of placing this subject upon a scientific basis, and of practicallv 

 originating what he termed the art of " Aerodromics." In his 

 epoch-making work on " Experiments in Aerodynamics," pub- 

 lished in 1891 among the Smithsonian Contributions to Knowl- 

 edge, he prepared the world for the recent advances in this art 



