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meeting in Boston, Mass., November 21, 1906. The experi- 

 ments referred to, which were undertaken at first for my 

 own pleasure and amusement, have gradually assumed a serious 

 character from their bearing upon the flying-machine problem. 



The word "kite" unfortunately is suggestive to most minds 

 of a toy — just as the telephone at first was thought to be a toy 

 — so that the word does not at all adequately express the nature 

 of the enormous flying structures employed in some of my ex- 

 periments. (See Plates XVI, XVII, XVIII.) These structures 

 were really aerial vehicles rather than kites, for they were capable 

 of lifting men and heavy weights into the air. They were flown 

 after the manner of kites, but their flying cords were stout manilla 

 ropes. They could not be held by hand in a heavy breeze ; but 

 had to be anchored to the ground by several turns of the ropes 

 around stout cleats like those employed on steamships and men- 

 of-war. 



One of the great difficulties in making a large structure light 

 enough to be flown as a kite, has been pointed out by Professor 

 Simon Newcomb in an article in McClure's Magazine published 

 in September, 1901, entitled " Is the Air-Ship Coming?"; and 

 this difficulty had so much weight with him at that time as to 

 lead him to the general conclusion that — " The construction of 

 an aerial vehicle which could carry even a single man from place 

 to place at pleasure, requires the discovery of some new metal, 

 or some new force." 



This conclusion the Wright brothers, and now Santos 

 Dumont, have demonstrated to be incorrect ; but Professor New- 

 comb's objections undoubtedly have great force, and reveal the 

 cause of failures of attempts to construct large-sized flying-ma- 

 chines upon the basis of smaller models that actually flew. Pro- 

 fessor Newcomb shows that where two aerial vehicles are made 

 exactly alike, only differing in the scale of their dimensions, the 

 ratio of weight to supporting surface is greater in the larger one 

 than in the smaller ; the weight increasing as the cube of the 

 dimensions, whereas the supporting surfaces only increase as the 

 squares. From this the conclusion is obvious that if we make 

 our structure large enough it will be too heavy to fly even by 

 itself — far less be the means of supporting an additional load 



