43 2 



BELL 



very core ; and man, not content with being confined to travel at a 

 high speed on a definite route marked by parallel steel rails, has 

 quickly taken up the automobile which can follow not only the multi- 

 tudinous roadways, but, if necessary, blaze out its own way through 

 the fields and woods. Instead of having his ambition satisfied by this 

 multiplication of his possible paths, he still thirsts for more freedom 

 and will not be satisfied until he has opened up for himself access to 

 the highways of the air, which are limitless in all directions and on 

 which speed laws enforced through police traps, if not impossible, 

 will at least be most difficult to maintain and enforce. 



While for many years I have felt the deepest interest in aeronautical 

 matters, it was only in 1898 that I first became actively engaged in the 

 work. I had the pleasure and the honor of being associated for some 

 seven years with the lamented Secretary Langley as his assistant in 

 direct charge of the experiments which he conducted at the Smith- 

 sonian Institution. Dr. Bell has already referred to the fact that this 

 later work which Mr. Langley conducted was carried on for the Board 

 of Ordnance and Fortification of the War Department. As you are 

 all no doubt aware, it is the custom of the War Department in con- 

 ducting important tests to exclude not only the general public but also 

 the representatives of the newspapers ; and in undertaking this work 

 for the War Department, Mr. Langley made a very definite agreement 

 that the public should be excluded from witnessing the construction of 

 the aerodrome and the tests of it, though in the interests of science he 

 retained the privilege of later publishing whatever part of the work he 

 might deem of importance to the scientific world. It could not be 

 foreseen at that time that the carrying out in good faith of this agree- 

 ment would bring upon him the bitter animosity of the whole corps of 

 American newspaper writers who would vent their ill will in ridicule 

 and in censure for failure to achieve complete success. 



As those of you who followed the newspaper reports during the ex- 

 periments in the summer and fall of 1903, will recall, the large house- 

 boat, on which were stored both the large machine and a duplicate of 

 it on a smaller scale, was carried down the Potomac River in July and 

 anchored at a point about forty miles from Washington. The first 

 experiments which were made were conducted with this model which 

 was an exact duplicate of the larger machine but of exactly one quarter 

 the linear dimensions. The object of the tests with this model was to 

 determine whether the balancing of the large machine had been cor- 

 rectly calculated from the results of the many previous tests of the 

 steam driven models of approximately the same size but embodying 



