CHAPTER II 

 PRELIMINARY 



Part I of the present work is intended to include an account of the experi- 

 ments with actual flying models, made chiefly at or near Washington, from the 

 earliest with rubher motors up to the construction of the steam aerodromes that 

 performed the flights of May G and November 28, 1896. 



An account of some observations conducted at Washington, with (lie whirl- 

 ing table, on the reaction of various surfaces upon the air, is relegated to a later 

 part. 



The experiments with working models, which led to the successful flights, 

 were commenced in 1887, and it has seemed to me preferable to pu1 them at first 

 in chronological order, and to present to the reader what may seem instructive 

 in their history, while not withholding from him the mistaken efforts which were 

 necessarily made before the better path was found. In this same connection, 

 I may say that I have no professional acquaintance with steam engineering, as 

 will, indeed, be apparent from the present record, but it may be observed that 

 none of the counsel which I obtained from those possessing more knowledge 

 was useful in meeting the special problems which presented themselves to me, 

 and which were solved, as far as they have been solved, by constant " trial and 

 error. ' ' 



I shall, then, as far as practicable, follow the order of dates in presenting 

 the work that has been done, but the reader will observe that after the prelimi- 

 nary investigations and since the close of 1893, at least four or five independent 

 investigations, attended with constant experiment and radically distinct kinds of 

 construction, have been going on simultaneously. We have, for instance, the 

 work in the shop, winch is of two essentially different kinds: first, that on the 

 frames and engines, which finally led to the construction of an engine of un- 

 precedented lightness; second, the experimental construction of the supporting 

 and guiding surfaces, which has involved an entirely different set of considera- 

 tions, concerned with equilibrium and support in flight. These constructions, 

 however successful, are confined to the shop and are, as will be seen later, use 

 less without a launching apparatus. The construction of a suitable launching 

 apparatus itself involved difficulties which took years to overcome. And, finally, 

 the whole had to be tested by actual flights in free air, which were conducted at 

 a place some 30 miles distant from the shop where the original construction 

 went on. 



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