260 SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE VOL. -7 



at which it was launched. in Plate 88 the camera was unfortunately not well 

 aimed, and only the front guy-post, bearing points, fioal and bowsprit are vis- 

 ible, besides the blur of the propellers, which, it will be noted, were moving 

 very rapidly. The camera with which this and the succeeding plates were taken 

 was one of the two special telephoto cameras belonging to the Zoological Park, 

 but built in the course of the aerodromic work and used where especially rapid 

 shutters were needed. As the shutters on these cameras give an exposure of 

 only 1 500 of a second, and consequently are sufficiently rapid to show the in- 

 dividual feathers in a rapidly moving bird's wing, any distortion of the ma- 

 chine in flight would certainly have been shown, lint, as will be seen from the 

 later photographs, no distortion of any kind occurred, both the surfaces and 

 the framework remaining in a perfectly straight condition. Near the bottom 

 of Plate 88 is the tug from which Plate 87 was taken, and a careful inspection 

 of Plate 87 shows two persons standing on the root' of the house-boat, below 

 the upper works, the gentleman on the left being Mr. Thomas \V. Smillie, the 

 official photographer of the Smithsonian Institution, who took all of the photo- 

 graphs except Plate 87, and, as stated above, used therefor the special telephoto 

 cameras with the rapid shutters. Plate 89 is an exceedingly good view, and 

 shows the propellers revolving very rapidly while Plates 90, 91 and 92 show very 

 clearly that the speed of the propellers had greatly decreased between the sue- 

 eessive photographs. Plate 93 shows the aerodrome shortly after it touched 

 the water and had been almost completely submerged, in spite of its floats, by 

 the very strong tide which was running. Though these plates show all that 

 photographs can, they give no adequate idea of the wonder and beauty of the 

 machine when actually in flight. For while the graceful lines of the machine 

 make it very attractive to the eye even when stationary, yet when it is actually 

 in flight it seems veritably endowed with life and intelligence, and (he spectacle 

 holds the observer awed and breathless until the flight is ended. It seems hardly 

 probable that anyone, no matter bow skeptical beforehand, could witness a flight 

 of one of the models and nolo the almost bird-like intelligence with which the 

 automatic adjustments respond to varying conditions of the air without feeling 

 that, in order to traverse at will the greal aerial highway man no longer needs 

 to wrest from nature some strange, mysterious secret, but only, by diligent 

 practice with machines of this very type, to acquire an expertness in the man- 

 agement of the aerodrome not different in kind from that acquired by every 

 expert bicyclist in the control of his bicycle. 



In describing Ibis flighl immediately after it was made, Professor John M. 

 Manly, who took the photograph shown in Plate 87, said: " The flight of the 

 small aerodrome was an even! which all who saw it will remember for the 

 resl of their lives. We were, of course, in a state of considerable nervous ex- 

 citement and tension, for, after weeks of delay from high winds, rains, and 



