SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO KNOWLEDGE VOL. 27 



a shorl statemenl to correcl the earlier one, and Mr. Langley accordingly made 



public the following note: 



" Mr. Lanulev stales thai he was nol an eye witness of tl speriment at 



Widewater yesterday, having been detained in Washington by business, but thai 

 on the report of Mr. Manly, immediately in charge, he is able to say thai the 



tatter's first impression that there had been defective balancing was corrected 

 bj a minuter examination, when the clutch, which held the aerodrome on the 

 launching ways and which should have released it at the instant of the fall, was 

 found to he injured. 



•• The machinery was working perfectly and giving every reason to antici 

 pate a successful flight, when this accident (due wholly to the launching mech- 

 anism) drew the aerodrome abruptly downward at the moment of release and 

 casl it into the water near the house-boat. The statement that the machine failed 

 for lack of power to fly was wholly a mistaken one. 



" The engine, the frame and all the more important parts were practically 

 uninjured. The engine is actually in good working order. The damage done was 

 confined to the slighter portions, like the canvas wings and propellers, and these 

 can he readily replaced. 



" The belief of those charged with the experiment in the ultimate success 

 fid working of the machine is in no way affected by this accident, which is one 

 of the large chapter of accidents that beset the initial stages of experiments so 

 novel as the present ones. It is chiefly unfortunate in coming at the end of the 

 season when outdoor work of this sort is impossible. 



•• Wiiether the experiments will he continued this year or not has not yet 

 been determined." 



In view of the many inaccurate accounts published in the daily press at 

 the time of this experiment, special attention is directed to the fact that even 

 under (lie enormous strain to which the aerodrome was subjected, due to its 

 striking the water at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees and at a 

 speed certainly not less than forty miles an hour, no bending or distortion of 

 any kind was found in the frame after it was recovered, except that a slighl 

 depression at the front had been produced by the lower guy-posl catching on 

 the launching car, as previously described. This is very clearly seen in Plate 

 97, Pig. 1, which shows the aerodrome being hoisted from the water, and in 

 Plate !i". Pig. 2, which shows it just afterwards resting on the raft, the winirs, 

 tail and rudder having been completely demolished by towing it through the 

 water to the houseboat from the place where it struck the water. This single 

 distortion, therefore, was in no way a result of the strains experienced by the 

 frame either while it was in the air or when it struck the water. Some of the 

 press reports, and, in fact, some of the accounts published in the scientific press, 

 stated that the aerodrome frame had proved so weak that it broke while the 

 machine was in the air, and that this was the cause of the accident. Nothing 

 could he farther from the actual fact- than this, for though there were many 

 things connected with the machine which could not he properly tested until it 

 was actually in the air. yel the strength of the frame had been most thoroughly 



