THE PEESENT STATUS OF MILITARY AERONAUTICS." 



[With 23 plates.] 



By Dr. George O. Squier,^ 

 Major, Signal Corps, U. S. Army. 



It is a matter of first significance that Tlie American Society of 

 Mechanical Engineers, composed of a body of highly trained and 

 serious-minded men, should be considering in annual meeting assem- 

 bled the subject of aerial navigation. Five years ago such a subject 

 could scarcely have had a place on the list of professional papers 

 on your programme. The present period will ever be memorable in 

 the history of the world for the first public demonstrations of the 

 practicability of mechanical flight. In fact, at the present moment 

 a resistless wave of enthusiasm and endeavor, sweeping away every 

 prejudice, is passing over the entire civilized world, fixing the atten- 

 tion of all classes upon the problem of flight. France, Germany, 

 and England are in a state of frenzied interest in this subject, and 

 each period of a single month sees some new step accomplished in the 

 march of progress. The universal highway is at last to be made 

 available for the uses of mankind, with its consequent influence upon 

 our modes of life and thought. * * * 



There are two general classes of vehicles of the air, (a) those which 

 depend for their support upon the buoyancy of some gas lighter than 

 air, and (5) those which depend for such support upon the dynamic 

 reaction of the air itself. These classes are designated — 



(a) Lighter- than-air types: Free balloons, dirigible balloons or 

 airships. 



(b) Heavier-than-air t3^pes : Aeroplanes, orthopters, helicopters, etc. 

 It should be remarked, however, that these two general classes 



exhibit a growing tendency to overlap each other. For example, the 

 latest dirigible balloons are partly operated by means of aeroplane 



"Reprinted by permission (abridged by author) from the Journal of The 

 American Society of Mechanical Engineers, New York, 1909, pp. 1571-1612. 



* Presented at the New York meeting (December, 1908) of The American 

 Society of Mechanical Engineers. 



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