526 SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY. 



industry " in Pittsburg, who had sympathized with Mr. Langley and 

 his work and had aided him in its prosecution. The name of this man, 

 William Thaw, was commemorated in the preface to " Experiments in 

 aerodynamics " in the following phrase : '' If there prove to be any- 

 thing of permanent value in these investigations, I desire that they 

 may be remembered in connection Avith the name of the late William 

 Thaw, Avhose generosity provided the principal means for them,*' 

 though it should be said that Mr. Thaw's aid in this direction was 

 not to be measured alone by money contribution to the experiments, 

 for it meant nmch at that time that as eminently a practical man as 

 he should have believed in Avhat was then considered a wild idea, and 

 have supported a scientific man in it l)()th l)y money and by moral 

 encouragement. This memoir, " Experiments in aerodynamics," was 

 at once republished in full in French and attracted widespread atten- 

 tion. INIr. Langley persevered in the study, and in 1893 he issued 

 a second memoir, '' The internal work of the wind." This also 

 appeared in English and French, and was designed to prove that 

 aerial flight had an aid, described as the potentiality in the internal 

 work of the wind, Avhich Avould be of great moment in the practical 

 solution of the problem. 



But the painstaking experiments with the whirling table and with 

 other forms of apparatus devised by Mr. Langley for the study of the 

 question of aerial navigation did not content him, and although not 

 himself a mechanical engineer, and with very inferior appliances, 

 he took up the building of a machine driven by a steam engine, which 

 he hoped would practically demonstrate the possibility of mechanical 

 flight. There were innumerable mechanical difficulties in its con- 

 struction and also in its launching, and, after failures which would 

 have disheartened an ordinary man, success came in the spring of 

 1896 when a steam-driven aerodome, constructed under Mr. Langley's 

 direction in his own shops, engine and all, actually flew for three- 

 quarters of a mile or more over the Potomac River. This remark- 

 able success had world-wide recognition. It was communicated to 

 learned bodies, was the talk of the newspapers, and in a specially 

 Avritten article in JNIcClure's Magazine Mr. Langley himself described 

 this trial and how he came to enter upon the subject. From his own 

 words we learn that this was a problem with him from childhood 

 days; that he used to lie in a New England pasture and watch the 

 hawks soaring far up in the blue, and sailing for a long time without 

 any motion of their wings, and this question he thought of in mature 

 life and set himself to inquire whether the problem of artificial flight 

 was as hopeless and as absurd as it was thought to be. " Nature," 

 he says, " has solved it, and why not man? " And with this question 

 he described the experiments Avith the whirling table down to the 



