528 SAMUEL PIEEPOXT LANGLEY. 



annals; and an expedition made by him, to observe the solar eclipse 

 of 1900, at Wadesboro, X. C., was signally successful. 



A half dozen or more papers illustrating the various advances made 

 in the study of the spectrum were also issued about this time. The 

 building of the large aerodrome and of models to aid in its construc- 

 tion was rapidly being pushed ahead. Since the successful flight of 

 the first aerodrome in 1896 a further possibility of increased power 

 with comi^arative lightness had come with the employment of the gas 

 engine, and this was experimented upon with a view to determining- 

 its feasibility for the purpose. 



In the midst of these labors, either of them enough to engross the 

 thought of an ordinary man, carried along as they were in addition 

 to the management of the Institution and its correspondence and the 

 interviews and the appearances before committees which this work 

 entailed — in the very midst, I say, of these labors there appeared an 

 article, of all places, in the Saint Nicholas Magazine, describing the 

 Children's Room of the Smithsonian prefaced by a letter written by 

 Mr. Langley himself, in which he appears as the attorney for the chil- 

 dren and pleads their cause with a grown-up Museum man, and 

 almost at the same time he wrote a curious and interesting paper 

 describing the fire-walk ceremony in Taliiti, where Mr. Langley spent 

 part of the summer of 1901, and where he hoped to find a miracle, 

 but witnessed instead an interesting ceremony, which, almost to his 

 own regret, he was able to explain by natural law. 



A brief popular account of the subsequent experiments with the 

 Langley aerodrome was published in 1905, an extended memoir on 

 the subject being yet unpublished, though left in such shape as to 

 render its jjublication certain. He describes in the briefer paper the 

 attempt made to purchase a suitable engine or to secure its building 

 by contract elsewhere ; the acceptance of such a contract by a mechan- 

 ical engineer, and the failure, after two years, to deliver the engine in 

 accordance with agreement ; the consequent necessity of building it at 

 the Institution; the innumerable details of construction that had to 

 be considered, and, finally, the trials, first of the test models, which 

 proved successful. Twice, on the Tth of October, 1903, and again on 

 the 8th of December of the same year, attempts were made to launch 

 the large machine, and in both cases, according to the observation of 

 numerous reliable engineers, members of the Board of Ordnance, and 

 others, it was the launching that proved a failure, and the words of 

 Mr. Langley, in closing this statement, seemed to be justified: '' Fail- 

 ure in the aerodrome itself," he declared, " or its engines there has 

 been none ; and it is believed that it is at the moment of success, and 

 when the engineering problems have been solved, that a lack of means 

 has prevented a continuance of the work." 



