SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY. 529 



There can be no doubt but that this failure to hiunch the big 

 machine was a serious blow to Mr. Langley. Not so much the failure 

 itself, for he was a i^hilosopher and a scientific man Avho knew that 

 success came only after repeated defeat. Had it meant unsuccessful 

 experiment in his laboratory or shop it would have daunted him not 

 in the least. It was necessary to make these experiments in the open 

 air before the eyes of the world, while his arrangements with the 

 Board of Ordnance and Fortification rendered it imperative that the 

 details of the construction should not be made public. The news- 

 _ paper press of the countrj^ misunderstanding his motives and angered 

 possibl}^ at the large expense connected with maintaining special cor- 

 respondents at an inconvenient place on the Potomac River, united in 

 a chorus of ridicule and attack, which in time made itself felt in the 

 National Legislature. At his years — for he was then nearly 70 — the 

 attitude assumed by the public press broke his spirit at this, the first, 

 indeed, the only, defeat in his career. 



The lack of means of which he speaks was only a lack of funds 

 from the source from Avhich he thought he was entitled to obtain it. 

 One or more private individuals offered him the opportunity to 

 continue. Several years before he had been offered a considerable 

 sum for this work if he would but place it upon some commercial 

 basis and take out patents on such portions of the machinery as 

 were patentable in order that commercial reward might come to 

 the persons furnishing the monej'^, but he steadfastly refused either to 

 secure a patent or to accept money from private j^ersons. He 

 declared that this work was solely in the interest of the Nation, and 

 if the Nation was not prepared to support it he was not willing to 

 proceed with it. As far as I can learn, he never wavered in his 

 belief that success would result from his work. Aerial navigation 

 was, in his opinion, sure to come, and the very machine which was 

 declared by the public press to have been wrecked beyond hope he 

 had repaired in absolute condition for another trial. 



It is a gratification to be able to record that the last paper that he 

 ever read was a series of resolutions adopted by the Aero Club, at 

 New York City, expressing appreciation of his work in behalf of 

 aerial navigation and confidence in the directions which it had taken, 

 and any reader of the current magazines or the daily press can see for 

 himself that, in sj^ite of criticism and ridicule, the principles which 

 he discovered are more and more gaining recognition. The future 

 of aerial navigation lies not in the direction of the balloon, which 

 is being abandoned even by its most ardent votaries, but in that of the 

 aeroplane; and whatever form this may take or whatever modifica- 

 tions may be made as the result of experiment, the laws of aerody- 

 namics will be the laws which Mr. Langley discovered, and the 



SM 1906 34 



