SAMUEL PIERPONT LAXGLEY. 21 



to learned bodies ; it was spread abroad by the newspapers, and in 

 an article published in McClurc's Magazine Doctor Langley himself 

 described this trial and told how he came to enter upon the subject. 

 From his own words we learn that this had been a problem with him 

 from his childhood ; that in his early days he used to lie on his back 

 in a New England pasture, watching the hawks soaring far above 

 him, sailing for a long time without any motion of their wings, and 

 suggesting questions which were renewed during his mature life, and 

 which finally set him at seriously inquiring whether the problem of 

 artificial flight was as hopeless and absurd as it was thought to be: 

 "If Nature has solved it, why not man?" This article, published in 

 1897, closed with the following paragraphs : 



"I have thus far had only a purely scientific interest in the results 

 of these labors. Perhaps if it could have been foreseen at the outset 

 how much labor there was to be, how much of life would be given to 

 it, and how much care, I might have hesitated to enter upon it at 

 all. And now reward must be looked for, if reward there be, in the 

 knowledge that I have done the best I could in a difficult task, with 

 results which it may be hoped will be useful to others. I have 

 brought to a close the portion of the work which seemed to be spe- 

 cially mine — the demonstration of the practicability of mechanical 

 flight ; for the next stage, which is the commercial and practical de- 

 velopment of the idea, it is probable that the world may look to 

 others." 



It must not be supposed that Langley, even during this period, 

 dropped his astrophysical work. He steadily thought upon the im- 

 provement of his instruments, and through such improvements pro- 

 duced invaluable results. The bolometer was brought to a greater 

 degree of refinement than had ever before been attained, and the 

 w^ork under his direction had progressed during this period to such 

 a point as to justify the publication of a remarkable volume of An- 

 nals and an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 1900, at Wades- 

 boro, North Carolina, in which he was remarkably successful. A 

 half dozen or more papers illustrating the various advances made in 

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



But while this, which he considered the great work of his life, 

 was going on he was led, in 1898, through circumstances which are 

 not definitely known, but which had to do, to a certain extent, with 

 the Spanish-American War, to take up the building of a flying- 

 machine of such power as to carry a man, this work being under- 

 taken under the Board of Ordnance and Fortification of the United 

 States Armv and with an allotment made by that board for the pur- 



