34 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS. 



scarcely been paralleled by the lightest gasoline motors of European 

 builders. The flying weight of the machine complete, with that of 

 the aeronaut, was 830 pounds, its sustaining surfaces were 1,040 

 square feet, and it was intended to launch it by impulse from a cata- 

 pult placed on the deck of a house-boat, precisely in the same man- 

 ner as the models which had flown so successfully in 1896 and in 

 subsequent years. 



Attempts were made to launch this machine, with C. M. Manly on 

 board, on the 7th of October and on the 8th of December, 1903. 

 Both trials were failures in consequence of a trivial defect in the 

 launching gear. In the first attempt "the front guy post caught in 

 its support on the launching car and was not released in time to give 

 free flight ;" in the second trial the same accident happened to the 

 rear guy post, and the machine was both times more or less wrecked 

 in the launching. As Langley states, "The machine never had a 

 chance to fly at all, but the failure occurred in the launching ways." 

 There is no doubt in my own mind that the apparatus would have 

 flown if it had been well launched into the air. 



We can now realize from Langley's report that entirely erroneous 

 impressions were given by the public press in its accounts of these 

 experiments. The method of construction of this proposed war 

 engine had been kept strictly private, and the newspaper reporters, 

 consumed with curiosity, were not allowed to come near enough to 

 see or to understand what occurred. They represented that the ma- 

 chine itself was an unqualified failure, which never could have flown. 

 Explanations subsequently given were disbelieved, very sharp and 

 unintelligent criticism of the expenditure which had been incurred 

 was made in Congress, and the general public was for a time given 

 the impression that the machine itself was a complete abortion and 

 had not a grain of utility. 



Meanwhile the funds allotted by the Board of Ordnance had been 

 exhausted and no additional grants were made. Thus was Langley, 

 with success in sight, finally defeated and deprived of the honor 

 which he craved, of being the first to exhibit dynamic man-flight in 

 the air. He was decried and ridiculed, both in prose and verse, his 

 experiments were misrepresented, and he was called a "professor 

 wandering in his dreams" ; so that all his other contributions to sci- 

 ence were for a time obscured by a failure due to the trivial defect 

 in his launching gear and by the lack of far-sightedness in our public 

 men. 



We all know how all this told upon him. There is no doubt that 

 the disappointment shortened his useful life and brought on the 

 attack of paralysis which ended his days. 



