EECENT PROGRESS IN AVIATION. 1 



[With 19 plates.] 



By Octave Chanute, 2 



Honorary member of Western Society of Engineers. 



[Remarks by President Allen introducing Mr. Chanute: It is a 

 remarkable coincidence that just 12 years ago this evening — October 

 20, 1897 — Mr. Chanute gave his first paper before this society on 

 the subject of aviation, the paper being entitled " Gliding Experi- 

 ments." A few years later, in 1901, and again in 1903, Mr. Wilbur 

 Wright appeared before the society, at Mr. Chanute's invitation, and 

 gave an account of the experiments then being made by himself and 

 his brother Orville. The opportunity comes to very few men, I 

 think, to appear before the same body 12 years after their predictions 

 had been made, and be able to point to the fulfillment of those pre- 

 dictions, as can be done by Mr. Chanute to-night. 



It is our privilege to listen to him now, at a time when aviation 

 has become a matter of great public interest, and when he can point 

 to the fulfillment of his own, prophecies, and the launching of the 

 aeroplane as a practical machine on the ideas that he enunciated in 

 our rooms 12 years ago. Mr. Chanute is well known to us all and 

 needs no introduction from me. We are proud to number him among 

 our members as, perhaps, the foremost Jiving authority on aviation 

 to-day in this country or in any other country.] 



I shall endeavor, with the aid of some lantern slides, to talk to you 

 about what has lately been accomplished with flying machines. As 

 your president has said, on the 20th of October, 1897, I had the 

 honor of presenting to you an account of some gliding experiments 

 that were carried on at Dune Park, near this city. Those experiments 

 were made solely to study the question of equilibrium and to deter- 

 mine if it was reasonably safe to experiment. We had the good 

 fortune to make about 2,000 flights (Mr. A. M. Herring, Mr. W. 



1 Reprinted by permission from Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, Chicago, 

 April, 1910. Presented before the society October 20, 1909. Journal copyright 1910 

 toy the Western Society of Engineers. 



■» Mr. Chanute died November 23, 1910. 



97578°— sm 1910 10 145 



