THE LAWGLEY AERODROME. 211 



months and but once was the aerodrome even attempted to be launched, 

 and this attempt was attended with disaster. The principal cause lay, 

 as I have said, in the unrecognized amount of difficulty introduced 

 even by the very smallest wind, as a breeze of 3 or 4 miles an hour, 

 hardly perceptible to the face, was enough to keep the airship from 

 resting in place for the critical seconds preceding the launching. 



If we remember that this is all irrespective of the fitness of the 

 launching piece itself, which at first did not get even a chance for trial, 

 some of the difficulties may be better understood; and there were many 

 others. 



During most of the year of 1894 there was the same record of defeat. 

 Five more trial trips were made in the spring and summer, during which 

 various forms of launching apparatus were tried with varied forms of 

 disaster. Then it was sought to hold the aerodrome out over the water 

 and let it drop from the greatest attainable height, with the hope that 

 it might acquire the requisite speed of advance before the water was 

 reached. It will hardly be anticipated that it was found impracticable 

 at first to simply let it drop without something going wrong, but so it 

 was, and it soon became evident that even were this not the case a far 

 greater time of fall was requisite for this method than that at com- 

 mand. The result was that in all these eleven months the aerodrome 

 had not been launched, owing to difficulties which seem so slight that 

 one who has not experienced them may wonder at the trouble they 

 caused. 



Finally, in October, 1894, an entirely new launching apparatus was 

 completed, which embodied the dozen or more requisites, the need for 

 which had been independently proved in this long process of trial and 

 error. Among these was the primary one that it was capable of 

 sending the aerodrome off at the requisite initial speed, in the face of 

 a wind from whichever quarter it blew, and it had many more facilities 

 which practice had proved indispensable. (PI. III.) 



This new launching piece did its work in this respect effectively, and 

 subsequent disaster was, at any rate, not due to it. But now a new 

 series of failures took place, which could not be attributed to any 

 defect of the launching apparatus, but to a cause which was at first 

 obscure, for sometimes the aerodrome, when successfully launched 

 would dash down forward and into the water, and sometimes (under 

 apparently identically like conditions) would sweep almost vertically 

 upward in the air and fall back, thus behaving in entirely opposite 

 ways, although the circumstances of flight seemed to be the same. The 

 cause of this class of failure was finally found in the fact that as soon 

 as the whole was upborne by the air, the wings yielded under the 

 pressure which supported them, and were momentarily distorted from 

 the form designed and which they appeared to possess. "Momen- 

 tarily,'' but enough to cause the wind to catch the top, directing the 



