THE CONQUEST OF TIME AND SPACE 



apparatus, but this cannot be easily introduced in so 

 small a scale of. construction. With it the time of flight 

 might be hours instead of minutes, but without it the 

 flight (of the present aerodrome) is limited to about 

 five minutes, though in that time, as will be seen pres- 

 ently, it can go some miles; but owing to the danger of 

 its leaving the surface of the water for that of the land, 

 and wrecking itself on shore, the time of flight is 

 limited designedly to less than two minutes." 



When this flying-machine was put to the actual test 

 its performance justified the most sanguine expecta- 

 tions; it actually flew as no other machine had ever 

 flown before. A number of men of science watched 

 this remarkable performance, among others Alexander 

 Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, who re- 

 ported it to the Institute of France. "Through the 

 courtesy of Mr. S. P. Langley, Secretary of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, I have had on various occasions the 

 pleasure of witnessing his experiments with aero- 

 dromes," wrote Dr. Bell, "and especially the remark- 

 able success attained by him in his experiments made 

 on the Potomac River on Wednesday, May 6th [which 

 led me to urge him to make public some of these results]. 



"On the occasion referred to, the aerodrome, at a 

 given signal, started from a platform about twenty 

 feet above the water, and rose at first directly in the face 

 of the wind, moving at all times with remarkable steadi- 

 ness, and subsequently swinging around in large curves 

 of, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter, and contin- 

 ually ascending until its steam was exhausted, when at 

 a lapse of about a minute and a half, and at a height 



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