NA TURE 



297 



THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1921. 



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The Langley Flying Machine. 



AT a recent meeting of the Royal Aeronautical 

 Society a paper was read by Mr. Griffith 

 Brewer on "The Langley Machine and the Ham- 

 monfilsport Trials," which has for its theme "the 

 attempt to rob the Wright brothers of the credit 

 of inventing the aeroplane." 



The argument of the paper turns on a usual 

 interpretation of the word "inventing," and it is 

 not suggested that the credit of establishing the 

 principles of aeroplane design is in doubt. The 

 dispute as to the relative importance of the 

 pioneers S. P. Langley and the Wright brothers 

 arose in the course of certain legal actions as to 

 the validity of patents taken out by the latter. 

 In connection with the defence of the Curtiss 

 Aeroplane Co. against a charge of infringement, 

 arrangements were made with the Smithsonian 

 Institution for the loan of the original man-carry- 

 ing aeroplane designed and constructed by 

 Langley. The design was modified in certain ways 

 before it was taken into the air at Hammonds- 

 port, and the contention of Mr. Brewer in putting 

 the case for the Wright brothers is that the 

 modifications were such as to invalidate the claim 

 that the original Langley aeroplane had been 

 flown. 



The trials of the modified aeroplane were made 

 late in the development of the subject, the loan by 

 the Smithsonian Institution being dated April, 

 1914. The public European flights of the Wright 

 brothers had taken place some six years prior to 

 this, whilst the date of the first successful flight 

 NO. 2714, VOL. 108] 



of about one minute's duration is stated to be 

 December, 1903. It is perhaps worth while to 

 clear up the historical facts of the trials, but the 

 paper tends to give an erroneous impression of the 

 importance of the part played by the Wright 

 brothers in spite of Mr. Brewer's note to the 

 eflfect that Langley himself did not make the 

 claims to which exception is taken, nor would he 

 have been likely to do so had he been alive to 

 hear of the controversy. 



The difficulty appears to arise from a not un- 

 common tvpe of mental blindness which is readily 

 produced by the contact of financial interests with 

 development. It is rather like making the 

 assumption that, because an arch cannot be used 

 as an engineering structure until the keystone is 

 in place, the keystone is therefore the most 

 important element in it; the rest of the structure 

 appears to be unseen. Applied to Mr. Brewer's 

 paper, the simile suggests that the keystone was 

 provided by the Wright brothers, and that the 

 much more laborious work of preparing for its 

 reception is to be found in the scientific experi- 

 ments of Langley. Readers of Nature will find 

 in its volumes references which indicate, in a 

 calmer atmosphere, the part played by Langley in 

 the development of aviation. So far back as 

 Julv 23, 1891, a paper on his experimental 

 researches is to be found in Nature showing that 

 the flight of a man-carrying aeroplane was possible, 

 and enunciating the fundamental principles for 

 obtaining a design. Matters were so much ad- 

 vanced in 1896 that on May 28 of that year 

 Nature was able to give a description of the 

 flight of the Langley model aeroplane under its 

 own power. This was a remarkable achievement, 

 since it required a solution of the problem of in- 

 herent stability, a quality almost certainly not pos- 

 sessed by the Wright aeroplanes of 1908. The 

 great addition to aeronautical knowledge and 

 practice made by the Wright brothers was the 

 introduction of the system of wing warping which 

 gave adequate lateral control even to an unstable 

 aeroplane. 



Langley 's researches have been described on 

 manv occasions, and their relation to the problem 

 of dynamic flight is shown in Sir Richard 

 Gregory's book, "Discovery," from which a 

 couple of extracts may be appropriately cited as 

 bearing directly upon the subject under discussion. 

 On p. 288 Langley is quoted as saying, in rela- 

 tion to his experiments before 1897 : — 



"I have brought to a close the portion of the 

 work which seemed specially mine — the demon- 



