The Way of a Bird in the Air 



A gigantic artificial dove and the lesson that it teaches 



MORE than twenty years ago, Otto 

 Lillienthal, a German engineer, be- 

 came interested in flying. He was 

 one of the first scientific pioneers of the 

 aeroplane. For weeks and weeks at a time,- 

 he would watch storks in motion. To 

 him, birds were masters from whom ignor- 

 ant man must learn if he, too, would fly. 



Lillienthal's first step, after long watch- 

 ing was to build a motor-less machine of a 



to the air, and that, after all, the bird idea 

 was inherently correct. All the latest 

 machines look very much like birds because 

 they have been provided with bird-like 

 bodies in which passengers and engines are 

 carried. 



A New England inventor, Percival White, 



has very wisely taken up Lillienthal's line 



of investigation and has built an exact 



gigantic copy of a carrier pigeon. His 



glider is an object lesson. His huge 



bird shows how sweet are the lines of 



Nature's flying machines and how 



Percival White's gigantic copy of a carrier pigeon. It has landing skids under the body and 

 a drag post under each wing for easy alighting. The wings are pivoted and swing easily 



type which has since come to be called a 

 glider, a kind of artificial bird, consisting 

 primarily of a pair of canvas wings stretched 

 on a frame. He would run down a hill with 

 this apparatus. After he had acquired 

 sufficient momentum, he would draw up 

 his legs, glide along freely for perhaps a 

 hundred yards, and come to earth. 



This performance was not so easy as it 

 seems. Even on the calmest days, the 

 wind tended to upset his apparatus. 

 Lillienthal had to throw himself bodily 

 from side to side to maintain his balance. 

 He had to be very quick — just as quick as 

 the wind. He made many hundred flights 

 and learned a great deal about soaring. But 

 one day, he was not quick enough. The 

 wind upset him, and he was killed — one of 

 the first martyrs of the air. 



When the motor-driven aeroplane at last 

 came, inventors paid less and less attention 

 to birds. The construction of flying ma- 

 chines was reduced to a problem in engi- 

 neering. And so the aeroplane became less 

 and less bird-like. In the hands of Wright 

 and Curtiss it assumed the form of a box- 

 kite with a man and motor perched on the 

 lower edge. Soon it was found that such 

 a construction off^ered too much resistance 



well worth copying they are. Although he 

 may not have had it in mind, young White 

 has vindicated Lillienthal. Every aero- 

 plane designer must envy the modeling of 

 White's glider. 



Lillienthal took great pains to explain 

 that if a bird is merely copied and enlarged, 

 it becomes either too heavy or too weak to 

 fly. This is a matter of structural size and 

 strength. How White has made his arti- 

 ficial dove strong and light enough to serve 

 as a gliding machine without prominent 

 stay posts and wires remains a question. 

 But even if White's glider serves no other 

 purpose than that of setting the flying 

 efficiency of a bird's shape into bold relief, 

 it is worthy of all praise. Assuming that 

 the structure is strong enough, the flat 

 gliding angle and the perfect shape of the 

 body would insure efficient flight. Like 

 Lillienthal, White must throw his body 

 from side to side in order to balance him- 

 self. But balancing in this fashion ought 

 to be easy for White. Lillienthal himself 

 pointed out that a bird easily shifts its 

 weight or rather muscular effort (the same 

 thing in this instance) to both wings or 

 fore and aft in order to control itself side- 

 wise and lengthwise. — Carl Dienstbach. 



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