668 



J^A TURE 



[October 29, iqo8 



PROGRESS TX AVIATION. 



APART from the unsuitability of the epithet, such 

 an incident as is suggested by a recent Daily 

 Mail poster, "Aeroplane Iriumph; Expresses Col- 

 lide; Passengers Injured," may not occur for some 

 j-ears to come, but the rapid development of aeroplane 

 locomotion within the last year indicates that it may 

 be desirable, at no distant date, to formulate " rules 

 of the road " for aeroplanes crossing each other's path 

 at the same level, and, unless this is done fairly soon, 

 there may be the same difficulty in obtaining inter- 

 national uniformity that has always existed in such 

 other connections as those of language, coinage, and 

 measurement of time. 



The records which have been published from day 

 to day in the Press have now, for the first time, 

 placed the problem of • flight on a perfectly practical 

 basis, and a great deal that has been written pre- 

 viously to the present year will only be read with 

 interest now insomuch as it enables a comparison to 

 be made between anticipation and realisation. We 

 heard reports of the Wright Brothers' achievements 

 in America in 1904 and 1905, but owing to the in- 

 ventors' efforts to av'oid publicity the feat of Santos 

 Dumont on November 12, 1906, in covering 220 

 metres in 2r2 seconds has been regarded by many 

 people as, the first realisation of an artificially pro- 

 pelled man-carrying machine lifting itself from the 

 giound and performing an actual flight. 



M. Delagrange's aeroplane made flights of 164 feet 

 and 196 feet in April, 1907, and by this time the con- 

 struction of aeroplane machines began to be taken 

 up from the commercial point of view by several firms 

 in France. The present writer visited Captain Ferber 

 in July of that year, and was shown a large building 

 on the outskirts of Paris specially fitted up with the 

 view of manufacturing aeroplanes to order, one being 

 in process of construction. All previous authenti- 

 cated records were eclipsed by Mr. Farman's flights 

 in November of last year. Yet these records seem 

 small by comparison with recent French achieve- 

 ments. In these, M. Delagrange figures prominently, 

 as is shown by the following examples, selected 

 without any claims to completeness : — March 21, 

 Farman, 4'5 km. in 3m. 29s.; April n, Delagrange 

 (.Archdeacon Cup), 3^925 km. in 6m. 30s. ; June 22, 

 at Milan, Delagrange, 15 km. in i6m. 30s. ; June 23, 

 at Rome, Delagrange, i7-5 km. in iSim., touching 

 ground once ; July 6, Farman (.Armengaud Prize), 

 2o'4 km. in 20m. 20s. ; September 6, Delagrange, 

 29m. 53-85. 



The Wright Brothers' performances take us a long 

 way back, and include the following statements of 

 flights : — September, 1905,' 17.961 km. in i8m. 9s., 

 19.570 km. in 19m. 55s. ; October, 1905, 24.535 kni- 

 in 25m. 5s., 33.456 km. in 33m. 175., 3S.956 km. in 

 38m. 3s., the causes of stopping being exhaustion 

 of fuel or hot bearings; May, 1908,^ flights from 22s. 

 up to 7m. 20s., with one man, distance 5 miles, two- 

 man flights,^ 0-45 mile in 29s., and 2-5 miles in 

 3ni. 40s. ; September 6, 1908, at Paris (Wilbur 

 Wright), flight of 19m. 48s., and in America, Sep- 

 tember 12 (Orvilie Wright), flight of 74m. 20s. (these 

 last on the authority of the daily Press). 



The first " two-man " flight (in Europe, at any 

 rate) would appear to date from March 21, when, 

 after the flight recorded above, Mr. Farman mounted 

 with M. Delagrange on the latter's aerodrome, which 

 flew a considerable distance with the heavy load.* 



^ Aiiicfican Magazine of Aeyonautics, July, 1907. 



- American Ai-ronautics^ June, 1908, quoted in ^r-rc/ia^/Z/fj, supplement 

 to Knowledge. 

 ^ Photographs are given in the Scientific American for May 30, 1908. 

 ^ .Aeronatttii's {Kno7i'lei/ge\ April, 190S. 



NO. 2035, VOL. 78] 



This record, it will be observed, is earlier than the 

 Wright records above chronicled. On May 30 Mr. 

 Farman flew 1-241 km., with Mr. .\rchdeacon as a 

 passenger, on his aeroplane.' Finallv, we have a 

 flight of more than 1}, hours by Mr. Wilbur Wright in 

 France, shortly after the accident to his brother's 

 machine in America, through which Lieut. Selfridge 

 lost his life. 



Simultaneously with these aeroplane experiments 

 we have a series of chronicles of successes with the 

 Zeppelin and other airships. We need onlv refer to 

 the Zeppelin record of iih. 50m., and a record bv 

 Major Gross of i3h. 2m., covering a distance of 1S7 

 miles. 



.\ very interesting summary of progress in avia- 

 tion up to the day of publication is afforded by M. 

 Armengaud, junior's, book.- It is- based on a lecture 

 delivered on February 16 at the Conservatoire des 

 .Arts et Metiers, and it contains, in addition to an 

 account of recent work, references to the early re- 

 searches of Penaud, Marey, and others on flight of 

 birds. .A feature of special interest is the diagram 

 showing the various systems of aeroplanes used bv 

 different experimenters. The illustration accompany- 

 ing this article is based on the diagram in question, 

 but we have omitted the purely gliding machines of 

 Wright and .Archdeacon, and have inserted the 

 Farman " flying fish " type, as well as a figure of 

 the mechanically-propelled \\'right model based on 

 the sketch in the Scienlific .-Inieriian. 



On looking at this table the typical Englishman 

 whose education on current topics does not extend 

 beyond the level of the halfpenny paper will ask, 

 " Which is the best flying machine? " .As the in- 

 terrogator usually is under the prevalent delusion 

 that " a straightforward answer to a straightforward 

 question " is all that is necessary to settle, once and 

 for all, the most complex problem of science, and 

 as he probably will forget all that has been told him 

 when he reads about the next football match, the 

 best wav of satisfying him is to give a definite answer 

 by choosing one at random from this diagram and 

 saying it is the best. A general discussion of the 

 different types of flying machine, including, not only 

 aeroplanes, but orthopters and helicopters, is given 

 bv M. .Armengaud, and this probably contains as 

 much as could be embodied in a small handbook. 

 But a complete examination of the conditions re- 

 quired to give the best results involves the discussion 

 of at least two qualities, efficiency and stability, and 

 while engineers have shown themselves fully com- 

 petent to deal with the first of these qualities, a full 

 discussion of the latter still involves the expenditure 

 of a large number of brain-power hours of work at 

 the hands of a really competent mathematician, and 

 it will be one of the objects of this note to direct atten- 

 tion to some of the most important unanswered 

 questions involved in the theory sketched out some 

 years ago by the present writer, with the assistance 

 of Mr. Williams. 



Captain Paul Renard's two papers on dirigibles ' 

 mav at this stage be studied with advantage. The 

 first paper is mainly theoretical, the second descrip- 

 tive. 



Taking the second part first, it contains an illus- 

 trated description of all the principal dirigibles that 

 have been constructed, and of a number that have 

 been projected. Captain Renard expresses the opinion 

 that France, which has produced a Montgolfier and a 



1 //-i,/. 



'~ " Le Prob'eme de I'Aviation, sa Soluti n par I'.^^roplane " (Paris : Ch. 

 Delagrave.) Price 2.50 francs. 



■' ■' Les .-V^rostats diriseables '* {Rcz'uc gcnei-ale ties Scieiues, Jun= 15 and 

 30, 1,08). 



