The National Geographic Magazine 



Lilienthal Gliding Machine as Reproduced in America for 

 Chanute by Herring 



ture's flying models, from the smallest 

 insect to the largest bird, are specifically 

 heavier than the air in which they fly, 

 most of them many hundreds of times 

 heavier, and that none of them adopt the 

 balloon principle in flight. It is also sig- 

 nificant in this connection that some of 

 Santos Dumont's most celebrated ex- 

 ploits were accomplished with quite a 

 small balloon, so ballasted as to sink in 

 the air instead of rise. He was then en- 

 abled, under the influence of his motive 

 power, to steer his balloon upward with- 

 out the expenditure of ballast and to de- 

 scend without the loss of gas. This 

 probably typifies, for the balloon, the di- 

 rection of change in the future. A 

 reduction in the volume of gas coinci- 

 dently with an increase in motive power 

 will lead to greater velocity of propulsion, 

 now the main desideratum. Then de- 

 pendence upon velocity for support rather 

 than gas may gradually lead to the elimi- 

 nation of the gas bag altogether ; in 

 which case the balloon will give birth to 

 a flying machine of the heavier-than-air 

 type. 



However this may 

 be, it is certainly the 

 case that the tend- 

 ency of aerial re- 

 search is today re- 

 verting more and 

 more to the old lines 

 of investigation that 

 were pursued for 

 hundreds of years 

 before the invention 

 of the balloon di- 

 verted attention from 

 the subject. The old 

 devices have been re- 

 invented ; the old ex- 

 periments have been 

 tried once more. 

 Again, the birds are 

 recognized as the 

 true models of flight, 

 and again men have 

 put on wings, but 

 this time with more 

 promise of success. 



THE GLIDING FLIGHTS OF ULIENTHAL 



Lilienthal boldly launched himself into 

 the air in an apparatus of his own con- 

 struction, having wings like a bird and a 

 tail for a rudder. Without any motor, he 

 ran down hill against the wind. Then, 

 upon jumping into the air, he found him- 

 self supported by his apparatus, and 

 glided down hill at an elevation of a few 

 feet from the ground, landing safely at a 

 considerable distance from his point of 

 departure. This exhibition of gliding 

 flight fairly startled the world, and hence- 

 forth the experiments of Lilienthal were 

 conducted in the public eye. He made 

 hundreds of successful flights with his 

 gliding machine, varying its construction 

 from time to time, and communicating to 

 the w.orld the results of his experiments 

 with practical directions how to manage 

 the machine under circumstances of diffi- 

 culty; so that, when at last he met with 

 the usual fate of his predecessors in this 

 line, the experiments were not abandoned. 

 They were continued in America by 



