Aerial Locomotion 



Langley's steam aero- 

 drome circling" in the 

 sky convinced me that 

 the age of the flying- 

 machine was at Iiand. 

 Encouraged and stim- 

 ulated b}^ this re- 

 markable exhibition 

 of success, I quietly 

 continued my experi- 

 ments in my Nova 

 Scotia laboratory in 

 the hope that I, too, 

 might be able to con- 

 tribute something of 

 value to the world's 

 knowledge of this im- 

 portant subject. 



Warned by the ex- 

 periences of others, I 

 have sought for a 

 safe method of ap- 

 proach — a method 

 that should risk hu- 

 man life as little as 

 possible during tVie 

 earlier stages of ex- 

 periment. E",xperi- 

 ments with aero- 

 dromes must neces- 

 sarily be fraught with 

 danger until man, by 

 practical experience 

 of the conditions to be 

 met with in the air 

 and of the means of 

 overcoming them, 

 shall have attained 

 skill in the control of 

 aerial apparatus. A 

 man cannot even ride 

 a bicycle without prac- 

 tice, and the birds themselves have to 

 learn to fl)-. Man, not having any in- 

 herited instincts to help him in this mat- 

 ter, must first control his flight con- 

 sciously, guided by knowledge gained 

 through experiment. Skill can only be 

 obtained by actual experience in the air, 

 and this experience will involve accidents 

 and disasters of various sorts before skill 



Soaring 



Landing 



can be obtained. If these disasters 

 should, as so often in the past, prove fatal 

 to the experimenter, the knowledge ob- 

 tained by the would-be aviator will be 

 lost to the world, and others must begin 

 all over again, instead of pursuing the 

 subject where he left off, with the benefit 

 of his knowledge and his experience. It 

 is therefore of the utmost consequence to 



