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AERONAUTICS IN AMERICA 
Its Slow but Sure Development, and Its Significance in the 
Realm of Amateur Sport 
BY CAPT. HOMER W. HEDGE 
Founder and President the Aero Club of America 
RATHER broad grin 
might have been seen 
enlivening the _ stolid 
features of Uncle Sam 
when, at the time Con- 
eresS was in_ session, 

how Senators and Rep- 
resentatives ‘‘played hookey”’ to witness 
Roy Knabenshue in one of his airship tests. 
A quorum of either house could not have 
been counted for the half hour the balloon 
remained in the vicinity of the capitol 
buildings. The desire to forget railroad 
rate legislation and the famous First Epistle 
may have had something to do with this; 
yet the spectacle in itself was attractive 
enough to interest the most indifferent. 
Crude as it is, an airship is truly a marvel- 
ous machine. 
Though it may be many years before 
we have realized the dream pictured in 
Kipling’s “The Night Mail,” progress in 
the public press told’ 
aerial travel has made wonderful strides 
during the last decade, and the keen in- 
terest displayed in all parts of the world 
at the present time augurs well for the 
future. The idea of navigating the air, like 
all great inventions, had an humble 
beginning. When in 1766 Cavendish dis- 
covered hydrogen gas, he found that it as- 
cended in air as a cork ascends through 
water. A few years later soap bubbles 
filled with gas were sent up. These were 
probably the first balloons. 
A few years later the Montgolfier brothers 
made hot-air balloons which rose to a height 
of a mile and a-half. Needless to say their 
efforts caused quite a stir. It is curious and 
instructive to note the endeavors which 
with an almost childish simplicity balloon- 
ists at first made to handle their unwieldy 
craft. Huge oars were used as paddles, 
and when these proved ineffectual in chang- 
ing the balloon’s horizontal course they were 
used in an attempt to work it upward or 
Copyright, t90¢, by Wa. E. ANNIS 
