SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY. 
17 
which would have disheartened an ordinary man, success 
came in the spring of 1896, when a steam-driven aerodrome 
constructed under Mr. Langley’s direction in his own shops, 
engine and all, actually flew for three-quarters of a mile or 
more over the Potomac river. This remarkable success had 
world- wide recognition. It was communicated to learned 
bodies, was the talk of the newspapers, and in a specially 
written article in McClure’s Magazine Mr. Langley him- 
self described this trial and how he came to enter upon 
the subject. From his own words we learn that this was a 
problem with him from childhood days; that he used to lie 
in a New England pasture and watch the hawks soaring far 
up in the blue, and sailing for a long time without any mo- 
tion of their wings, and this question he thought of in ma- 
ture life, and set himself to inquire whether the prob- 
lem of artificial flight was as hopeless and as absurd as it 
was thought to be. “Nature,” he says, “has solved it, and 
why not man?” And with this question he described the 
experiments with the whirling table down to the actual flight. 
As was his wont, he discussed the attempts of those who came 
before him, and in simple language explained the theory 
upon which mechanical flight would be possible. This 
article, printed in 1897, closed with the following paragraph : 
“I have thus far had only a purely scientific interest in the 
results of these labors. Perhaps if it could have been fore- 
seen at the outset how much labor there was to be, how much 
of life would be given to it, and how much care, I might 
have hesitated to enter upon it at all. And now reward must 
be looked for, if reward there be, in the knowledge that I 
have done the best I could in a difficult task, with results 
which it may be hoped will be useful to others. I have 
brought to a close the portion of the work which seemed tc 
be specially mine — the demonstration of the practicability of 
mechanical flight — and for the next stage, which, is the com- 
mercial and practical development of the idea, it is probable 
that the world may look to others. The world, indeed, will 
be supine if it do not realize that a new possibility has come 
to it, and that the great universal highway overhead is now 
soon to be opened.” 
3— Bull. Phil. Soc., Wash., Vol. 15. 
