Part 7 (2/2)

The foregoing instances of construction are cited to show how wildly the imagination will roam when it follows wrong ideals.

THE TAIL AS A MONITOR.--The tendency of the center of pressure to change necessitates a correctional means, which is supplied in the tail of the machine, just as the tail of a kite serves to hold it at a correct angle with respect to the wind and the pull of the supporting string.

CHAPTER VII

ABNORMAL FLYING STUNTS AND SPEEDS

”PEQUOD, a Frenchman, yesterday repeatedly performed the remarkable feat of flying with the machine upside down. This exhibition shows that the age of perfection has arrived in flying machines, and that stability is an accomplished fact.”--News item.

This is quoted to show how little the general public knows of the subject of aviation. It correctly represents the achievement of the aviator, and it probably voiced the sentiment of many scientific men, as well as of the great majority of aviators.

A few days afterwards, the same newspaper published the following:

”Lieutenant ----, while experimenting yesterday morning, met his death by the overturning of his machine at an alt.i.tude of 300 meters.

Death was instantaneous, and the machine was completely destroyed.”

The machines used by the two men were of the same manufacture, as Pequod used a stock machine which was strongly braced to support the inverted weight, but otherwise it was not unlike the well known type of monoplane.

Beachy has since repeated the experiment with a bi-plane, and it is a feat which has many imitators, and while those remarkable exhibitions are going on, one catastrophe follows the other with the same regularity as in the past.

Let us consider this phase of flying. Are they of any value, and wherein do they teach anything that may be utilized,

LACK OF IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINES.--It is remarkable that not one single forward step has been taken to improve the type of flying machines for the past five years. They possess the same shape, their stabilizing qualities and mechanism for a.s.suring stability are still the same.

MEN EXPEDITED, AND NOT THE MACHINE.--The fact is, that during this period the man has been exploited and not the machine. Men have learned, some few of them, to perform peculiar stunts, such as looping the loop, the side glide, the drop, and other features, which look, and are, hazardous, all of which pander to the sentiments of the spectators.

ABNORMAL FLYING OF NO VALUE.--It would be too broad an a.s.sertion to say that it has absolutely no value, because everything has its use in a certain sense, but if we are to judge from the progress of inventions in other directions, such exhibitions will not improve the art of building the device, or make a fool-proof machine.

Indeed, it is the very thing which serves as a deterrent, rather than an incentive. If machines can be handled in such a remarkable manner, they must be, indeed, perfect! Nothing more is needed! They must represent the highest structural type of mechanism!

That is the idea sought to be conveyed in the first paragraph quoted. It is pernicious, instead of praiseworthy, because it gives a false impression, and it is remarkable that even certain scientific journals have gravely discussed the perfected (?) type of flying machine as demonstrated by the experiments alluded to.

THE ART OF JUGGLING.--We may, occasionally, see a cyclist who understands the art of balancing so well that he can, with ease, ride a machine which has only a single wheel; or he can, with a stock bicycle, ride it in every conceivable att.i.tude, and make it perform all sorts of feats.

It merely shows that man has become an expert at juggling with a machine, the same as he manipulates b.a.l.l.s, and wheels, and other artifices, by his dexterity.

PRACTICAL USES THE BEST TEST.--The bicycle did not require such displays to bring it to perfection.

It has been the history of every invention that improvements were brought about, not by abnormal experiments, but by practical uses and by normal developments.

The ability of an aviator to fly with the machine in an inverted position is no test of the machine's stability, nor does it in any manner prove that it is correctly built. It is simply and solely a juggling feat--something in the capacity of a certain man to perform, and attract attention because they are out of the ordinary.

CONCAVED AND c.o.xVEX PLANES:--They were performed as exhibition features, and intended as such, and none of the exponents of that kind of flying have the effrontery to claim that they prove anything of value in the machine itself, except that it incidentally has destroyed the largely vaunted claim that concaved wings for supporting surfaces are necessary.

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