FlightGlobal.com
Home
Premium
Archive
Video
Images
Forum
Atlas
Blogs
Jobs
Shop
RSS
Email Newsletters
You are in:
Home
Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0126.PDF
MARCH 6t 1909. THE HUMAN SIDE OF FLYING. BEING AN ATTEMPT TO INTRODUCE THE READER TO MESSRS. ORVILLE AND WILBUR WRIGHT AT PAU. By H. MASSAC BUIST, THE algebraic, the ingeniously theoretical, the Greek dictionary, and the wildly prophetical phases of flight each and all enjoy more than a due share of prominence in an age where the beginnings of practical achievement have aroused widespread public interest in the subject of riding the wind. To be frank, in this connection algebra, Greek and theory prove on investigation to constitute a medley of fine make-believe for facts ; while mere prophecy and the making of random claims are other and more popular substitutes for facts. Yet, as one of the people, it is possible to be keenly interested in the subject of human flight without having the least respect for anything short of practical, full - scale achievement; and any degree of honest or of intelligent enthusiasm is bound to beget a healthy distaste for the time and energy-wasting processes of claiming and of prophesying. In this dilemma, how is one to approach the subject so as to come by something that shall be satisfying ? That has been my problem ; and the thought that it has been shared by others emboldens me to tell how I have begun to solve it. The first step is to become convinced that there must be a human side to flying, despite the colourless, abstract, and appallingly erudite tomes that teem from the Press turn and turn about with fancy-free, hair-raising treatises on the precise manner in which we are going to wake up one morning to find the sky darkened with an enemy's aerial fleet, that seemingly never has to come to earth for petrol-tank or other guess replenishments. These things being so, I resolved to go in quest of the present Mecca of the movement—Pau. Are you minded to go too ? For me the excursion was rendered delightful every mile of the way, because I journeyed along the true pilgrim's course, the high road, albeit in rare luxury because on a 6-cyl. Rolls-Royce car, the route followed enabling us to halt many times on the way to visit other workers at the science of flight, as at Chalons, Issy-les- Moulineaux, Juvisy, Buc, and elsewhere, so that our interest grew and grew with the miles of roadway left behind, reaching the culminating point at Pont Long. But as no words can be as full of various fascinating meanings as is the open road, I shall not make the way tedious by telling our experiences in the order of their occurrence. Instead, we will start from Pau, for you will allow that it seems impossible to take a ply in the human phases of flight without being interested in the personalities- of the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright. To follow the daily flights conveniently one needs a motor car, for the journey from Pau to Pont Long occupies an hour and a half by horse-drawn conveyance, and that is a tedious waste of time where minutes are precious. The town is quitted by the Bordeaux road. A series of large sign-boards, bearing each the legend " Champ d'Aviation," saves all trouble at the parting of the ways. By car one comes in twenty minutes' driving on some flat, open land on the left, with a large, solidL looking, reddish-brown building set back a couple of hundred yards or so from the roadway. This substantial and neatly-designed structure houses, perhaps, the most wonderful, as it is the simplest, machine yet devised by the mind of man—the four-year-old Wright biplane that the greatest men from all parts of the world have jour- neyed hundreds of miles to see, and that a king has been, proud to sit on, though he might not make a flight. -••• We are rarely fortunate among visitors, who for the most part only go out to see flights about four o'clock ini the afternoon, whereas we have set out at eight o'clock in the morning, with Miss Katherine Wright and the mail on board, and as the only other members of the party besides myself are Mr. Griffith Brewer, who repre- sents Messrs. Wright's patent rights in this country, and WHY WOULDN'T SHE START?—Wilbur Wright tries the starting bogie along the rail to see if the ball-bearing-wheels run free. On this occasion it was eventually found that the pulley-wheel at the top of the derrick had seized and jambed the rope. The group includes Orville Wright (extreme right) and the three pupils on the left. 128
Sign up to
Flight Digital Magazine
Flight Print Magazine
Airline Business Magazine
E-newsletters
RSS
Events
