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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0273.PDF
MAY I.S, 1909. in the wilds far removed from the habitation of man, that a few general particulars concerning the work in which Messrs. Harbrow specialise may be of interest to many readers of FLIGHT. And specialists in the building of sheds, certainly, are the firm of Harbrow, who have constructed at Shellbeach, in the Isle of Sheppey, the Aero Club's hangar and Short Brothers' " flight " factory. What has been done down there is an object lesson, in the first place, of the advantages which accrue to the purchaser from specialisation, for so thoroughly au fait is the firm with the exact details of the work which they undertake, that they are able to be really reasonable in in their price when circumstances might have led to the anticipation of a costly job. In the course of their long experience they have extended the nature of their work to an extent which is, of course, wholly inadequately described by the term " shed," but the term is not altogether unsuitable in some respects, for it is to be observed that in nine cases out of ten the man who wants a house for his motor car or accommodation for his flyer thinks of it as a shed in the first instance, even if a firm like Messrs. Harbrow actually gives him something very much better than he had anticipated for his money. As a matter of fact, Messrs. Harbrow themselves call their structures iron buildings, but neither is this, as they themselves point out, a wholly accurate definition, for they are really composed of timber covered with galvanized iron, lined inside with non-conducting felt, and finished off with match-boarding. Literally their range of utility extends from a kennel to a country residence, and at the same time that the motorist or aviator is having his garage put up, he can, for an equally moderate sum, have a very commodious bungalow erected on the spot alongside it. Of course, it is mainly those engaged in this latter pursuit of flight who would be likely to select the site for the domicile after they had pitched upon a likely spot for the accommodation of their machine, but if aviation becomes popular, it may not be many years before little colonies of " flight bungalows " spring up behind the " aero-sheds " on the borders of the great flight lands. FLIGHT SPEFDS OF THE FUTURE. SPEAKING before the Royal Society of Arts on Monday evening, when he delivered the last of his three Cantor Lectures on Aerial Flight, Mr. F. W. Lanchester touched upon an aspect of the problem which reflects a very important light upon its future. Starting from the point of view that a flying machine must in the end, whatever its intermediate stages, hold its place by virtue of its utility as a vehicle of locomotion, Mr. Lanchester proceeded to show how its sphere in competition with other means of progression is strictly defined by its speed capabilities. The road vehicle and the ship both do their work with greater economy than is possible with a flying machine, hence there would be no point in using the air if the earth or the sea are available, unless an increased speed were thereby obtained. Nor is this the only reason why high speed should be associated with the flying machines of the future. Any machine in the air has to contend with the wind, and while its effective speed as a vehicle of transport is its velocity relative to the earth, its capacity for speed is relative to the air in which it flies. Consequently, unless designed for flight at speeds superior to those of ordinary winds, it could only have a very limited utility. There is still one further point which makes high speed desirable, and that is the automatic stability which it confers on a machine in the presence of wind gusts. Mr. Lanchester showed by means of certain diagrams, and it can otherwise be demonstrated by models, that a gust of wind contrary to the direction of flight menaces the stability of the machine if the gust approximates in velocity to half the velocity of the machine itself. If, there- fore, the machine is to be stable in a gust of 30 miles an hour, which might be quite reasonably expected, it should fly at a speed of not less than 60 miles an hour. / r GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE THE first meeting of the new Government Advisory Committee was held at the War Office on Wednesday last, when there was a full attendance. Lord Rayleigh, the president, took the chair. Although the sitting lasted SITS. ::^r^^i • over three hours, only the methods of procedure were discussed. Mr. F. J. Selby, of the National Physical Laboratory, has been appointed Hon. Secretary to the Committee for the present. . SPREADING THE MOVEMENT. Too much stress can hardly be laid upon the advan- tages which are likely to accrue from the spreading of a definite interest in flight in the minds of the general public, and it is with the greatest satisfaction that we learn of lectures on aviation being delivered in almost unexpected quarters. There is, of course, the strongest and most direct of ties between flight and natural history, for it is, after all, the birds that show man that the conquest of the air is possible. On Friday evening of last week, when the Selborne Society—which was founded in 1885 to perpetuate the memory of Gilbert White, the author of the celebrated "Natural History of Selborne"—held its Annual Con- versazione, the principal items' on the programme were two lectures entitled " How Birds Fly" and " How Men Fly," by Mr. F. W. Headley, F.Z.S., and Mr. T. W. K. Clarke, B.A.," respectively. Both lectures were illustrated by lantern slides, and Mr. Clarke demon- strated some of his remarks by models. Mr. Headley's set of illustrations were of exceptional interest, alike to students of natural history and to those engrossed in the study of human flight. BACK NUMBERS OF FLIGHT.' THE publishers have pleasure in announcing that they have secured a few of the back issues of FLIGHT, and any of our new readers who may wish to complete their sets may obtain the first nineteen numbers for 2s. 6d. post free, from the Publishers, 44, St. Martin's Lane, W.C. 275
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