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Aviation History
1909
1909 - 0514.PDF
AUGUST 28, 1909. THROUGHOUT the past week the greatest object-lesson and the" most convincing that has been afforded yet con- cerning the achievement of mechanical flight has been in almost continuous progress at Rheims. The value of it to the new movement is absolutely inestimable. As two days' racing have to be accomplished to bring the meeting to a close, this is scarcely the moment to pause to review the performances from the point of " breaking record," for it may well be that to-day's and to-morrow's efforts will see all previous achievements eclipsed. At the moment we are concerned with another aspect of the meeting. A week ago, when on the threshold of it, we were considering that at last a flying machine race-meeting had actually materialised, and that the vast section of the public that does not take any intimate interest in the mighty problem of aerial locomotion was about to be convinced of the possibilities and of the extraordinary stage of present practical achievement by the promptest of all processes, ocular demonstration. To-day we may do something more than look forward. We may look backward, too. During the last six days history has been made. The weather has been by no means uniformly favourable. The competitors, or rather their machines, have not behaved in every case with clockwork regularity. That is what the Cockney calls " no indebtiment." Boat racing on the surface of the water is a sport that has been in vogue from the earliest times of which we have record. Yet whenever half-a- dozen craft are pitted each against the rest, there are always a goodly percentage of breakdowns from one cause or another. Masts break, oars break, the boats get swamped, and so forth. It is so even with the living competitors. A racehorse or a steeplechaser must be regarded as a physically-perfect machine, yet the per- centage that do not finish in a given race, or that figure very poorly in it, is certainly quite high. In a word, the essence of all sport is the ever present possibility of the unexpected happening. The fact that that has occurred to sundry competitors at the Rheims Aviation Meeting is a point of scarcely any importance or consideration. Nobody would gainsay that to-day the motor car is not a practical vehicle; but let any long-distance race be organised for such machines, and the proportion that will not come to grief in the course of the competition, mostly from some trivial cause, will be less than 50 per cent. In the case of the flying machines that are at present figuring in the great meeting in France, the percentage of successful flights has been higher than that. This meeting is, in a sense, a greater test than are most competitions. Usually, in a horse race, a bicycle race, a motor car race, or any other sort of race, there is the single effort to be made and the thing is done with. jBut in the case of this Rheims meeting we find the same jnen and machines figuring dayafterday, morning and after- noon, for eight consecutive days at a spell. Surely that is a •very remarkable thing. How very different would be the :tale of all horse, motor, sailing, or other races if they .consisted in repeating the effort day after day for eight .days. Victories would go to far other ones than those who carry them under the present system. So we find it in the aerial contests that have been going forward this week. To take but a single example, early in the com- petitions the Curtiss biplane set up an European speed record which M. Louis Bleriot easily bettered the next day on a monoplane. What is .the meeting teaching the public ? Firstly, it is demonstrating beyond a shadow of doubt a very essential point that has been brought out in these columns many times already, namely, that mechanical flight does not consist in any one single style of machine, but is a principle that can be exploited in a variety of details of design, so that there may be as many types of aeroplanes as there are styles of water craft or ol horse- drawn vehicles. At present the difference between one flyer and another is scarcely so much in the matter of size—albeit, there is a wide variety between the enormous sustaining surfaces of the Cody biplane or the Antoinette monoplane and the small Bleriot monoplane—as in the various features of design. One man maintains stability and effects turning by warping the wing extremities, another moves the whole of each wing inde- pendently of the other, a third has fixed sustain- ing surfaces and auxiliary flaps, while a fourth employs minor planes, the angles of tilt of which can be altered at will. Some have a single surface, others two superposed planes, and yet others employ three-decker machines. Again, some have to fit their aeroplanes with a variety of ingenious devices in the form of springs for absorbing shocks, while other designers have found out how to dispense entirely with any means of absorbing shock. In a word, already it has been proven that man has acquired the main principles of mechanical flight, otherwise practical machines could not be designed in such a variety of fashions. It we were proceeding on merely acrobatic principles it would be found that we should be able to fly on one, or at most two, different types of machines. Instead, there are a wide variety, and as yet there are scarcely two alike, for different screws or different motors are employed for one of a given type and another aeroplane of the same make and design. The Rheims meeting marks an epoch in the history of mechanical aerial locomotion. It is the first occasion on which a wide variety of machines has been brought together, and on which one has been pitted against the other day after day, so that one day the monoplone is to the fore and the next day the biplane takes the lead; while the fact that many of the competitors have been practising on flyers for a few weeks only, reveals that the management of them can be acquired as quickly as one learns to drive a motor car. Nor were motor cars, in an equally early stage of that movement, as reliable as aeroplanes have been proving themselves at the Rheims meeting. Indeed, quite apart from bettering performances in regard to speed, height of flight, and so forth, one finds that the meeting serves to demonstrate quite a number of points as to the practical utility of such machines. For example, there was some doubt as to whether or not one flying machine would be able to pass another very close without the one upsetting the other by the dis- placement of air, or by the suction caused by the propellers and so forth. At Rheims we have seen during the past week that in a race between a monoplane and a biplane the single-surface machine has flown under the two-decker, and in ' sh a position has actually succeeded in forging ahead. ' is we know now that the close passing of one macl? e by another, whether the one above the other or sia?, by side, is possible with safety. These points have been brought out throughout the world in telegrams that have been published by the Press. The result is that none who read can scoff any longer. The age of flight is the age we live in. 516
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