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Aviation History
1910
1910 - 0122.PDF
(/OGHT) FEBRUARY 19, 1910. 29 .OGRESS IN BRITAIN. ALTHOUGH during the past couple of years the charge that Great Britain was lagging behind in the race for the supremacy of the air has had all too much foundation in fact, the position is, we are glad to think, so far improving, that we can now begin to look forward into the future with some complacency. We do not say that anything like all has been done that might have been, or that we are yet well on the way towards taking the place in aviation that in years past we should have considered ours by prescriptive right in the development of mechanical science. Possibly we have less imagination than we had in past generations, and perhaps our forte has become that of development rather than invention. But be that as it may, although, perhaps, as a nation we have not done all that we would have liked to have done in the discovery of first principles, we are endeavouring to atone now for our lapses, and are making up a good deal of the lost ground. Much good, and to a great extent unobtrusive work is being done in many quarters, as is being evidenced in the pages of FLIGHT week by week of late. Our past few con secutive issues have contained numerous descriptions of all- British aeroplanes and all-British dirigibles, while almost every day brings us fresh news of development in one detail or another. There can be no question but that British enterprise has begun to go ahead in an eminently satisfactory manner, albeit this country still has a long way to go before it can actually claim to have regained its rightful place among the nations. For some of our backwardness we may lay the blame at the door of those too conservative authorities who, ostrich-like, have declined to believe until the knowledge was forced upon them that the science of flight was one worthy of serious encouragement. In this, as in many other directions, it has been left to the private inventor and experimenter to do all the spade-work, without help, or even sympathy, from the State, while foreign Governments were en couraging the newly-fledged science financially, and in every other way that far-sighted patriotism could suggest. Even now, the British aviator probably receives less encouragement from the State than any of his foreign rivals. It would seem indeed that in the eyes of the permanent officials of the Government the inventor is a person who is a serious nuisance, to be ignored at any cost. But even if there is not much help to be got from those to whom one naturally looks for it for the advance ment of a science like aviation, which has so tremendous a bearing upon the question of national defence, splendid headway is assured now that His Majesty the King has come forward to the rescue. Not only has he graciously given his patronage to the near approaching Aero Show at Olympia, but just as we go to press we learn officially that King Edward has granted per mission to the Aero Club of the U.K. to use the prefix " Royal." The mere fact that the head of the State is so alive to the possibilities of the movement must in itself produce a marked all-round effect. It must of necessity have a beneficent influence upon the industry itself, because even the most sceptical of people must realise that there is a great immediate future for aviation if the King himself agrees to associate his name with the second Aero Show held in Great Britain. As is known by every student of flight who has graduated through automobilism—and most have—it was many years before those same honours were accorded to automobilism in this country, and on this fact we may justifiably congratulate ourselves, particularly in view of the far- reaching influence which His Majesty's patronage is bound to exert upon aeronautic progress at home. The mention of automobilism in connection with aviation leads us once more to the consideration of how vastly the latter has benefited by the heavy spade-work that has been done in the past by the Royal Automobile Club, and by the automobile movement generally, this having undoubtedly assisted enormously in obtaining thus early a dignified recognition for the new industry, which is at once a sport as well. In many ways aviation has benefited from this spade-work of which we speak. In the face of much opposition and many discouragements, the R.A.C. persevered with the task of lifting automobilism from the status of a movement that was as an Ishmaelite in the land to that of universal recognition as one of the most powerful factors in the development of civilised life, and as having the support and approval of every section of the community, from the King himself to the humblest of his subjects, who avails himself of the motor 'bus to take him to and from his daily toil. How well the Club has succeeded in this work it is unnecessary for us to elaborate at the moment —its record stands so that he who runs may read. The official and the public mind have been educated in such a way that all the later developments in automobilism, which if they had come suddenly without this preparatory education would have aroused fresh opposition and fresh prejudice, are now apt to be looked upon as almost commonplace, and to be greeted simply as the natural and progressive outcome of an industry that is firmly established. Aviation itself, as a development of auto mobilism in its widest sense, may not yet be looked upon by the man in the street as commonplace, but it is already being treated by the generality of people with a recognition of its possibilities almost amounting to familiarity. For this we are more indebted to the automobile movement and its representative bodies than most of us are in the habit of recognising. Taken altogether, the prospects of aviation in Great Britain may be viewed with a good deal of confidence and hope for the future, both in the hands of the State itself and of those private individuals who are spending time, money, and thought in the pioneer work which is doing for this new industry and sport what similar work in another direction has done for the motor industry. The history of motoring in this country is an exemplifica tion of what we may quite justifiably anticipate in the case of flight—except that we do not start with repressive legislation already on the Statute Book. Other countries, more imaginative, or with the inventive faculty better developed, obtained a substantial lead over ourselves, but although tardy in getting seriously to work, and hampered to some extent by conservatism and an un willingness to plagiarise, it is well to recognise that the lost ground is rapidly being made up, and that there is no reason why the British flight industry should not speedily attain to at least as strong a position as that of any other country. There was at one time far more leeway to pick up in the automobile industry as compared with France, Germany, and even Italy than there is to-day in connec tion with aeronautics; and yet it took but a very few years to neutralise that lead in spite of all adverse influences at home. Il8
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