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Aviation History
1911
1911 - 0078.PDF
CORRESPONDENCE,. %• The name and address of the writer (not necessarily for publication) MUST in ah cases accompany letters intended for insertion, or containing queries. Correspondents communicating with regard to letters which Hoping, as an admirer of your magazine, that you will find they have read in FLIGHT, would much facilitate ready space for this letter in its columns. reference by quoting the number of each such letter. New York, January 4th. JOHN GUY GUPATRIC. NOTE.—Owing to the great mass of valuable and interesting corre spondence which we receive, immediate publication is impossible, but each letter will appear practically in sequence and at the earliest possible moment. Patents in 1910. [1033] Out of a total of 30,403 applications for patents filed at the Patent Office during the past year, including those which resulted in provisional protection only, there were, according to a calculation we have just made, 687 occurring under the heading of " Aeronautics." The full numbers of applications for 1909 and 1908 were 30,603 and 28,598. If the average of foreign applications has been maintained, it will be found that the high proportion of 45 per cent, or thereabouts of the total number of applications will have been from persons resident abroad, most of whom are Germans and Americans. Under our new patent system great difficulty is often experienced in overcoming the preliminary objections of the Examiner, owing to the discovery of previous patents, even though no longer in force, but it is quite the exception for a patent appli cation to be absolutely refused. According to the latest annual report, out of a gross income of ^302,000, the Patent Office handed over to the Treasury a net profit of ^94,000. STANLEY, POPPLEWELL AND CO. Neale Control. [1034] Although this is rather late in the day, I wish to call your attention to certain articles which have appeared from time to time in your valuable publication concerning the " Neale " system of control. In your issue of October 8th, 1910, you refer to this control as follows : " The Neale biplane ... is a machine that certainly does embody a method of control that is, so far as we are aware, quite original." It may interest you, therefore, to know that in the summer of 1909 Mr. Wilbur Kimball, Secretary of the New York Aero nautical Society, constructed at the Morris Park aerodrome of that Society a full sized biplane controlled laterally by movable vertical panels set between the ends of the main planes. To increase the effectiveness of his invention, Mr. Kimball placed four of these panels on each end of his machine. The aeroplane itself was driven by eight (although I am not positive of this number) small propellers placed in the rear of the planes. After some practice, Mr. Kimball succeeded in getting off the ground, but one day, when flying low, he had the misfor tune to wreck his machine against a fence—not without proving, however, the soundness of his principle. Early in the autumn. Dr. William Greene, the prominent aviator and manufacturer, came to New York from Ohio to experiment at the grounds of the Society with his Curtiss type biplane. (When I say Curtiss type, I mean that the machine was laterally balanced by the shoulder-fork, and that the machine generally resembled a Curtiss.) After making many fine flights, in one of which he carried two passengers beside himself, Dr. Greene sold his biplane to Mr. Kimball. The latter removed the ailerons and in their place inserted vertical panels. The machine was then taken to some small town in New Jersey, presumably Railway, at which place Mr. Kimball established a private flying ground. Here experiments were carried on with great success, although not much is generally known concerning them. In the winter of 1910, however, the writer had the good fortune of being one of an aeroplane model class under Mr. Kimball. At one of the meetings of the class, Mr. Kimball remarked that he had recently made a flight of over a quarter of a mile in his machine. By this time, the record has probably been increased. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the so-called " Neale " control was actually tlown with in the United Slate*, and in an American machine with an 4 merican aviator in 1909. •• Proof of the above statements may be had from the Aero nautical Society, New York. How long ago Neale first flew with his control in England, I do not, of course, know. Paterson and King Biplane. [1035] 1 enclose a photo taken at about 4 o'clock on December 31st afternoon, showing the wrecked biplane of Messrs. Paterson and King on the sands at Freshfi sld. They had flown to Southport (Paterson as pilot and King as passenger and were within about 300 yds. of their hangar on the return journey and close to the sands about to land, when a sudden gust caught the left plane and drove the right plane into the sand. Fortunately neither were hurt, but the machine was badly smashed as you can see from the photo. It might be of interest to readers of FLIGHT, which I may say I look forward to each week. Waterloo Park. T. E. C. WILSON. The Dipping Front Edge. [1036] I was greatly interested in Mr. Morris' letter (844) in a recent issue of FLIGHT, as I also believe that the dipping front edge principle is wrong. Briefly, my arguments are these : The cyclic up-currents are caused by the action of the sustaining surface on the air immediately in front of the leading edge. Therefore, by Newton's law, the air in being thus deflected exerts a downward reaction on the aeroplane, which must exactly neutralise the lifting effect due to bringing the up-current back to the horizontal. Thus the net lift due to the up-current is zero. Also, the theory of the dipping front edge is based on the assumption that since a cyclic current is present with a flat plane it is present if the surface k curved. I maintain that this assumption is not justified. Let a flat plane be moving horizontally as in Fig. 1. In this case there can be no up currents. Now let the rear 80
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