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Aviation History
1912
1912 - 0670.PDF
L/jjGHT] By this time the pilot, together with his machine, is falling with sufficient velocity to reverse the direction of flight of the envelope with such speed as to open the parachute immediately. The airman not being strapped to his machine is lifted from it and is gently lowered to earth with comparative safety- Mr. Hearne, in his article in Fry's Magazine of last August, says that ** all aeroplane failures do not occur close to earth, and if a quick-acting apparatus could be devised, it might prove very useful as a safeguard." Nairobi, British E. Africa. FREDERICK J. GOSDEN. ® ® ® ® RECENT BOOKS. DURING the past few weeks three or four books of considerable interest have been published, which many of our readers will doubtless like to place in that section of their libraries reserved for aeronautic literature. This same section by the way should be assuming a much more attractive appearance than it had a few years ago, for if we may judge from our own shelves, which now exist in a state of overcrowded untidiness, we should say that even a moderate bibliophile must already be making a very presentable show. The works that we have under review at the moment seem to form a kind of graduated scale of reading, which, starting with simple history, rises crescendo to a pure mathematical note in a book by Prof. G. H. Bryan on " Stability in Aviation." How many of those who buy a work of this character really sit down with serious intention of mastering its contents, would itself form a problem scarcely less abstruse than some of those that the author attacks with a full broadside of equations. Nevertheless, there is this to be said for Prof. Bryan's book, which should encourage some among the less enthusiastic mathematicians to acquire it as a standby, which is, that it has its summary at the beginning instead of at the end. In too many of these mathematical works, there is no summary worth speaking of at all, and although the student will not find in the first eighteen pages of Prof. Bryan's book a ready- made plan of a completely stable aeroplane, yet he may succeed in feeling a little more at home with his subject before striking out into the sea of abstruse calculations that form the main portion of the text. There is at least one class of reader who should go in not only undaunted but with some feeling of joy, and it is to him in particular that the author appeals when he remarks how " any honours student who devotes a year or more to a systematic study of hydrodynamics will, at the end of that time, have little prospect of finding any problem practical or unpractical which has not already been solved and which he can approach with any reasonable chance of obtaining a solution or results worth publishing. The present subject, on the other hand, literally bristles with unsolved problems, and the difficulty is not so much that the problems are insoluble as that their solutions are long and tedious. For this reason it is important that the number of persons interested in the subject should no longer be merely countable on the fingers of one hand." In the " Mechanics of the Aeroplane," Capt. Duchene has written a meritorious book of the simple scientific order that it would have been a pity to have confined solely to those whose familiarity with written French includes a sufficiently wide technical vocabulary to enable them to peruse a treatise of this kind in its original language with interest, pleasure and profit. Capt. Duchene's work, however, has been translated into English and its field of interest thereby extended ; moreover, the names of its translators give confidence to the student in his anticipation of a usefully spent hour or so of study. We know of none better fitted to undertake the work of dealing sympathetically, if we may use the expression, with an original aeronautic treatise than Mr. J. H. Ledeboer and Mr. T. O'B. Hubbard. Both are students themselves and both are possessed of the editorial experience and facility of expression that is necessary to the successful accomplishment of the task such as they have just undertaken. In translating the " Mechanics of the Aeroplane" they have ably assisted the author in placing on our English bookshelves a new work that is well worthy of being there. With whatever indifference we may cast an eye upon the doings of the feathered denizens of our universe, the fact remains, as the author of "The Flight of Bird>" remarks, that they are still the master pilots of the world. Mr. F. W. Headley has been a close student of bird flight for a long while and he is to be numbered among those who have combined an appreciation of the advantages of the camera as an automatic recorder of visual impressions with a singular dexterity in its practical use. Of the contents of his book there is nothing that surpasses the merit of his photographs. Those taken of pigeons at close quarters form a wonderfully fascinating collection of bird flight studies. As the author of "The Structure and Life of Birds" Mr. Headley naturally has something to say about the machinery of bird flight, and perhaps the following abstract from the chapter devoted to the scaffolding of the wing " may serve to interest readers in this book who might not other- JULY 20, 1912. wise be tempted to acquire what they may be inclined to believe is merely another book about birds." " The scaffolding of the wing is itself very light, the thickest of the bones, the humerus, is hollow in big birds that are strong or. the wing. In some, the bones are hollow right to the finger tips ; there is an opening in each bone at the near end ; a thin pulmonary membrane enters there and thus they are filled with air that has passed through the lungs .... the fact that large birds have more aeration than small demands explanation. The small bird would gain but little in lightness, since each bone consists almost entirely of its exterior shell." And, finally, having descended the literary scale in so far as the scale is a measure of the abstruseness of the subjects discussed, we come to the little history that has just been published by the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. This little book has primarily been prepared for the purpose of putting on record in an attractive form, circumstances surrounding the foundation of this historic institution forty-five years ago when aviation was yet a dream. As a matter of fact, however, the author has taken the opportunity of tracing as a connected story, the outline of the history of the aeronautic movement from the end of the eighteenth century to the present time. Several readers of FLIGHT have, we know, often felt the need of just such a little book as this, and the humble shilling that it costs could scarcely be better spent, seeing that the book in question has been so attractively produced and contains so much that is both interesting and valuable. For one reason, if for no other, it should be possessed by all, which is that the information it contains is published under an PSgis, that is a guarantee of accuracy, and as much of the early history of aviation is so apt to be misrepresented by writers who are not quite sure of their ground, it is of the utmost consequence that the interested reader should have a reliable book of reference with which he can make himself once and for all time acquainted with the facts. ® ® ® ® NEW COMPANY REGISTERED. Breguet Aeroplanes, Ltd., 1, Albemarle Street, W.— Capital .£30,000, in 29,000 ordinary shares of £1 each and 4,000 deferred shares of 5-f. each. Acquiring the exclusive right to manufacture Louis Breguet aeroplanes in the United Kingdom and its Colonies, Protectorates, and Dependencies, and in India and Egypt, &c. ® ® ® ® Aeronautical Patents Published. Applied for In I it II Published July 18th, 1912. 15,058. A. DOUTKE. Aeronautical machines. PRINCIPAL CONTENTS. * Editorial Comment An Empire Fund for Military Aviation. The Military Competitions—The Machines Air Eddies. By " Oiseau Bleu" From the British Flying Grounds The late Capt. E. B. Loraine. A Patriotic Appeal Royal Aero Club. Official Notices Flight Technology. Drift Wires A New Compass British Notes of the Week Hendon Second July Meeting The Royal Flying Corps The St. Malo-Jersey Aeroplane Competition Airship News Foreign Aviation News New Records Models. Conducted by V. E. Johnson, M.A Progress of Flight about the Country Correspondence PAGR 64S 649 653 654 658 659 660 661 662 663 663 664 ... 664 665 666 667 668 669 FLIGHT 44, ST. MARTIN'S LANE, LONDON, W.C Telegraphic address : Truditur, London. Telephone : 1828 Gerrard. S U BSCRIPTION RATES. FLIGHT will be forwarded, post free to any part of the world at the following rates:— UNITED KINGDOM. ABROAD. s. d. s. d. 3 Months, Post Free ... 1 8 3 Months, Post Free... 2 9 6 „ „ -33 6 .. M ••• 5 6 12 „ „ ... 6 6 12 „ „ ... 11 0 Cheques and Post Office Orders should be made payable 10 the Proprietors of FLIGHT, 44, St. Martin's Lane, W.C., and crossed London County and Westminster Bank, otherwise no responsibility will be accepted. Should any difficulty be experienced in procuring FLIGHT jrom local newsvenaors, intending readers can obtain each issue direct from the Publishing Office, by forwarding remittance as above. 67O
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