Category: Aviation & flight

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 334

Dropping bombs from flying machines had lost much of its newish noirness by 1915, even though the whole idea of the practical applications of  dropping explosives on people was only four years old. That sort of high explosive newness can be shed very quickly, given the immediacy of its action. But Londoners were outraged enough in 1915 to label the bombing of populated non-military targets as murder, as the title of this full-page print screams from the 23 October 1915 issue of The Illustrated London News in our second post on the history of aerial bombing.  The subtitle reads: “Like a thief in the Night:  One of the Fleet of Hostile Airships Which Raided this Country on October 13 Over the London Area—Shells from Anti-Aircraft Guns Bursting About It.”  It continues: “lives lost and damage done without the shadow of military excuse” is how it was quietly referred to in the text, the the subtle image is anything but–it is quiet, but it is also cold, and scary, the menacing zeppelin shown floating darkly deadly above the roofs and chimney tops of residential houses.  The point of the picture was crystal clear–the enemy was practicing something new, and that something new was directed at civilians, and that it could be crushing and deadly and a threat everywhere.

The Zeppelins were new to war, having been first brought to development in 1900; by the beginning of the war, in 1914, the Germans had two operational airships that could reach an altitude of about 4500 feet and carry 4400 pounds of bombs.  Their first raid on England came on 31 May 1915 and within the year would kill 550 British citizens, though the costs to the Germans were so high (77 of 115 active Zeppelins would be either destroyed or damaged beyond repair by June 1917) that the air attacks would be suspended in July 1917.

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 333


I’m not
sure why the Wright Brothers’ experimental gliding flight was so much in
competition with other pressing scientific news of the day that reports on
their progress was relegated to the middle of this issuer of Scientific
American for 22 February 1902. 
The report is sandwiched in between “Winter Railroading in Alaska”, “Experiments of M.
Moissan  with hybrids of potassium” and “A
Garbage-Consuming plant” on the page opposite and “Alloys for Brass and Bronze
“ just below it.  And as it turns out
there are more words devoted to the Alaska railroading article than to the
Wrights as well.  There are dozens of
articles given better placement in this issue: steam boiler inspection, variable
speed gears for pumps, making photographs with electric headlights, domestic
manufacturing of Portland cement, assorted announcements of electrical
progress, and other such stuff. The front page of the issue is
dedicated to the new bridge of the Redheugh Bridge at Newcastle-on-Tyne; the Wright article follows on
page 8.

Even
though the brothers had been experimenting with gliding flight at Kill Devil
since 1900, reports of their activities had been under-reported, if popularly
reported at all.  And this seems to have
suited them—they seemed not to need publicity, or recognition.  After all, they had made incomparable strides
since they first became interested in flight in 1896 following the failure of Samuel
Langley and the Potomac River crash of his aerodrome. (Just for the record, Alex Bell also referred to
his aircraft as aeromdomes.)

This report
for February seems to be the earliest of the 1902 flights in North Carolina,
with the principle difference (from what I can see) is that this earlier glider
didn’t yet have a tail which would make an appearance a little latter in the
year (followed by a very critical discovery on the need for the maneuverability
of the tail.) It also seems that the 1902 gliders were as different from the
1901 gliders as the 1903 glider/plane would be from the 1902 model.

Still,
given the competing news of the day, and the importance of the Wrights’
experiments, and the amount of interest in flight at this time,  it is a little mysterious to me why the report
on their sandy accomplishments got so gobbled up in the nonchalant scientific
bric-a–brac of 1902. 

Notes:

Since this is outside my area I
quote liberally from the US Commission on the Centennial of Flight for a more
exact description of the difference of the gliders between 1901 and 1902:

“Their 1902 glider had a new wing with a shallow camber
and high aspect ratio. It was a major departure from their earlier machines. It
had roughly the same wing surface area as the 1901 machine, but the
similarities ended there. The wingspan was ten feet (three meters) longer and
the chord two feet (0.6 meter) shorter than the old machine, making the glider
look larger and more graceful. It had an overall length of 16 feet (5 meters)
and weighed 112 pounds (51 kilograms). The wing camber followed a shallow
parabolic curve, and the elevator
was extended farther out in front of the pilot. This gave it more leverage,
which allowed better control. The 1902 glider also had a new rudder that consisted of two fixed vertical surfaces located
behind the aircraft . Wilbur and Orville calculated that these would help
prevent the skidding that had occurred when they warped the wings.”

 And the following on the 1902 flights from

Orville Wright “How We Made the First Flight”:

“The flights of the 1902 glider
had demonstrated the efficiency of our system for maintaining equilibrium, and
also the accuracy of the laboratory work upon which the design of the glider
was based. We then felt that we were prepared to calculate in advan ce the
performance of machines with a degree of accuracy that had never been possible
with the data and tables possessed by our predecessors. Before leaving camp in
1902 we were already at work on the general design of a new machine which we
proposed to propel with a motor

JF Ptak Science Books LLC  Post 329


In early 1908 the future of aviation in
Europe was tucked away in a crate in

France

.  The hommes oiseaux, the Wright Brothers, were
about to show the Europeans what flying was—and flying was definitely not what
the Europeans had been doing.  The
difference between the Wrights and everyone else was obvious:  the Wrights were flying; they were elegant,
crafted, flexible, viable, and their movements in their craft were convincing
that they really did belong there.  The
European efforts in the air to 1908 were heavy, big and box-y, forced; they
made things try to fly, rather than fly.

Henry Farman was perhaps the greatest of the
early European aviators, owning several of the continental flight duration
records, though no one in

Europe

had been in
the air for more than one minute prior to 1908. 
But Farman achieved a major success in January 1908 that was of a sort of
monumental stature that is difficult to understand today.  And what he did was this:  for the first time in

Europe

he flew an aeroplane in a circle.  On 15
January he was the only one top complete a one-kilometer circular course,
taking with him the vaunted Deutsch-Archdeacon prize. What this meant though
was a huge jump in the control of the flying machine; it became right there no
longer a flying car, but an aeroplane with more

delicate controls.  [The image above shows Farman in a photo from The Illustrated London News for 18 January 1908, just taking off.  I get the very definite sense of him leaning forward, feeling the tension of the moment.]

But the Americans were masters of the air,
having by far the most successes, and traveled further and faster and with
more élan and capacity than anyone else anywhere—and by wide margins.   But to this point the Europeans had only
read of their accomplishments, and had seen only still photos.  There was no way for them to appreciate the
magnitude of the Wrights’ accomplishments via those media.  Their frustration could be seen in this image
from The Illustrated London News of 15 June 1908, which screamed “Wright’s
Secret of Flying revealed at Last: Photographs of the Mysterious Aeroplane”.
The big page showed an artist’s representation of the two-person flyer along
with a smaller, smudgy photo of the great machine in flight.

This photo would have to suffice for the
moment, as Wilbur Wright was busy trying to repair his crated plane, which was,
incredibly, damaged by customs inspectors. 
The plane was finally ready and on 8 August Wilbur flew—he made tight,
effortless turns, demonstrated exceptionally able control, flew low and high,
fast and slow, and made lovely landings. 
His crowd included the most celebrated flyers on the continent—they were
all uniformly astonished, leading some to say, for the record, that compared to
the Wrights, the Europeans had done absolutely nothing.  Wilbur Wright was an enormous hero, feted far
and wide, making some 200 flights over the next year.  The Wright Brothers’ plane was finally seen
and inspected,. And all of the claims of greatness seemed to be surpassed by
their physical demonstrations.

The most interesting part for me is that, even five years following their first successful heavier-than-air flight in Kill Devil, North Carolina, the astonishing correctness of their accomplishment could not be fully appreciated without their flyer being seen in operation, and in person.