THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2200, 26 May 1908, Page 4

THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR.

From 'early antiquity man has dreamed of leaving the earth and ot travelling whither he may Vs t in the air. At a moment when the realisation of that ambition seems m sight it is interesting, writes Mr 1. h. barman in the London Globe, to recall some of the most noteworthy early attempts which were made to solve the problem of flying, h rom the legeridary performance of Icarus till comparatively recent years iahnost all the inventors took the flapping of the wings of birds as their model. It was only natural that the flight of birds should serve as the principle applied in the machines heavier than the air, and yet destined to travel in it, but it is not the flapping movement but the soaring with the outstretched motionless wings which has furnished the example for the modern aeroplanes. .Apart from that of Icarus, one of the first attempts to conquer the ethereal element related in history was made in tho fourth century beforo tho Christian ere by Archytas of Tarentum, a friend of Plato. Ho is credited with having made the first kite, and according to Greek authors, ho constructed a wooden dovo which flew, but which could not-rise again after it had o nce fallen to the ground. It supported itself in the air by. an internal mechanism producing vibrations of the wings. In A.D. 66 Simon the Magician, or Mechanician, as he was also called, made flights of a certain height at Rome. The Christians of that epoch attributed his power to the Demon, and when he fell and broke his nock on the Forum his death was believed to have been brought about by the prayers of St. Peter during tho flight. Having taken the top of the tower of the Hippodrome in Constantinople as his starting point, a Saracen during the reign of Emperor Emanuel Comnenus’ suffered the same fate as Simon. His experiments were, however, based on the principle of inclined planes. In the thirteenth century tho English Franciscan monk, Roger Bacon, inaugurated a more scientific era. In his “Treatise on the Admirable Power of Art and Nature” he expounded the idea that a flying machine could bo made in which the man, sitting on it-or suspended from 'its centre, would turn a handle giving an up and down movement to the wings. Towards the end of the fifteenth century Jean Baptiste Dante, the Perotrse mathematician, constructed artificial wings, by the aid of which he is said to have risen in the air, and to have made several flights over Lake Trasimeme. History, however, relates that he broke his log when he tried to perforin in public at a fair in his native town of Perouso.