The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1908. LEARNING TO FLY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2216, 13 June 1908, Page 2

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. SATURDAY, JUNE 13, 1908. LEARNING TO FLY.

Tho feat of ,-M. Delagrango, who lias just succeeded in covoring a circular course aggregating some eight miles, at Rome, impresses upon us tlio fact that mankind is actually learning to fly. Tile moro circumstance that aeroplanes now llv is significant enough. In theory we have had them with us many years, beautiful to look upon, reasoned out according to rigid mathematical data, and doing everything but ffy. But this is a -reproach that can no longer he urged against them, Delagrniigo, Forman, tlio Wrights, and others have within the last few months put it hopelessly out of date. Admittedly, tho aeroplane is still only in the experimental stage. 1 The machines that have actually flown are of small freight carrying capacity. Tho spectacle of a band of excursionists sailing merrily through the air from Dover to Calais remains in the remote future, and so does the application of tlio aoroplano to tho purposes of .war. It is entirely a matter of demonstration whether tlio box-kite system with which recent successes have been achieved will proyo adaptable on a larger scale. It is quite possible that it may not, and the real advance may proceed -in a different direction. But there are two reasons why This uncertainty as to tho course of evolution does not discount the value of present results. One is that ono actual flight, however limited, .puts more heart into tho inventor than a thousand papers read before learned societies and proving beyond doubt that a paper machine “must” ffy. Tho moment tliero is soon to be an attainable success. the inventors gather together, and it goes hard with lis if between thorn they make no progress.

And this indeed constitutes the second point. These successes .prove that the science of aerial navigation is no longor groping in the dark, and they show how fruitful is freotrado in scientific ideas. It is clear that a really dramatic flight, say across the Atlantic, may be tho achievement of anyone of a dozen pioneers now actively at work. And their undeniable successes' will go far to rescue us from the delusion of navigablo balloons. Come they in nevor so 6trange disguise they aro aiono tho less delusion, and a waste of effort so far as final conquest of the air as concerned. That conquest belongs to some form of aeroplane, though tho number of possible forms is almost infinite, and no one can say which will ultimately triumph. The .present aeroplanes aro ludicrously unlike anything imagined a decade ago by tho illustrators of popular novels, and it may well oo tint the near future will bring us forms equally unlike those that now hold the field. .But what is certain is that, as the eminent Jules Verne foresaw. the heavuer-tban-air principle is tlio one to which wo must' pin our faith. The partial successes of dirigblo balloons liavo really hindered progress. .Had it not been for tho unfortunate fact that early exponents of the aeroplane bent their endeavors to close imitation of tho motion of tlio bird’s wing, a mystery .no ono can fathom, we might have .been much further ahead; for some of the very earliest attempts at flight wore with machines heavier than air. But perhaps success was never really possible until now*, when the inventor is able to combino great rigidity of framework with lightness of construction ; and when, above all, lie is provided with a motor which generates enormous power for ‘its weight. This is tlio fundamental point, and it has made startlingly fruitful tlio splendid pioneering work of Maxim and Langley and Lilienthal.