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Man May Yet Fly

Man May Yet Fly image
Parent Issue
Day
28
Month
September
Year
1894
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

Can a man fly? Learned professors of the scienoes of aeronáutico agree tiiat he cannot, and a formidable commission of experts appointed by tb e Germán government to investígate into the possibilitiesof aerial navigation have final - ly and decisively and officially said that it is impossible. Still an ingenieras and observant Germán of the name of Otto Lilienthal, af ter a long series of experiments and in the face of the decisions of the eminent scientists, has succeeded in proving that a clever man can fly, and fly for considerable distanoes too. Professor Lilienthal, like most men who have solved difficult problems, has gone clear away from the principies to which other men have found limitations. When he decided to fly, in other words, he left the possibilities aftorded by the balloon entirely ont of his calculations. Balloons, said he, are crude affairs, dangerous, not to be depended upon, nondirigible and clnmsy. There is nothing in nature built upon the principie of the balloon, yet there are things in nature which can fly, and fly much better thau the best balloons. Those things are birds. To the birds, then, I will go for the model of my flying machine. And to the birds he went. From these same birds it was that Professor Lilienthal learned tho true principies of aerial navigation, which principies he has succeeded to a degree in adapting to the uses of man. He flrst learned that it is the concave shape of a bird's wing that enables it to soar, rising or falling at will without muscular exertion in the teeth of a high wind. Then he learned that a bird's wing bones are constrncted similarly to those ia aman's arm. Knowing these things, he built his flying machine, or, to be more correct, his soaring machine. He made far himself of light but impervious cotton clothand split willow wands two immense wings 23 feet from tip to tip, and a practicable if not highly ornamental radder or tail. He preserved in their constrnction as nearly as possible the form of a bird's wings and tail, increasing the parabolic curve of the bird's wings to the exact proportionate degree for his larger ones. These wings and the tail, weighing in all only 25 pounds, are so constructed as to fold up like the wings of a bat. Having completed them, the professor ad j usted them to his arms, took a run along a hilltop and calrnly and confideutly juinped over the side, spreading his wings as he did so. He soared 6ome distance and, alighted, n s_af ety and comfort. He repeated his experfment many, rnany times, leaming how to control hi3 apparatus, how to chango direction, how to rise or descend at will. He improvecl his wings and tail and kept on practicing until now he eau soar for several hundred yards, rise to a much greater height than he started from and fulfill most of the f unctions of a big bird, save only that of propelling himaelf in still air and starting his flight from level gronnd. These two things a man is not strong enough to do, the bird possessiug much greater strength for its size and weight than the most muscular maa. But what Professor Lilienthal lacks in streugth he has made up in ingenuify, for he has now conatructed a littls motor, operated by carbonic acid gas, which, while it adds scarcely anything to the weight of his flying apparatus, is capable of developing continuously two horsepower, or more than euough energy to work the wings. Indeed iu the first trial the little motor developed too much strength and broke the wings, putting a Btop to further experiments for the time. If Professor Lilienthal succeeda in perf ecting the great invention, the practicability of which he has already demonstrated, and in making aerial navigation on the simple principies favored by the birds safe for mankind, he will have achieved a notable triumph over the wonderftil forces of nature as well as the world's greatjst scieutists. And he seems veiy likely to succeed, unless he should grow oareless in handling his experimental wings and perohanoe fall victim to the awfnlfaio which overtook the lamonted and !?'jïnrlary I;%arus, the

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Subjects
Ann Arbor Argus
Old News