Aerial root

“ The narrative of the first aerial voyage, written by one of the two first aeronauts, exists, and we are in a position to place it before our readers. Such an enterprise certainly demanded great courage in him who was the first to dare to confide himself to the unknown currents of the atmosphere It threatened him with dangers, perhaps with death by a fill, by fire, by cold, or by straying into the mysterious cloud-land. ”

“ The twofold character of the aerial principles is increased by every polarizing action from without, and therefore principally by the surface of the earth, which consists of two elements. Were there no surface to the earth, were simply air present, then there would be no electrical change of poles. ”

“ We are at present specially engaged with the narrative of the first attempts in aerostation—the first experiments in the new discovery. We have followed with interest the exciting details of the first adventurous ascents, in which the genius of man first essayed the unexplored paths of the heavens. Yet a continued record of aerial voyages would not be of the same interest. The results of subsequent expeditions, and the impressions of subsequent aeronauts are the same as those already described, or differ from them only in minor points. No important advance is recorded in the art. ”

“ To those who, from a modest beginning and with gradually increased extent and elevation of flight have gained full control over the apparatus, it is not in the least dangerous to cross deep and broad ravines. It is a difficult task to convey to one who has never enjoyed aerial flight a clear perception of the exhilarating pleasure of this elastic motion. ”

“ May not our mechanicians, in like manner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of that great class of problems with which man can never cope, and give up all attempts to grapple with it? ”

“ NAVIGATING THE AIR IF it were possible to regard all medieval literature without more than a grain of doubt, we must believe that aerial flight by human beings was accomplished long before science had risen even to the dignity of acquiring its name. Thus, it is recorded by a medieval historian that during the reign of Charlemagne some mysterious persons having acquired some knowledge of aerostatics from the astrologers, who were credited with numerous supernatural powers, constructed a flying-machine, and compelling a few peasants to enter it, sent them off on an aerial voyage. ”

“ Proposed to be extended by the author to include the aerodynamics and aerodonetics of flight. The whole science concerned with the flight of an aerodrome. Thus the present work may be entitled a Treatise on Aerodromics, and the whole subject of aerial flight would be dealt with at a College or University by a lecturer or professor of Aerodromics. ”

“ The physical exertion demanded of the mountaineer is entirely absent in the case of an aeronaut who is sailing at perfect ease in a free balloon. Moreover, it must be remembered that—a most important consideration—the aerial voyager, necessarily travelling with the wind, is unconscious, save at exceptional moments, of any breeze whatever, and it is a well-established fact that a degree of cold which might be insupportable when a breeze is stirring may be but little felt in dead calm. ”

“ The problems that arise in connection with the study of Aerial Flight are so numerous and of so diverse a character that, except for their relation to the title subject, they would scarcely find place in one volume. In the present work an attempt is made, it is believed for the first time, to treat the classification of the phenomena associated with the study of Flight on a comprehensive and scientific basis. ”

“ The aerial ship is to be buoyed up in the air by being suspended from four globes, made of thin copper sheeting, each of them about twenty-five feet in diameter. From these globes the air is to be exhausted, so that each of them, being lighter than air, will support the weight of two or three men. ”

“ The air is an ocean that gives uninterrupted access to every corner of the land and every reach of the sea. The air force is charged with responsibility for keeping the airlanes open to aerial commerce and should be provided with the ground or sea transport necessary to that job, but by the same token the ground and sea forces must develop and control all the instruments they require to perform their functions. And aside from the sound basis for this concept that lies in logic, the record is clear that it is equally sound in practice. ”

“ They radiate from the aerial like the ripples from a pebble in a pool of water, in gradually enlarging circles. If a cross section of the aerial and atmosphere could be made in the same manner that an apple can be sliced with a knife, and the waves held stationary long enough to see them, they would appear as in Fig. 8. The curved lines represent the lines of strain induced by the oscillations. Each group of lines represents a wave. It will be noticed as they radiate farther from the aerial that they become larger and spread out. ”

“ It is important, therefore, that the aëronautical student should have some acquaintance with the general properties of the air which affect its density, and some knowledge of the generation and prevalence both of the great currents of the atmosphere, and of the local winds and invisible turmoils which so nearly concern the safety and effective progress of the aërial navigator. ”

“ The commencement and end of the orbit, where the motion should be in the same direction as the body, is most difficult to observe, though even this detail is visible if the orbit selected be sufficiently near to the axis of flight. ”

“ III.—The constancy of demonstrated in the present proposition has for an immediate consequence the constancy of the gliding angle (if be ignored) , that is to say, the thrust required to maintain an aerodrome in flight will be constant for a given value of and if this thrust be supplied by a component of gravity (Fig. 110) , and if be the angle of descent, we have:—
that is to say, is constant. If we take account of the body resistance , we shall find that the value of will increase the higher the velocity. ”

“ Indeed, it may be claimed that, among the very earliest aeronauts, those who had sailed away into the skies and brought back intelligent observations or impressions of the realm of cloud-land, or who had only described their own sensations at lofty altitudes, had already contributed facts of value to science. It is time then, taking events in their due sequence, that mention should be made of the endeavours of various savants, who began about the commencement of the nineteenth century to gather fresh knowledge from the exploration of the air by balloon ascents organised with fitting equipment. ”

“ There may be made some flying instrument so that a man sitting in the middle of the instrument and turning some mechanism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying. ”

“ This is a fact easily demonstrated experimentally: a model in which the adjustment has been carried to its limits will behave in a most capricious manner, sometimes gliding perfectly and at others dropping suddenly in the midst of a flight like a bird when shot. ”

“ Had the weight been but a nail or a feather, lifted under such conditions, physicists know that, after he has gained as perfect control of it as we now have of steam, air-ships weighing thousands of tons can be raised to any height in our atmosphere, and the seemingly untraversable highways of the air opened to commerce. ”

“ In the case of birds such as those above cited, the soaring mode of flight is so extensively employed that without doubt the process of natural selection, or whatever other method Nature may employ, may be relied upon to have approximated the proportions of least resistance proper to the ordinary velocity of flight of the species. ”

“ High above his birthplace the snowy Alps paint themselves against the sky, an aerial dream of beauty, softened by the tender hues of dawn and sunset, serenely fair through the rift of the tempest; even their white death takes a nameless grace from distance and atmosphere, clothing itself in beauty as a spirit in clay, and tempting wanderers to their graves: but no such beauty clothes the man whose daily vision beholds them; hard, clamorous, disputatious, with one hand he rends the rotten splendors of Rome from its tottering Image, and with the other plunges baby-souls to inevitable damnation ”

“ When an aerofoil is designed according to the foregoing specification, whether as a solid as in the case in point, or as a lamina of the same mean section, the equivalent area for uniform values of and will evidently be that of a plane whose plan ordinates are those of a segment, that is, proportional to the thickness ordinates. ”

“ The Best Aerial that Can Be Made.--To make this aerial get the following material together: (1) enough stranded or braided wire for three or four lengths of parallel wires, according to the number you want to use (2) six or eight electrose ball insulators, see B, Fig. 8; (3) two 5-inch or 10-inch electrose strain insulators, see C; (4) six or eight S-hooks, see D; one large withe with one eye for middle of end spreader, see E; (6) two smaller withes with one eye each for end spreader, see E ”

“ They studied birds in flight and found that, in reality, a bird is an aeroplane. The part of the wings nearest to the body support it in the air, leaving the more flexible portion at the extremities to flap up and down and act as propellers. By gliding experiments they also found that the air along the surface of the earth is continually undergoing a churning movement, every building, hill, and tree sending up its air wave. In 1903 they made their first real flight of twelve seconds with their twelve horsepower aeroplane ”

“ At the risk of being tedious, we have dwelt at some length on the initial experiments which in less than a single year had led to the discovery and development of two distinct methods—still employed and in competition with each other—of dismissing balloons into the heavens. ”

“ Fig. 152. this is essential on account of the fact that the angle between the supporting plane and the tail plane is assumed to be the angle made by the former by the line of flight. The computation of is made from gliding data, the whole surface being assumed as subject to skin-friction, or an allowance may be made in respect of the supporting plane on the lines laid down in §§ 182, 183 and 184. ”

“ In the case of smaller birds or insects, such as the dragon-fly cited, it is an open question to what extent the problem is modified by the exigencies of active flight, and so the evidence, as confirming or otherwise the present theory, is at the best inconclusive. ”

“ At the bottom of the abyss, which already opened 1500 yards below us, the earth, instead of appearing round like a ball, shows concave like a bowl by a peculiar phenomenon of refraction whose effect is to lift up constantly to the aeronaut's eyes the circle of the horizon. ”

“ Resuming the roll of progressive aeronauts in England whose labours were devoted to the practical conquest of the air, and whose methods and mechanical achievements mark the road of advance by which the successes of to-day have been obtained, there stand out prominently two individuals, of whom one has already received mention in these pages. ”

“ The wings of a flying machine, it has been said, are called planes, but they are not true planes. Like the wings of a bird, they are 'cambered', that is to say, they curve upward from the leading edge and downward again to the trailing edge. Some of the most valuable work contributed by the laboratory to the science of flight has had for its object the determination of the best form of camber, or curve of the plane. ”

“ In sections where airplanes had never come or at most had been merely glimpsed—a swift moving speck in the sky that came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere—a plane that really came down to earth was a novelty. ”

“ But even as we searched the landscape with our field-glasses an aeroplane rose from behind our own position and made for the distant ridge, its diaphanous wings displaying red, white, and blue concentric circles to our glasses like the scales of some huge magpie-moth, while a long streamer of petrol smoke made faint pencillings in the sky behind it. As it hovered above the ridge seven or eight little white clouds like balls of feathers suddenly appeared from nowhere just below it. They were German shrapnel. ”

“ Using our anti-gravitating power, we rose once more into clear space, and then, beneath our feet, for hundreds of miles, we saw the vast clouds rolling around the mist-clad planet, much as, on an overcast day, the aeronaut sees the earth clad in cloud. ”

“ Of the age in which these men lived and worked, giving their all in many cases to the science they loved, even to life itself, it may be said with truth that ‘there were giants on the earth in those days,’ as far as aeronautics is in question. ”

“ We are about to consider man’s efforts to rise from the bottom of this ocean and wing his flight a little way through the atmosphere above him. His excursions upward are limited, for he could not live near the surface heights of this ocean, vast and deep and boundless. The art and science of his flight through the air, because of its relation to the flight of birds, we call aviation. ”

“ Hence the whole mass of the bird rebounds, making a fresh leap through the air; whence it follows that flight is simply a motion composed of successive leaps accomplished through the air. And I remark that a wing can easily beat the air in a direction almost perpendicular to its plane surface, although only a single one of the corners of the humerus bone is attached to the scapula, the whole extent of its base remaining free and loose, while the greater transverse feathers are joined to the lateral skin of the thorax. ”

“ If the predetermined course lies more or less across the wind the plane must be pointed into the wind, in which case its travel, with respect to the earth, is not in the line of its fore and aft axis. ”