Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 288, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 December 1912 — SEVERE TESTS ARE REQUIRED [ARTICLE]

SEVERE TESTS ARE REQUIRED

Seven Hundred Candidates for Aeronautic Corps Must Undergo Rigid Examinations In Paris. Paris. —The 700 candidates for France’s flying corps are to be subjected to very severe tests at the physical examination ordered by the ministry of war. Among the requirements are perfect vision, normal color sense, sharp hearing and absolute soundness of the organs of respiration and circulation. It is specified particularly that no men who have to wear spectacles shall do any flying, a rule made the more interesting because some of the world’s most notable airmen, past and present, wore or now wear glasses. The candidates are now learning to fly at the government aerodromes, some of them as pilots of dirigible balloons, but the majority as individual aeroplane pilots. The test is to be more severe for operators of aeroplanes than for' balloon aeronauts.