People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 May 1896 — HE FLIES LIKE A BIRD. [ARTICLE]

HE FLIES LIKE A BIRD.

PnfMtor Unfits Parfacta a M«a4i Flying Machine. , Washington, D. C.. May 13.—'The firs) public statement regarding the flying machine experiments conducted bfc Professor Samuel P. Langley, the seek retary of the Smithsonian Institution* for some months past were made day with the authority of ProfessoF Langley. Profeasor Alexander Graham BelL the inventor, reports on ProfessoJ Langley’s machine as follows: "On last Wednesday, May 6, I wife nessed a very remarkable experiment with Professor Langley’s aerodrome or the -Potomac river. “The aerodrome, or ‘flying machine/ in Question was ot steel, driven by » steam engine. It resembled an enormous bird, soaring In the air with exr treme regularity in large curves, sweeping steadily upward in a spiral path, the spirals with a diameter of perhaps 100 yards, until it reached a height of about 100 feet In the air at the end of a course of about huf a mile, when the steam gave out, the propellers which had moved It stopped, ang then, to my further surprise, the wholes instead of tumbling down, settled as slowly and gracefully as It 1b possible for any bird to do, touched the water without any damage, and was picked out immediately and ready to be tried again. “A second trial was like the first, except that the machine went in a different direction, moving In one continuous gentle ascent as it swung around in circles like a great soaring bird.” Prof. Langley says: “The aerodrome, or flying machine, has no gas to lift it as in the case of a balloon, but on the contrary is about 1,000 times heavier, bulk for bulk, than 1 the air on which it is made to run and which sustains It somewhat In the way in which thin. lee supports a swift skater. “The power 1b derived from a steam engine through the means of propellers, but owing to the Beale on which the actual aerodrome Is built, there has been no condensing apparatus to use the water over and over. “Enough can be carried for only a very brief flight, a difficulty which does not belong to larger machines than the present examples in which the supporting surfaces are but about fourteen feet from tip to tip.“The distance flown each time was about one-half mile. The rate of speed depends (as is the case of any vehicle on land) on whether it Is going on a level or up hill.”