Before passing to survey of those early years, let it be set down that in 1907, when the Wright Brothers had proved the practicability of their machines, negotiations3 were entered into between the brothers and the British War Office. On April 12th, 1907, the apostle of military stagnation4, Haldane, then War Minister, put an end to the negotiations by declaring that ‘the War Office is not disposed to enter into relations at present with any manufacturer of aeroplanes.’ The state of the British air service in 1914, at the outbreak of hostilities5, is eloquent6 regarding the pursuance of the policy which Haldane initiated7.
‘If I talked a lot,’ said Wilbur Wright once, ‘I177 should be like the parrot, which is the bird that speaks most and flies least.’ That attitude is emblematic8 of the majority of the early fliers, and because of it the record of their achievements is incomplete to-day. Ferber, for instance, has left little from which to state what he did, and that little is scattered9 through various periodicals, scrappily enough. A French army officer, Captain Ferber was experimenting with monoplane and biplane gliders11 at the beginning of the century—his work was contemporary with that of the Wrights. He corresponded both with Chanute and with the Wrights, and in the end he was commissioned by the French Ministry13 of War to undertake the journey to America in order to negotiate with the Wright Brothers concerning French rights in the patents they had acquired, and to study their work at first hand.
Ferber’s experiments in gliding14 began in 1899 at the Military School at Fountainebleau, with a canvas glider12 of some 80 square feet supporting surface, and weighing 65 lbs. Two years later he constructed a larger and more satisfactory machine, with which he made numerous excellent glides15. Later, he constructed an apparatus16 which suspended a plane from a long arm which swung on a tower, in order that experiments might be carried out without risk to the experimenter, and it was not until 1905 that he attempted power-driven free flight. He took up the Voisin design of biplane for his power-driven flights, and virtually devoted17 all his energies to the study of aeronautics18. His book, Aviation, its Dawn and Development, is a work of scientific value—unlike many of his contemporaries, Ferber brought to the study of the problems of flight a trained mind, and he was concerned equally178 with the theoretical problems of aeronautics and the practical aspects of the subject.
After Bleriot’s successful cross-Channel flight, it was proposed to offer a prize of ￡1,000 for the feat19 which C. S. Rolls subsequently accomplished (starting from the English side of the Channel), a flight from Boulogne to Dover and back; in place of this, however, an aviation week at Boulogne was organised, but, although numerous aviators20 were invited to compete, the condition of the flying grounds was such that no competitions took place. Ferber was virtually the only one to do any flying at Boulogne, and at the outset he had his first accident; after what was for those days a good flight, he made a series of circles with his machine, when it suddenly struck the ground, being partially21 wrecked22. Repairs were carried out, and Ferber resumed his exhibition flights, carrying on up to Wednesday, September 22nd, 1909. On that day he remained in the air for half an hour, and, as he was about to land, the machine struck a mound24 of earth and overturned, pinning Ferber under the weight of the motor. After being extricated25, Ferber seemed to show little concern at the accident, but in a few minutes he complained of great pain, when he was conveyed to the ambulance shed on the ground.
‘I was foolish,’ he told those who were with him there. ‘I was flying too low. It was my own fault and it will be a severe lesson to me. I wanted to turn round, and was only five metres from the ground.’ A little after this, he got up from the couch on which he had been placed, and almost immediately collapsed26, dying five minutes later.
Blériot in full flight.
Ferber’s chief contemporaries in France were179 Santos-Dumont, of airship fame, Henri and Maurice Farman, Hubert Latham, Ernest Archdeacon, and Delagrange. These are names that come at once to mind, as does that of Bleriot, who accomplished the second great feat of power-driven flight, but as a matter of fact the years 1903–10 are filled with a little host of investigators27 and experimenters, many of whom, although their names do not survive to any extent, are but a very little way behind those mentioned here in enthusiasm and devotion. Archdeacon and Gabriel Voisin, the former of whom took to heart the success achieved by the Wright Brothers, co-operated in experiments in gliding. Archdeacon constructed a glider in box-kite fashion, and Voisin experimented with it on the Seine, the glider being towed by a motor-boat to attain28 the necessary speed. It was Archdeacon who offered a cup for the first straight flight of 200 metres, which was won by Santos-Dumont, and he also combined with Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe in giving the prize for the first circular flight of a mile, which was won by Henry Farman on January 13th, 1908.
A history of the development of aviation in France in these, the strenuous29 years, would fill volumes in itself. Bleriot was carrying out experiments with a biplane glider on the Seine, and Robert Esnault-Pelterie was working on the lines of the Wright Brothers, bringing American practice to France. In America others besides the Wrights had wakened to the possibilities of heavier-than-air flight; Glenn Curtiss, in company with Dr Alexander Graham Bell, with J. A. D. McCurdy, and with F. W. Baldwin, a Canadian engineer, formed the Aerial Experiment Company, which built a number180 of aeroplanes, most famous of which were the ‘June Bug,’ the ‘Red Wing’ and the ‘White Wing.’ In 1908 the ‘June Bug’ won a cup presented by the Scientific American—it was the first prize offered in America in connection with aeroplane flight.
Among the little group of French experimenters in these first years of practical flight, Santos-Dumont takes high rank. He built his ‘No. 14 bis’ aeroplane in biplane form, with two superposed main plane surfaces, and fitted it with an eight-cylinder Antoinette motor driving a two-bladed aluminium30 propeller31, of which the blades were 6 feet only from tip to tip. The total lift surface of 860 square feet was given with a wing-span of a little under 40 feet, and the weight of the complete machine was 353 lbs., of which the engine weighed 158 lbs. In July of 1906 Santos-Dumont flew a distance of a few yards in this machine, but damaged it in striking the ground; on October 23rd of the same year he made a flight of nearly 200 feet—which might have been longer, but that he feared a crowd in front of the aeroplane and cut off his ignition. This may be regarded as the first effective flight in Europe, and by it Santos-Dumont takes his place as one of the chief—if not the chief—of the pioneers of the first years of practical flight, so far as Europe is concerned.
Meanwhile, the Voisin Brothers, who in 1904 made cellular32 kites for Archdeacon to test by towing on the Seine from a motor launch, obtained data for the construction of the aeroplane which Delagrange and Henry Farman were to use later. The Voisin was a biplane, constructed with due regard to the designs of Langley, Lilienthal, and other earlier experimenters—both181 the Voisins and M. Colliex, their engineer, studied Lilienthal pretty exhaustively in getting out their design, though their own researches were very thorough as well. The weight of this Voisin biplane was about 1,450 lbs., and its maximum speed was some 38 to 40 miles per hour, the total supporting surface being about 535 square feet. It differed from the Wright design in the possession of a tail-piece, a characteristic which marked all the French school of early design as in opposition33 to the American. The Wright machine got its longitudinal stability by means of the main planes and the elevating planes, while the Voisin type added a third factor of stability in its tail-planes. Further, the Voisins fitted their biplane with a wheeled undercarriage, while the Wright machine, being fitted only with runners, demanded a launching rail for starting. Whether a machine should be tailless or tailed was for some long time matter for acute controversy34, which in the end was settled by the fitting of a tail to the Wright machines—France won the dispute by the concession35.
Henry Farman, who began his flying career with a Voisin machine, evolved from it the aeroplane which bore his name, following the main lines of the Voisin type fairly closely, but making alterations36 in the controls, and in the design of the undercarriage, which was somewhat elaborated, even to the inclusion of shock absorbers. The seven-cylinder 50 horse-power Gnome37 rotary38 engine was fitted to the Farman machine—the Voisins had fitted an eight-cylinder Antoinette, giving 50 horse-power at 1,100 revolutions per minute, with direct drive to the propeller. Farman reduced the weight of the machine from the 1,450 lbs. of the Voisins182 to some 1,010 lbs. or thereabouts, and the supporting area to 450 square feet. This machine won its chief fame with Paulhan as pilot in the famous London to Manchester flight—it is to be remarked, too, that Farman himself was the first man in Europe to accomplish a flight of a mile.
Other notable designs of these early days were the ‘R.E.P.’, Esnault Pelterie’s machine, and the Curtiss-Herring biplane. Of these Esnault Pelterie’s was a monoplane, designed in that form since Esnault Pelterie had found by experiment that the wire used in bracing39 offers far more resistance to the air than its dimensions would seem to warrant. He built the wings of sufficient strength to stand the strain of flight without bracing wires, and dependent only for their support on the points of attachment41 to the body of the machine; for the rest, it carried its propeller in front of the planes, and both horizontal and vertical42 rudders at the stern—a distinct departure from the Wright and similar types. One wheel only was fixed43 under the body where the undercarriage exists on a normal design, but light wheels were fixed, one at the extremity44 of each wing, and there was also a wheel under the tail portion of the machine. A single lever actuated all the controls for steering45. With a supporting surface of 150 square feet the machine weighed 946 lbs., about 6.4 lbs. per square foot of lifting surface.
The Curtiss biplane, as flown by Glenn Curtiss at the Rheims meeting, was built with a bamboo framework, stayed by means of very fine steel-stranded cables. A—then—novel feature of the machine was the moving of the ailerons by the pilot leaning to one side or the other in his seat, a light, tubular arm-rest being pressed183 by his body when he leaned to one side or the other, and thus operating the movement of the ailerons employed for tilting46 the plane when turning. A steering-wheel fitted immediately in front of the pilot’s seat served to operate a rear steering-rudder when the wheel was turned in either direction, while pulling back the wheel altered the inclination47 of the front elevating planes, and so gave lifting or depressing control of the plane.
This machine ran on three wheels before leaving the ground, a central undercarriage wheel being fitted in front, with two more in line with a right angle line drawn48 through the centre of the engine crank at the rear end of the crank-case. The engine was a 35 horse-power Vee design, water-cooled, with overhead inlet and exhaust valves, and Bosch high-tension magneto ignition. The total weight of the plane in flying order was about 700 lbs.
As great a figure in the early days as either Ferber or Santos-Dumont was Louis Bleriot, who, as early as 1900, built a flapping-wing model, this before ever he came to experimenting with the Voisin biplane type of glider on the Seine. Up to 1906 he had built four biplanes of his own design, and in March of 1907 he built his first monoplane, to wreck23 it only a few days after completion in an accident from which he had a fortunate escape. His next machine was a double monoplane, designed after Langley’s precept49, to a certain extent, and this was totally wrecked in September of 1907. His seventh machine, a monoplane, was built within a month of this accident, and with this he had a number of mishaps50, also achieving some good flights, including one in which he made a turn. It was184 wrecked in December of 1907, whereupon he built another monoplane on which, on July 6th, 1908, Bleriot made a flight lasting51 eight and a half minutes. In October of that year he flew the machine from Toury to Artenay and returned on it—this was just a day after Farman’s first cross-country flight—but, trying to repeat the success five days later, Bleriot collided with a tree in a fog and wrecked the machine past repair. Thereupon he set about building his eleventh machine, with which he was to achieve the first flight across the English channel.
Henry Farman, to whom reference has already been made, was engaged with his two brothers, Maurice and Richard, in the motor-car business, and turned to active interest in flying in 1907, when the Voisin firm built his first biplane on the box-kite principle. In July of 1908 he won a prize of ￡400 for a flight of thirteen miles, previously52 having completed the first kilometre flown in Europe with a passenger, the said passenger being Ernest Archdeacon. In September of 1908 Farman put up a speed record of forty miles an hour in a flight lasting forty minutes.
Santos-Dumont produced the famous ‘Demoiselle’ monoplane early in 1909, a tiny machine in which the pilot had his seat in a sort of miniature cage under the main plane. It was a very fast, light little machine, but was difficult to fly, and owing to its small wing-spread was unable to glide10 at a reasonably safe angle. There has probably never been a cheaper flying machine to build than the ‘Demoiselle,’ which could be so upset as to seem completely wrecked, and then repaired ready for further flight by a couple of hours’ work. Santos-Dumont retained no patent in the design, but185 gave it out freely to any one who chose to build ‘Demoiselles’; the vogue53 of the pattern was brief, owing to the difficulty of piloting the machine.
These were the years of records, broken almost as soon as made. There was Farman’s mile, there was the flight of the Comte de Lambert over the Eiffel Tower, Latham’s flight at Blackpool in a high wind, the Rheims records, and then Henry Farman’s flight of four hours later in 1909, Orville Wright’s height record of 1,640 feet, and Delagrange’s speed record of 49·9 miles per hour. The coming to fame of the Gnome rotary engine helped in the making of these records to a very great extent, for in this engine was a prime mover which gave the reliability54 that aeroplane builders and pilots had been searching for, but vainly. The Wrights and Glenn Curtiss, of course, had their own designs of engine, but the Gnome, in spite of its lack of economy in fuel and oil, and its high cost, soon came to be regarded as the best power plant for flight.
Delagrange, one of the very good pilots of the early days, provided a curious insight to the way in which flying was regarded, at the opening of the Juvisy aerodrome in May of 1909. A huge crowd had gathered for the first day’s flying, and nine machines were announced to appear, but only three were brought out. Delagrange made what was considered an indifferent little flight, and another pilot, one De Bischoff, attempted to rise, but could not get his machine off the ground. Thereupon the crowd of 30,000 people lost their tempers, broke down the barriers surrounding the flying course, and hissed55 the officials, who were quite unable to maintain order. Delagrange, however,186 saved the situation by making a circuit of the course at a height of thirty feet from the ground, which won him rounds of cheering and restored the crowd to good humour. Possibly the smash achieved by Rougier, the famous racing40 motorist, who crashed his Voisin biplane after Delagrange had made his circuit, completed the enjoyment56 of the spectators. Delagrange, flying at Argentan in June of 1909, made a flight of four kilometres at a height of sixty feet; for those days this was a noteworthy performance. Contemporary with this was Hubert Latham’s flight of an hour and seven minutes on an Antoinette monoplane; this won the adjective ‘magnificent’ from contemporary recorders of aviation.
Viewing the work of the little group of French experimenters, it is, at this length of time from their exploits, difficult to see why they carried the art as far as they did. There was in it little of satisfaction, a certain measure of fame, and practically no profit—the giants of those days got very little for their pains. Delagrange’s experience at the opening of the Juvisy ground was symptomatic of the way in which flight was regarded by the great mass of people—it was a sport, and nothing more, but a sport without the dividends57 attaching to professional football or horse-racing. For a brief period, after the Rheims meeting, there was a golden harvest to be reaped by the best of the pilots. Henry Farman asked ￡2,000 for a week’s exhibition flying in England, and Paulhan asked half that sum, but a rapid increase in the number of capable pilots, together with the fact that most flying meetings were financial failures, owing to great expense in organisation58 and the doubtful factor of the weather, killed this goose before many golden eggs had been gathered in187 by the star aviators. Besides, as height and distance records were broken one after another, it became less and less necessary to pay for entrance to an aerodrome in order to see a flight—the thing grew too big for a mere59 sports ground.
Long before Rheims and the meeting there, aviation had grown too big for the chronicling of every individual effort. In that period of the first days of conquest of the air, so much was done by so many whose names are now half-forgotten that it is possible only to pick out the great figures and make brief reference to their achievements and the machines with which they accomplished so much, pausing to note such epoch-making events as the London-Manchester flight, Bleriot’s Channel crossing, and the Rheims meeting itself, and then passing on beyond the days of individual records to the time when the machine began to dominate the man. This latter because, in the early days, it was heroism60 to trust life to the planes that were turned out—the ‘Demoiselle’ and the Antoinette machine that Latham used in his attempt to fly the Channel are good examples of the flimsiness of early types—while in the later period, that of the war and subsequently, the heroism turned itself in a different—and nobler—direction. Design became standardised, though not perfected. The domination of the machine may best be expressed by contrasting the way in which machines came to be regarded as compared with the men who flew them: up to 1909, flying enthusiasts61 talked of Farman, of Bleriot, of Paulhan, Curtiss, and of other men; later, they began to talk of the Voisin, the Deperdussin, and even to the Fokker, the Avro, and the Bristol type. With the standardising of the machine, the days of the giants came to an end.
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1
accomplished
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| adj.有才艺的；有造诣的；达到了的 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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negotiations
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| 协商( negotiation的名词复数 )； 谈判； 完成（难事）； 通过 | |
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stagnation
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| n. 停滞 | |
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hostilities
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| n.战争；敌意(hostility的复数)；敌对状态；战事 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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initiated
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| n. 创始人 adj. 新加入的 vt. 开始，创始，启蒙，介绍加入 | |
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emblematic
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| adj.象征的，可当标志的；象征性 | |
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scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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glide
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| n./v.溜，滑行；(时间)消逝 | |
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gliders
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| n.滑翔机( glider的名词复数 ) | |
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glider
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| n.滑翔机；滑翔导弹 | |
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ministry
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| n.(政府的)部；牧师 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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glides
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| n.滑行( glide的名词复数 )；滑音；音渡；过渡音v.滑动( glide的第三人称单数 )；掠过；（鸟或飞机 ） 滑翔 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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aeronautics
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| n.航空术，航空学 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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aviators
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| 飞机驾驶员，飞行员( aviator的名词复数 ) | |
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partially
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| adv.部分地，从某些方面讲 | |
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wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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wreck
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| n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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extricated
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| v.使摆脱困难，脱身( extricate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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collapsed
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| adj.倒塌的 | |
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investigators
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| n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 ) | |
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attain
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| vt.达到，获得，完成 | |
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strenuous
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| adj.奋发的，使劲的；紧张的；热烈的，狂热的 | |
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aluminium
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| n.铝 (=aluminum) | |
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propeller
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| n.螺旋桨，推进器 | |
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cellular
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| adj.移动的；细胞的，由细胞组成的 | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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controversy
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| n.争论，辩论，争吵 | |
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concession
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| n.让步，妥协；特许(权) | |
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alterations
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| n.改动( alteration的名词复数 )；更改；变化；改变 | |
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gnome
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| n.土地神；侏儒，地精 | |
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rotary
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| adj.(运动等)旋转的；轮转的；转动的 | |
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bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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tilting
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| 倾斜，倾卸 | |
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inclination
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| n.倾斜；点头；弯腰；斜坡；倾度；倾向；爱好 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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precept
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| n.戒律；格言 | |
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mishaps
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| n.轻微的事故，小的意外( mishap的名词复数 ) | |
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lasting
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| adj.永久的，永恒的；vbl.持续，维持 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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Vogue
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| n.时髦，时尚；adj.流行的 | |
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reliability
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| n.可靠性，确实性 | |
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hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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dividends
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| 红利( dividend的名词复数 )； 股息； 被除数； （足球彩票的）彩金 | |
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organisation
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| n.组织，安排，团体，有机休 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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heroism
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| n.大无畏精神，英勇 | |
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enthusiasts
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| n.热心人，热衷者( enthusiast的名词复数 ) | |
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