Publication 472, 1903, Airship progress

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"Airship" not defined precisely; seems to imply a vessel capable of easily & effectively transporting passengers?


Original title Airship progress
Simple title Airship progress
Authors
Date 1903
Countries
Languages
Keywords history, future, prediction, passenger, airship
Journal Aer. World
Related to aircraft? 1
Page count 1
Word count 315
Wikidata id


See also Publication 475, 1903, Airships coming

Full text:

Airship Progress.

The first efforts to navigate the air date from mythology. The early experimenters tried wing-like attachments on their limbs, Such at- tempts to fly have all been failures. The kite was the next principle tried. In the balloon a great advance was made, as this structure would actually float and carry considerable weight to a high altitude. The fact, however, that it could not be directed in its flight set men experimenting again to overcome this difficulty, but until recently all attempts to build dirigible machines were worse than fail- ures. Despite the fact that nearly all the ex- periments of the present day are confined to machines in which the buoyancy is imparted by gas, scientists agree that a ship of this kind can never be controlled in a high wind. They say we must go back to first principles and study the wings of the bird. A famous natur- alist claims to have proved that the soaring power of a bird lies directly in its feathers. He has made a minute dissection of a feather and says that it furnishes the floating force. He contends that the air so circulates through the fine, hair-like barbules that a power is cre- ated sufficient to carry the bird along, and that the bird's very weight is necessary to its flight.

But whatever the explanation of this strange force, it is almost a certainty, with the greatly increased facilities for investigations of the present day, that an airship will be one of the useful inventions of the future. The seeming- ly impossible has been accomplished so often that the solution of this problem is impatiently awaited, and will cause no great wonderment when. at last completed. The airship perfected will no doubt revolutionize travel and even warfare, but it will be adopted and utilized as readily as have been all other great scientific

discoveries.

Sources

  • Brockett 1910, page 34, entry 472: Airship progress. Aer. World, Vol. 1, No. 6, 1903, Glenville, Ohio, p. 141. S (472
  • Scan at Internet Archive