Today, a century-old article helps lead us to
flight. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
Here's a richly-illustrated
Harper's article that speaks to young
people about flight. It was written in 1869. That
was after 85 years of ballooning and parachuting,
as well as many failed experiments with
heavier-than-air-flight. The article begins like
this:
The obstacle for man in the way of his acquiring
the art of flying in not the difficulty of
constructing wings, but that of obtaining the
necessary force to work them.
That business about working the wings
means the author still expected the first heavier
than air flying machines to be ornithopters with
flapping wings. And he talks about early
flapping-wing experiments. Most of them weren't
really meant to get a man off the ground -- only to
lower him to earth with minimal damage.
Power really was the stumbling block. Fifteen years
before, the first primitive dirigible had used a
propeller driven by a steam engine -- a heavy
engine with a small power output. No engine was yet
light enough to lift a heavier-than-air ship into
the sky.
When the Wright Brothers managed to take off from
the ground 34 years later, it was under the power
of their own homemade internal combustion engine.
The new gasoline engines finally provided high
enough power-to-weight ratios for serious flight.
But, past history aside, the article provides two
powerful ingredients for the minds of its young
readers. Over half the text deals in great loving
detail with the romance of past ballooning and
parachuting exploits: we read the sad story of an
English balloonist named Harris who took his
fiancee on an exhibition balloon flight in 1824.
The hydrogen release valve jammed in the open
position; and, with its gas leaking away, the
balloon began to fall. They threw out everything
that was loose, but their own weight was too much.
They could not both reach the earth safely. So in a
grand heroic gesture, Harris flung himself
overboard to save his lady. She swooned, and
awakened -- unharmed -- in the crashed gondola. And
this is only one of several affecting vignettes of
aerial heroism, illuminated with wonderfully
dramatic etchings.
The second feature is a brief but clear set of
instructions for a young lad to make his own
hot-air balloon. And it was in that coupling of
Victorian sentiment with accessible technical
detail that the minds of a new generation were
being forged.
Nine years later Bishop Milton Wright brought a toy
helicopter home to his boys, Orville and Wilbur,
and set in motion, at last, the fulfillment of the
age-old dream of flight. It is, after all, in the
way we speak to our children that we change the
future.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
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