An aeroplane, as commonly known, is a machine which is sustained in the air by one, two, or three sets of rigid surfaces or planes. Unlike the balloon, it is heavier than air, and it must therefore maintain its position in the air by some form of mechanical propulsion. It must, in other words, fly like a bird.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A BLERIOT MONOPLANE]
The first aeroplane was invented by Henson, an Englishman, who in 1843 flew his machine, using a two-horse-power steam engine. In 1888 and in 1900 two other practically successful models appeared, one made by a French and the other by an English inventor. Langley, an American, who began experimenting in 1885, managed to fly over the Potomac in 1896.
The Wright brothers made their initial flights under motor power in 1903.
During the years since 1903 innumerable types of aeroplanes have been developed, all based upon the lines laid down by Langley, Henson, Maxim, and other pioneers. Among the most successful experimenters have been Farman, Delagrange, Bleriot, Curtiss, and the Voisins.
The flapping-wing machine is called an orthopter (_orthos_, straight, + _ptera_, wing) and is supposed to copy bird flight. Screw-flyers, called helicopters, lift themselves from the ground by the thrust of varying numbers of rapidly moving propellers, revolving horizontally.
Some startling feats have been performed in the field of aeronautics.
On August 7, 1910, John B. Moisant, an American, flew in a Bleriot monoplane across the English Channel, a distance of about twenty-five miles, in thirty-two minutes. He carried one pa.s.senger. On September 12, 1910, Claude Grahame-White, an Englishman, flew in a Farman biplane thirty-three miles in thirty-four minutes, near Boston, winning a prize of ten thousand dollars.
Every day new ideas take shape and are developed in some form that promotes the pleasure, comfort, or safety of mankind. There seems to be literally no limit to man"s inventive power. His brain teems with thoughts and his hands labor incessantly to force his thoughts into material forms. He mounts higher and higher on the scale of civilization, casting away old ideas, inefficient methods, and worn-out machines, and subst.i.tuting the new and wonderful things which he has achieved.