University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA)

 - Class of 1908

Page 25 of 404

 

University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA) online collection, 1908 Edition, Page 25 of 404
Page 25 of 404



University of Pittsburgh - Owl Yearbook (Pittsburgh, PA) online collection, 1908 Edition, Page 24
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look over the fields of science where he has won his grand but bloodless victories, we can but add our final tribute by repeating the words, “It is magnificent’ . J'ROKKSSOR I. A XCI.KYS l-'I.YINC MACH INK. (Professor Langley began his work on flying-machines while director of the Allegheny Observatory. There are said to Ik some remains of his machinery in the cellar of the old building. So we claim some of the honor of the final results and feel an interest in them. 11 is honor is ours.—Editor.) (From the American Magazine, April, 1907—Herbert X. Casson.) Then came a great American who lifted the whole matter (of flying) to a higher level—S. I . Langley. Langley stood at the head of the Smithsonian Institution. lie was officially and by merit one of the most eminent scientists of the world, lie was spangled with medals and honors. Vet he staked all his prestige on the chance of succeeding where Maxim and Ader had failed. l he master passion of Langley's life was to fly. While playing in a meadow near Poston one day, he saw high overhead a soaring hawk, hovering and gliding in smooth circles through the upper air. The boy Langley was fascinated. How glorious, he thought, to Ik a bird! And forty years later the scientist Langley was still under the spell of that feathered wizard of the sky. 1 le began the most thorough and scientific study of birds that had ever been undertaken, it had been stated by Sir Isaac Xewton, and generally believed, that a large bird required relatively more energy than a small one. Langley found that this was absurdly untrue. A condor, for instance, has only one-fourth as much wing per pound as a little screech-owl. A flamingo has one-third as much as a raven, l he two extremes of the bird world, in fact, are the big. lazy albatross, who soars easily on 3,000 mile journeys, and the tiny humming-bird, whose small body is a throbbing dynamo of energy. The one is all sail like a four-masted schooner; the other is all engine, like a gasoline launch. Then Langley went to the museums and studied the pterodactyl—the greatest of all flying machines. As a flying-machine, this gigantic bat. with its twenty-foot wings, was Nature's masterpiece. At the pterodactyl Nature stop|X d and man must begin. Vet this air-king, so Langley found, had onh one-twentieth of a horsepower to drive his thirty pound body against the wind. With these facts to encourage him. Langley proceeded to make an artificial pterodactyl. And so it came to pass, several months later, that a gray-haired scientist stood on the banks of the Potomac and saw his steel-and-canvas bird rise high in the air and fly for a mile with as much ease as though it were a living creature, flic machine was one-fourth the linear dimension of the larger machine afterwards built and was driven by a onc-and-a-half horsepower engine. This flight was the first ever made by a real flying-machine and it proved that human flight is possible. 17

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sun’s radiant energy, and the intimately correlated problem of life upon our globe. Professor I-angley found time to study many minor though important questions bearing upon radiant energy, not alone from the sun but from other sources. His studies of the moon’s temperature added immensely to our knowledge of the “lesser light that rules the night. With the spectrobolometer, the highest temperature of the moon was found to be about zero centigrade, and the lowest temperature not far from the temperature of space. Professor Langley’s work in mapping the invisible spectrum was a herculean task. Aided by Professors Keeler. Very and Page, thousands of measurements were made with the sjiectrobolometer and read visually before the photographic method was devised and developed so beautifully by Professor Langley and his coworkers at the Smithsonian Institute. Professor I angley received many honors during his life time. To Ik called as the successor of Professor Baird as secretary of the Smithsonian Institution was the highest gift in a scientific sense that could Ik conferred u| n him by his country. Oxford conferred uix n him the degree of I). C. L.; Cambridge, the degree of I). Sc.: Harvard, Princeton. L’niversity of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin conferred u|X)ii him the degree of LL.I). 1 le was a corres|xmdent of the French Academy, a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and other scientific associations. He received the Henry Draper. Count Rumford. Janssen and other medals for his splendid discoveries. Professor Langley was born in Roxbury. Mass.. August 22, 1834. On the twenty-second of November. 1905, he suffered a slight stroke of paralysis but recovered sufficiently to be taken to Aiken. South Carolina, (ireat Iiojk-s were entertained that his recovery was only a matter of time, but it was not so to be. He passed away to the “Summer Land of Song on the 27th day of February. 1906. 11 is Ixxly was brought to Washington and the funeral services held in All Souls Church. The venerable Kdward Fvcrett Hale, an old time friend of Professor Langley, spoke most fitting and kindly words at the brief services, 'flu regents of the Smithsonian Institution acted as honorary pall-bearers, and the members of the Smithsonian staff as active pall-lx arers. lie remains were taken to Boston in a private car. and were laid away in Forest I fills Cemetery by the side of his mother. A short address was delivered at the cemetery by his friend. Alexander Graham Bell, in which he gave a brief resume of Professor I Quigley’s life work. When Napoleon stcxxl at the edge of a great battlefield where a great victory had been won by his soldiers, his ears were deaf to the cries of the wounded and dying; he heard them not, but said to his generals, in the ccstacy of victory: “C’est magnifique . When our own Langley stcxxl on the summit of the old Allegheny hills where so much of his life work had lxen done, and watched the sun setting in all his glory, we heard him exclaim, It is magnificent ”. Now that lie is gone, and we 16



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Then the t S. War Department accepted Langley’s invitation, and came into the flying business. At a cost of $50,000. a large machine was built on the same lines as the small one, and Langley believed that the dream of his boyhood was about to come true. Hut in some way the big machine was not launched properly. It never had a chance to fly. Down it went into the waters of the Potomac. The Aerodrome was not demolished but is practically in complete condition for flight, except in the lack of suitable supporting surfaces. Charles M. Manly, who was Professor Langley's chief assistant, is expecting very soon to find the time to provide the machine with such surfaces and give it a fair trial, when he believes it will prove successful and crown Mr. Langley's work with the success which it so richly deserves. A laugh went around the world at ‘'Langley’s holly.'' and not long afterward the great pathfinder died of a broken heart. The ridicule had no effect upon his beliefs. I le knew that others would complete what he and Maxim and Ader had begun. Ilis last word, written just before his death, was a prophecy of success. ' The great universal highway overhead,” he said, “is now soon to be opened.” PROF. JAMES EDWARD KEELER DIRECTOR (1891-1898) From address by Dr. John A. Brashcar X MAY, 1891, Prof. Keeler was unanimously elected to the directorship of the Allegheny ()bservatory, a position he at once accepted. W hen Prof. Keeler came to Allegheny he found the observatory poorly equipped for the line of investigation he desired to pursue as a continuation of his work at Lick Observatory, but friends of the institution and Prof. Keeler soon furnished the means. Mrs. William Thaw contributed the money to construct a spectroscope of the highest type, which was designed by Pro. Keeler. Mr. Willianj Thaw. Jr., supplied the means for a new driving clock and the remounting of the 13-inch equatorial, while the Junta Club of Pittsburgh generously donated a sum sufficient to place a modern shutter on the dome. Thus equipped, Prof. Keeler commenced a seris of researches by which, in the years he was with us. some of the most brilliant discoveries ever made in astronomical science were added to those he had already given to the world. ()f the 62 papers he contributed to various scientific journals during his directorate perhaps the most important ones are those which we have numbered 120 and 121 in the transactions of the observatory. Xo. 120 refers to his spectroscopic study of the constitution of Saturn's rings; Xo. 121 a paper on a spectroscopic pr K)f of the meteoric constitution of Saturn’s rings. 1 lad he made no other discovery than this solution of the character of Saturn's rings, his name would forever lx remembered in the annals of scientific discovery, for the mathematicians, 18

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