University of Santa Clara - Redwood Yearbook (Santa Clara, CA)

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THE REDWOOD. In America and in France — and America and France led the world in the new science — successful gliding flights were numerous in the year 1905, but the dates of those successful flights run from June to the end of the year. Bleriot, Archdeacon and the Voisius glided over the Seine in June and July, 1905, and the remarkable sustained flights of the Wright brothers over Huffman Prairie took place between September 26th and October 5th, 1905. I mention the Wright brothers par- ticularly in this connection, for the reason that in the Federal Courts, some years ago, they sought to enjoin every skillful aviator using other than a Wright aeroplane from making public flights in this country on the general ground of infi ' ingement of the Wright patent. Let me put this statement clearly: The Wright Company in all its flying-machines is using curved sur- faces in combination with wing-warp- ing. The Wright brothers invented this combination or they did not invent it. If they did invent it, they omitted all mention of it in their letters patent. The Wright brothers ' patent is is- sued for a combination of a normally- flat aeroplane with a type of wing- warping which had figured previously in numerous French tests ; but as an in- controvertible fact all of the Wright flying-machines, as well as the Cur- tiss, Bleriot, and many other aero- planes, use today, and have been using since the Spring of 1905, curved sur- faces combined with wing- warping , and that combination was introduced to the world on April 29th, 1905, and is described in the minutest detail in the Montgomery patents, and the com- bination was described in the press im- mediately following the epochal eight- mile flight at Santa Clara. Montgomery was a profound student of aeronautics, and he reasoned out his theory of the curved surface thus : The plane surface and the curved surface are distinctive, just as the flat surface and the vessel are distinctive, and, as a flat surface has its application in re- lation to solids while a vessel is suited to matter in its fluid form, so, there- fore, surfaces which are designed to operate upon the air, which is a fluid, must be constructed in a manner to suit the fluid condition rather than upon the lines of a plane suited to sol- ids only. A simple, though homely, il- lustration of this principle is the fact that any one may throw a pile of books upon a table and the table will hold the books, but if a quantity of water be thrown upon the surface of the ta- ble, the water will not remain there. In a nutshell, Montgomery contended that the fundamental principles for success in aerial flight lie in the warp- ing of the wing-surfaces as a balancing and controlling element. When his original theories were op- posed by men who, like Professor Langley, held decided opinions with reference to the art of flying, Mont- gomery freely admitted that his crit- ics were able and praiseworthy experi- menters, but he cabnly observed that Aristotle was one of the greatest of

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THE REDWOOD. elements of controlled flight and main- tained equilibrium. On April 29th, 1905, the quaint old Mission town of Santa Clara played host to thousands of people come to witness the long heralded ascent of the Montgomery airship. Correspondents and artists from many newspapers and mag azines were in the gathering on the college campus when the anxiously- awaited hour of exhilntion came. The confident Montgomery then introduced a startling innovation. Other experi- menters with aeroplanes had flound- ered around on the earth with their gliders, but this man daringly used a heated-air balloon to carry his glider and its pilot, Daniel Maloney, up to a height of 4,000 feet. Then the glider Vv is cut loose, and there ensued a spec- tacle, or series of spectacles, that kept the vast crowd either gaping in sheer wonderment or cheering in a frenzy of delight. Aviator Maloney glided eight miles in twenty minutes and safely alighted at a previously designated spot. Dur- ing that record-breaking flight, he ex- ecuted spiral and circling turns with ease and grace, described figure-eight evolutions, traveled in a horizontal course with the wind and against it, and indulged in thrilling dives, the hair-raising movement being checked by simply changing the angles of the wing surfaces. That flight, it has been said, inaugurated the era of flying-ma- chines that fly. The Scientific American of May 20th, 1905, referring to the Montgomery ma- chine, says: An aeroplane has been constructed that in all circumstances will retain its equilibrium and is sub- ject in its gliding flight to the control and guidance of an operator. Alexander? Graham Bell, in the same connection, declared that all subse- quent attempts at aviation must begin with the Montgomery machine . Prior to April 29th, 1905, the longest flights of man-carrying machines were the maximums of 1,000 feet by Lilien- thal and Ader, the 852-feet flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, and the 1377-feet flight of the Wrights in 1904 in the presence of Octave Chanute. All of these flights ended in damage to the apparatus ; but on the day of the eight- mile flight from the balloon in Santa Clara, aerial navigation began its new career on scientifically-determined principles. Detailed descriptions and numerous illustrations of the Montgomery aero- plane appeared in the aeronautical and scientific press, and there was ample incentive for such publicity, for the rec- ords of aeronautics show that failure was written over every attempt at aerial navigation prior to 1905. Be- fore that date, according to Victor Longhead, late secretary of the Ameri- can Aeronautical Association, and a well-known authority, all attempts at flight, without a solitary exception that is authenticated, had been marked by ever-present uncertainty as to equilib- rium, constant hazard to the operator and frequent accidents, ranging from mishaps to fearful fatalities.

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THE REDWOOD. the world ' s philosophers, and that Aristotle ' s assertion that falling bodies would descend with a velocity propor- tionate to their weight (a stone weigh- ing ten pounds falling ten times as fast as a stone weighing one pound) had been proven false by Galileo ' s actual experiment of dropping a heavy weight and a light weight at the same instant, side by side, from the tower of Pisa. Even when the weights were heard to strike the gromid together there were some who, in spite of the evidence of their senses, still clung to the doctrine of Aristotle. Montgomery declared that, given the time and the means, he would prove his theories by experi- ments. It was not until 1904 that his matured studies were applied to ma- chines in a conclusive demonstration of l)otli equilibrium and control under the guidance of a rider, and those machines were constructed under patent office protection, so far as that goes, and in- volved, among other tlnngs, the warp- ing of wing surfaces. Through years of struggle Montgom- ery had reached the threshold of suc- cess, and it was the irony of fate that the merited reward should be literally snatched from his hands. He had once experimented with a soaring apparatus Avhicli consisted of true (flat) planes, and failure in the use of the planes had led him to the adoption of curved surfaces. His experiences in the eigh- ties convinced him that the laws of aerodynamics and the formation and adjustment of the proper wing surfaces for flight were not understood, and that it was foolhardy for anyone to at- tempt the navigation of the air while uncertain as to whether or not his ma- chine contained in itself the property of inherent equilibrium. To be ex- plicit, there are two classes of ma- chines, one in which the equilibrium depends ui on the skill of the rider, as in the ease of the bicycle, and one in which the machine has in itself the ele- ments of equilibrium, as in the auto- mobile, the operator of which has merely to use his judgment in directing its course. The materialization of his master-study in 1904 was the prelude to the triumph of April 29th, 1905, and the year 1905, I venture to predict, will be known to the future as something akin to the annus mirabilis of the aeroplane. In his examination of the wings of hawks, buzzards, eagles, seagulls, peli- cans, wild geese and other birds. Profes- sor Montgomery found the under-sur- faee of the wing from the front to the rear edge a true parabola, varying in its curviture, both according to the re- lation between the weight of the bird and its wing surface, and the propor- tion of length and breadth of the wing ; but, although his minute observations and mathematical deductions would fill volumes, suffice it to say that from such observations he reached the con- elusion that the surface best suited to receiving and utilizing the aerial movements and forces is one having a gradually increasing curviture from the rear to the front edge, and that the curviture of this is dependent on the