THE DUNNE AEROPLANE.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1894, 31 October 1913, Page 3

THE DUNNE AEROPLANE.

BRITAIN'S LOSS AND FRANCE'S ' GAIN. Lieutenant J. W. Dunne, late of the Wiltshii'o Regiment, the inventor of the "automatic stability" aeroplane, experienced the triumph of seven years' patient labours recently, when Commandant Jules Felix, the famous French airman, who flow from Casa Blanca to Fez, in Morocco, piloted one of his biplanes from astchureh to France, crossing the channel in a storm. Commandant Felix went up as a passenger, and was at once allowed to tako the control, the Dunno machine being tho only typo upon which this is tho practice with pupils. He stood up on his seat and did an "aerial cake walk" round the aerodroino,, and finally dived 400 ft. with his hands off the controls. Upon alighting M. Felix expressed surprise that the Dunno machine had not become famous long ago. He spoke of it as a 'revolutionary invention, and predicted that in two years it will bo the only typo of aeropljne in the air. Few events in the recent history of flight have been so interesting as the success of Lieutenant J. W. Dunne's automatic stability aeroplane; This machino is probably the oldest in design in the United Kingdom, and has survived practically unchanged from an experimental model which was used as early as 1906, that is to say, two years before any power-driven aeroplanes Were i.i use on the Continent. In that year mysterious accounts appeared of secret experiments with an aeroplane on tlio Duke of Atholl's estate at Blair Atholl. The most elaborate precautions were taken to prevent unauthorised people from seeing what was done. The Royal _ Engineers, who assisted in the experiment, were taken to the flying ground by night, and many of them had no idea exactly in what part of tho country thi?y_ were, Tho first experiments were carried out witli a glider, and amongst those present were General Hadden, General Ruck, and the Duke of Atholl himself. The glides were conducted hv Colonel Capper, then chief of the Balloon Department, who directed the_ earliest experiments at Aklershot, Lieu'tenant Gibbs, who afterwards became a wellknown aviator, and Lieutenant Dunno himself. . The precautions taken were so great that the aeroplane was pointed so that anyone seeing it from a distanco would assume that it was the ortliViarv typo of gliding machino instead of being _ constructed P tho V shaoo. which is the basis of Lieutenant Dunne's theory. Tho peculiar design of tho machino consisted in'the attempt to acottirc automatic stability bv making the wines i,ohtl backwards from the central point at which the engine and the pilot's seat is placed, f.o that tlio winrs, by Iving well behind the centre of tiro machine, took tho place of tlio tail in the ordinary aeroplane. After tho Blair Atholl experiments. Lieutenant Dunne took his machine to Eastchurch. and built several replicas of it, 0110 of them beina a monoplane of the same design. Tho War Department, in its wisdom, dropped all interest 111 the invention, with the result _ that Lieutenant Dunne has perfected his machine unaided. Now the French Government has stepped in and obtained tho invention.