BRITISH BACKWARDNESS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 17 April 1909, Page 2

BRITISH BACKWARDNESS.

A rkcknt cablegram stated that the Tondon Daily Mail had offered ,£I,OOO for the first aeroplane of British invention and manufacture to fly a mile is a singular proof of British backwardness in this line of effort. Scores of flights of over a mile have been made abroad. Mr Wilbur Wright’s record is over 60 miles. The conditions under which experiments with the Army aeroplane are being carried out at Farnhorough are thus described ;—“When a trial of the aeroplane is attempted it has to be laboriously extracted sideways through an inadequate door, and has to be coaxed with infinite difficulty through all sorts of obstructions in order to reach the absurdly limited piece of ground where alone flights can be attempted. By the time that these protracted operations are complete, the weather has probably changed, and they have to be repealed backwards' to get the unlucky machine into its cramped quarters. ‘ Painful economy ’ is visible in the whole equipment. Dirigible balloons involve a radically different type of work from that expended upon aeroplanes ; both however, are carried on_ in the same broken-down establishment, and by the same inadequate staff, which in addition has to supply ordinary non-dirgible balloons. In such conditions anything that can be called progress is obviously impossible.”