FIRST BIRD MAN.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 243, 19 January 1917, Page 4 (Supplement)

FIRST BIRD MAN.

OItVILLE WRTIiHT PRESENTS HIS PATENTS TO THE BRITISH NATION. The most wonderful thing in all the wonderful story of human flight is that it was accomplished arid the world was none tho wiser. Santos Dumont flew eighty yards in a, small aeroplane ot his awn construction—in effect a rower-driven box-kite —in Octolier, 1!)) G. A year later, almost to the day, Henry Earman flew a distance of half a mile, and people at once woke up to the fact that the problem tint had baffled Ure ingenuity of man for countless centuries had at last been solved. Then, and then only, a couple of young American working mechanics took a Yankee newspaper reporter into their confidence and that what Dumont and Earman had accomplished was a nice bn-;itelle. "We ourselves," they said, "have lieen flying these years pr.st in heavier-than-air machines that we lia-o built in secret with old lengths of '."legraph wire, •spare cycle part<, and bits of matchboarding.'' THEY WORKED ALONE. The news ,was cabled over here and received with whole-hexrted scepticism. People shruggod their shouiiders 111 derision. "Another Y'anfcee yarn!" they cried. But the story, incredible though sounded, was true. Working alone ov their two selves in a rough-hewn shack, sit mated far from railways or other dwelling-places amid the sand-hills of North Carolina, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright had constrci ted, >i: 1!K)2 aeroplanes on lines not very dissimilar from those evolved by Dumont and Fa.rman four and five years later. And, moreover, they had flown in them for distances v.p t3 twenty miles and more, remaining in the air often for oyer half-an-hour at a time.

True, no human eyes, other than their own, had seen these performances. Tho sea-gulls, fluttering above and around them, were al'ko tneir sole c-oni-potitors and the r only witnesses. But that what they said they had done ha ! r.ctually been accomplished, they were soon able to prove beyond the possibility of doubt. Tho brothers showed their various machines to approved experts: their early "gliders" (aeroplanes w'thout engin, s) and their later finished powerdriven ones. Moreover, they flew in them, and proved themselves perfect masters of the then well-nigh unknown r.,rt of aviation. VISITED BY KINGS. Immediately their names were on all tongues, America lionised' them. They camo over to Europe, and kings and emperors vied with one another in welcoming them. Nevertheless, they still remained the same unaffected working mechanics. Among other notables who c:ame to see them 'was our. King George—then Prince of Wale.-,. The Wrights received him in their hangar, which was also their solo dwelling-place—a rough shed, furnished only by a truckle-bed in one corner, two chairs (one minus tho back), and a common little deal table. Nor even to royalty could they be induced to unbend. Thov (answered mostly in monosyllables. The Prince laughingly rallied them on their lack of spe;<ch. Whereupon eno of them, his hawklike eyes twinkling, said: "Sir, parrots arc the only birds that ta'lk, and they are not good flyers." Unhappily, Wilbur Wright was killed >OOll afterwards while flying at I' ore >iever. U.S.A.: but the surviving brother, Orville, is now a multr-million-aii'e.