HOW IT FEELS TO FLY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 270, 7 November 1908, Page 3

HOW IT FEELS TO FLY.

WRIGHT BROTHERS' STORY OF THEIR STRUGGLES. Messrs. Wilbur and Orville Wright contribute to the Century Magazine an article describing the development of their aeroplane and how they attained success. Their personal interest in aerial navigation, they say, dates from their childhood, when their mother gave them the toy known as the helicoptera, which Hies by means of two cardboard screws driven by rubber bands under torsion. The brothers made larger toys of the same kind for themselves, and later took

Ito kite-flying. But not till the death of Lilienthal, inventor of the aerial •' glider," in lS'Jti, did they begin to consider the possibility of making a flying machine. They then studied aeronautical text-books, and became infatuated with the idea of mechanical flight. They built '• gliders" intended to remain stable in the air when flown as kites. Their first instruments were ia the shape of a broad V, with the centre of gravity beneath the wings. All the students of aviation had embodied 'this principle in their machines, but the Wrights, after long consideration, abandoned it altogether. They aimed thenceforth at an apparatus inert to the effects of change of direction or speed—not at one automatically balancing itself. So was ultimately evolved the existing double-plane apparatus with arched surfaces.

But as they persevered they found that all the formulae for air-pressures, etc., were erroneous. Endless cxperiI ments were made with results -at first I bewildering. Finally, disregarding the experiences of previous aviators, they struck out on their own lines and were ; at length successful in making a short ! flight with a " glider*' fitted with motor i and propeller. In the spring of 1904 a dozen American journalists assembled to witness 9 flight. The motor failed, as did the experiment. The reporters paid no more attenion to the machine, though flights of several minutes were made above "a ground open on every side and bordered on two sides by muchtravelled thoroughfares with electric I ears passing .every hour.'' Yet the Wright aeroplane remained a "mystery'' to the American Press until quite recently. Describing to the reader the sensations of flight after the machine has left the rails from which it starts and I lias, risen into the air, the writers say: I " The ground under you is at first a L perfect blur, but as you rise the objects [become clearer. At a height of 100 ft. you feel hardly any motion at all, except for the wind wliich strikes your face. If you did not take the precaution to fix" your hat before starting, you have probably lost it by this time. "The operator moves a lever; the right wing rises, and the machine swings about to-the left. You make a very short turn, yet you do not feel the sensation of being thrown from your seat, so often experienced in automobile and railway travel. When you are near the starting-point the operator stops the motor while still high in the air. The machine coasts down at an oblique angle to the ground, and after sliding fifty or a hundred feet comes to rest. Although the machine often lands-When travelling at a speed of a mile a minute, you feel no shock whatever, and cannot, in fact, tell the exact moment at which it first touched the ground." \