AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9167, 15 August 1908, Page 5

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

CABLE NEWS.

nited Press Association-By Electric Telegtoph Copyright.

SUCCESS OF WRIGHT BROS.' AIRSHIP.

A MILE A MINUTE.

Received August 14, 8.25 a.m. PARIS, August 13

The Wright Brothers' airship, which has been making pieliminary flights in France, has covered a distance of eight miles in eight minutes. A long flight, with the view of thoroughly testing the capacity of the machine is projected.

AN ACCIDENT. Received August 14, 10' p.m. PARIS, August 14. When descending Wilbur Wright touched the wrong lever, causing the aeroplane to strike the ground, slightly injuring one of the wings. The accident will delay the experiments for eight days.

All experimenters in aerial navigation have recognised as a vital condition of safe flight, the absolute necessity of attaining some means of equilibration. In photographs of the Farman aeroplane, and the machine invented by Dr. Alexander Graham Bell upward or downward tilting wings are clearly shown, but this, the friends of the Wrights point out, is achieved by a rather cumbrous structure of framework which places great strain upon the critical points. The principle utilised by the, Wrights, it is claimed, is infinitely simpler as well as structurally stronger and more reliable, because the tilting or slanting of the wings is accomplished not by fragile sections hinged at their extremities, but by an easy upward or downward canting of the entire aeroplane structure itself, and by a method that equalises the distribution of stress, and completely sustains the whole, framework. This is effected by means of a wire line passed over a drum, so that the operator of the aeroplane, with a turn of the wrist on a lever, may fo elevate the end or jwings of the rear framework on one side and depress it co-ordinately on other and the linen composing the upper and lower planes is curved upward at the extremity of one wing while depressed on the other. The operator ia installed in the central rigid section of the aeroplane.. Both this central structure and the lateral extensions or wings form togethe? a rectangular parallelogram, which is rigid in front, while in the rear the lateral extensions move easily on joints controlled by the wire attached to the lever. By this device, which, difficult as it is to | explain verbally, is yet so simple as to be readily understood by anyone who has studied geometry and rudimentary physics, the aviator is enabled when his machine is struck by a vag r ant air current which threatens to overturn it, instantly to increase the angle of resistance on the one wing, and depress it on the other, thus restoring equilibrium. But the evolution which restores tie machine to an even keel by giving it momentarily the shape of the two blades of a screw propeller would also have a tendency to impart to ic a rotary motion. The Wrights have counteracted that danger by means of their tail-rudder, which is broughc into play by the same movement that elevates or depresses the tips of the great wings, and thus holds the aerial craft on its true course. In this way the Wrights apparently have made their aeroplane as flexible as a bird's wing, and, what is no less vital, as strong.