heard shooting. My orders were to let no one come down the ladder."

As he spoke, Carnes' head appeared at the skylight.

"It's the right place, all right, Doctor," he called. "Come on up, the
shooting is all over."

Dr. Bird mounted the ladder and stepped out on the roof. Set on one edge
was a large piece of apparatus, toward which the scientist eagerly
hastened. He bent over it for a few moments and then straightened up.

"Where is the operator?" he asked.

Carnes silently led the way to the edge of the roof and pointed down.
Dr. Bird leaned over. At the foot of the fire escape he saw a crumpled
dark heap, with a secret service operative bending over it.

"Is he dead, Olmstead?" called Carnes.

"Dead as a mackerel," came the reply. "Richards got him through the head
on his first shot."

"Good business," said Dr. Bird. "We probably could never have secured a
conviction and the matter is best hushed up anyway. Bolton, have two of
your men help me get this apparatus up to the Bureau. I want to examine
it a little. Have the body taken to the morgue and shut up the press.
Find out which room the chap occupied and search it, and bring all his
papers to me. From a criminal standpoint, this case is settled, but I
want to look into the scientific end of it a little more."

"I'd like to know what it was all about, Doctor," protested Bolton. "I
have followed your lead blindly, and now I have a housebreaking without
search-warrant and a killing to explain, and still I am about as much in
the dark as I was at the beginning."

"Excuse me, Bolton," said Dr. Bird contritely; "I didn't mean to slight
you. Admiral Clay wants to know about it and so does Carnes, although he
knows me too well to say so. As soon as I have digested the case I'll
let you know and I'll go over the whole thing with you."

A week later Dr. Bird sat in conference with the President in the
executive office of the White House. Beside him sat Admiral Clay, Carnes
and Bolton.

"I have told the President as much as I know, Doctor," said the Admiral,
"and he would like to hear the details from your lips. He has fully
recovered from his malady and there is no danger of exciting him."

"I cannot read Russian," said Dr. Bird slowly, "and so was forced to
depend on one of my assistants to translate the papers which Mr. Bolton
found in Stokowsky's room. There is nothing in them to definitely
connect him with the Russian Union of Soviet Republics, but there is
little doubt in my mind that he was a Red agent and that Russia supplied
the money which he spent. It would be disastrous to Russia's plans to
have too close an accord between this country and the British Empire,
and I have no doubt that the coming visit of Premier McDougal was the
underlying cause of the attempt. So much for the reason.

"As to how I came to suspect what was happening, the explanation is very
simple. When Carnes first told me of your malady, Mr. President, I
happened to be checking Von Beyer's results in the alleged discovery of
a new element, lunium. In the article describing his experiments, Von
Beyer mentions that when he tried to observe the spectra, he encountered
a mild form of opthalmia which was quite stubborn to treatment. He also
mentions a peculiar mental unbalance and intense exhilaration which the
rays seemed to cause both in himself and in his assistants. The analogy
between his observations and your case struck me at once.

"For ages the moon has been an object of worship by various religious
sects, and some of the most obscene orgies of which we have record
occurred in the moonlight. The full moon seems to affect dogs to a state
of partial hypnosis with consequent howling and evident pain in the
eyes. Certain feeble minded persons have been known to be adversely
affected by moonlight as well as some cases of complete mental
aberration. In other words, while moonlight has no practical effect on
the normal human in its usual concentration, it does have an adverse
effect on certain types of mentality and, despite the laughter of
medical science, there seems to be something in the theory of 'moon
madness.' This effect Von Beyer attributed to the emanations of lunium,
which element he detected in the spectra of the moon, in the form of a
wide band in the ultra-violet region.

"I obtained from Carnes a history of your case, and when I found that
your attacks grew violent with the full moon and subsided with the new
moon, I was sure that I was on the right track, although I had at that
time no way of knowing whether it was from natural or artificial causes
that the effect was being produced. I interviewed Admiral Clay and found
that you were suffering from a form of dermititis resembling sunburn,
and that convinced me that an attack was being made on your sanity, for
an excess of ultra-violet light will always tend to produce sunburn. I
inquired about the windows of your solarium, for ultra-violet light will
not pass through a lead glass. When the Admiral told me that the glass
had been replaced with fused quartz, which is quite permeable to
ultra-violet and that the change had been almost coincident with the
start of your malady, I asked him to get you out of the solarium and let
me examine it.

"By means of certain fluorescent substances which I used, I found that
your pillow was being bathed in a flood of ultra-violet light, and the
fluoro-spectroscope soon told me that lunium emanations were present in
large quantities. These rays were not coming to you directly from their
source, but one of the windows of the State, War and Navy Building was
being used as a reflector. I located the approximate source of the ray
by means of an improvised apparatus, and we surrounded the place.
Stokowsky was killed while attempting to escape. I guess that is about
all there is to it."

"Thank you, Doctor," said the President. "I would be interested in a
description of the apparatus which he used to produce this effect."

"The apparatus was quite simple, Sir. It was merely a large collector of
moonlight, which was thrown after collection onto a lunium plate. The
resultant emanations were turned into a parallel beam by a parabolic
reflector and focused, through a rock crystal lens with an extremely
long focal length, onto your pillow."

"Then Stokowsky had isolated Von Beyer's new element?" asked the
President.

"I am still in doubt whether it is a new element or merely an allotropic
modification of the common element, cadmium. The plate which he used has
a very peculiar property. When moonlight, or any other reflected light
of the same composition falls on it, it acts on the ray much as the
button of a Roentgen tube acts on a cathode ray. As the cathode ray is
absorbed and an entirely new ray, the X-ray, is given off by the button,
just so is the reflected moonlight absorbed and a new ray of
ultra-violet given off. This is the ray which Von Beyer detected. I
thought that I could catch traces of Von Beyer's lines in my
spectroscope, and I think now that it is due to a trace of lunium in the
cadmium plating of the barrels. Von Beyer could have easily made the
same mistake. Von Beyer's work, together with Stokowsky's opens up an
entirely new field of spectroscopic research. I would give a good deal
to go over to Baden and go into the matter with Von Beyer and make some
plans for the exploitation of the new field, but I'm afraid that my
pocketbook wouldn't stand the trip."

"I think that the United States owes you that trip, Dr. Bird," said the
Chief Executive with a smile. "Make your plans to go as soon as you get
your data together. I think that the Treasury will be able to take care
of the expense without raising the income tax next year."

       +------------------------------------------------------+
       |                                                      |
       |                 _IN THE NEXT ISSUE_                  |
       |                                                      |
       |                                                      |
       |                    Murder Madness                    |
       |                                                      |
       |  _Beginning an intensely Gripping, Four-Part Novel_  |
       |                                                      |
       |                _By_ MURRAY LEINSTER                  |
       |                                                      |
       |                                                      |
       |                  The Atom Smasher                    |
       |                                                      |
       |     _A Thrilling Adventure into Time and Space_      |
       |                                                      |
       |                _By_ VICTOR ROUSSEAU                  |
       |                                                      |
       |                                                      |
       |               Into the Ocean's Depths                |
       |                                                      |
       |      _A Sequel to_ "_From the Ocean's Depths_"       |
       |                                                      |
       |              _By_ SEWELL PEASLEE WRIGHT              |
       |                                                      |
       |                                                      |
       |                 Brigands of the Moon                 |
       |                                                      |
       |          _Part Three of the Amazing Serial_          |
       |                                                      |
       |                  _By_ RAY CUMMINGS                   |
       |                                                      |
       |                                                      |
       |                  ----_And Others!_                   |
       |                                                      |
       +------------------------------------------------------+

[Illustration: _The Readers' Corner_

_A Meeting Place for Readers of_
Astounding Stories]

_Our Thanks_

Three months ago the Clayton Magazines presented to lovers of Science
Fiction everywhere a new magazine with a brand-new policy--Astounding
Stories--and now it is the Editor's great pleasure to announce to our
thousands of friends that this new magazine is enjoying a splendid
success.

Within twenty-four hours of the time that Astounding Stories was
released for sale, letters of praise began pouring into our office,
and--and this is significant--many of them clearly revealed that their
writers had grasped the essential difference of the new Science Fiction
magazine over the others.

We cannot better state this difference, this improvement, than by
quoting what the Reader whose letter appears under the caption, "And
Kind to Their Grandmothers," says in his very first paragraph: "And I
was still more pleased, and surprised, to find that the Editor seems to
know that such stories should have real story interest, besides a
scientific idea." It is exactly that. Every story that appears in
Astounding Stories not only must contain some of the forecasted
scientific achievements of To-morrow, but must be told vividly,
excitingly, with all the human interest that goes to make any story
enjoyable To-day.

The Editor and staff of Astounding Stories express their sincere thanks
to all who have contributed to our splendid start--especially to those
who had the kindness to write in with their helpful criticism.

Already one of your common suggestions has been taken up and embodied in
our magazine, and so we have this new department, "The Readers'
Corner," which from now on will be an informal meeting place for all
readers of Astounding Stories. We want you never to forget that a
cordial and perpetual invitation is extended to you to write in and talk
over with all of us anything of interest you may have to say in
connection with our magazine.

If you can toss in a word of praise, that's fine; if only criticism,
we'll welcome that just as much, for we may be able to find from it a
way to improve our magazine. If you have your own private theory of how
airplanes will be run in 2500, or if you think the real Fourth Dimension
is different from what it is sometimes described--write in and share
your views with all of us.

This department is all yours, and the job of running it and making it
interesting is largely up to you. So "come over in 'The Readers'
Corner'" and have your share in what everyone will be saying.

                                                       --_The Editor._

"_And Kind to Their Grandmothers!_"

  Dear Editor:

  I received a pleasant surprise a few days ago when I found a new
  Science Fiction magazine at the newsstand--Astounding Stories. And
  I was still more pleased, and surprised, to find that the Editor
  seems to know that such stories should have real story interest,
  besides a scientific idea.

  Of course I took with a grain of salt the invitation to write to
  the editor and give my preference of the kind of stories I like. I
  know that every editor, down in his heart, thinks his magazine is
  perfect "as is." In fact, praise is what they want, not
  suggestions, judging by the letters they print.

  Well, I can conscientiously give you some praise. If Astounding
  Stories keep up to the standard of the first issue it will be all
  right. Evidently you can afford to hire the best writers
  obtainable. Notice you've signed up some of my favorites, Murray
  Leinster, R. F. Starzl, Ray Cummings. I like their stuff because it
  has the rare quality rather vaguely described as "distinction,"
  which make the story remembered for a long time.

  The story "Tanks," by Murray Leinster, is my idea of what such a
  story should be. The author does not start out, "Listen, my
  children, and you shall hear a story so wonderful you won't believe
  it. Only after the death of Professor Bulging Dome do I dare to
  make it public to a doubting world." No, he simply proceeds to tell
  the story. If I were reading it in the Saturday Evening Post or
  Ladies Home Journal it would be all right to prepare me for the
  story by explaining that of course the author does not vouch for
  the story, it having been told to him by a crazy Eurasian in a
  Cottage Grove black-and-tan speakeasy at 3.30 A. M. In Astounding
  Stories I expect the story to be unusual, so don't bother telling
  me it is so. That criticism applies to "Phantoms of Reality," which
  is a story above the average, though, despite its rather flat title
  and slow beginning.

  Here's another good point about "Tanks." Its characters are human.
  Some authors of stories of the future make their characters all
  brains--cold monsters, with no humanity in them. Such a story has
  neither human interest nor plausibility. The sky's the limit, I
  say, for mechanical or scientific accomplishments, but human
  emotions will be the same a thousand years from now. And even
  supposing that they will be changed, your readers have present day
  emotions. The magazine can not prosper unless those present-day
  emotions are aroused and mirrored by thoroughly human characters.
  The situation may be just as outre as you like--the more unusual
  the better--but it is the response of normal human emotions to most
  unusual situations that gives a magazine such as yours its powerful
  and unique "kick."

  The response of the two infantrymen in "Tanks" to the strange and
  terrifying new warfare of the future exemplifies another point I
  would like to make--the fact that no matter what marvels the future
  may bring, the people who will live then will take them in a
  matter-of-fact way. Their conversation will be cigarettes,
  "sag-paste," drinks, women. References to the scientific marvels
  around them will be casual and sketchy. How many million words of
  an average car owner's conversation would you have to report to
  give a visitor from 1700 an idea of internal combustion engines?
  The author, if skillful, can convey that information in other ways.
  Yet a lot of stories printed have long, stilted conversations in
  which the author thinks he is conveying in an entertaining way his
  foundation situation. Personally, I like a lot of physical
  action--violent action preferred. This is so, probably, because I'm
  a school teacher and sedentary in my habits. I have never written a
  story in my life, but I'm the most voracious consumer of stories in
  Chicago. I like to see the hero get into a devil of a pickle, and
  to have him smash his way out. I like 'em big, tough, and kind to
  their grandmothers.

  It seems to me that interplanetary stories offer the best vehicle
  for all the desirable qualities herein enumerated combined. There
  is absolutely no restraint on the imagination, except a few known
  astronomical facts--plenty of opportunity for violent and dangerous
  adventures, strange and terrestrially impossible monsters. The
  human actors, set down in the midst of such terrifying conditions,
  which they battle dauntlessly, grinning as they take their blows
  and returning them with good will, cannot fail to rouse the
  admiration of the reader. And make him buy the next month's issue.

  But spare us, please the stories in which the hero, arriving on
  some other planet, is admitted to the court of the king of the
  White race, and leads their battles against the Reds, the Browns,
  the Greens, and so on, eventually marrying the king's daughter, who
  is always golden-haired, of milky white complexion, and has large
  blue eyes. Kindly reject stories of interplanetary travel in which
  a member of the party turns against the Earth party and allies
  himself with the wormlike Moon men, or what have you. Stories in
  which a great inventor gone crazy threatens to hurl the Earth into
  the Sun leave me cold and despondent, for the simple reason that
  crazy men are never great inventors. Name a great inventor who
  wasn't perfectly sane, if you can. The author makes the great
  inventor insane to make it plausible that he should want to destroy
  the World. Well, if he is a good author he can find some other
  motive.

  One more thing. I like to smell, feel, hear and even taste the
  action of a story as well as see it. Some authors only let you see
  it, and then they don't tell you whether it's in bright or subdued
  light. The author of "Tanks" fulfills my requirements in this
  respect, at least partially.--Walter Boyle, c/o Mrs. Anna Treitz,
  4751 North Artesian, Chicago, Ill.

_A Permanent Reader_

  Dear Editor:

  I want to thank you for the very entertaining hours I spent
  perusing your new magazine, Astounding Stories. I read one or two
  other Science Fiction magazines--it seems that tales of this sort
  intrigue me. However, I wish to say that the debut number of your
  magazine contained the best stories I ever read. Again thanking you
  and assuring you that should the stories continue thus I will be a
  permanent reader--Irving E. Ettinger, The Seville, Detroit, Mich.

_We're Avoiding Reprints_

  Dear Editor:

  I am well pleased with your new magazine and wish to offer you my
  congratulations and best wishes. As I am well acquainted with most
  of the Science Fiction now being written, I am in a good position
  to criticize your magazine.

  First: The cover illustration is good, but the inside drawings
  could be greatly improved.

  Second: Holding the magazine together with two staples is a good
  idea.

  Third: The paper could be improved.

  Fourth: The price is right.

  Here I classify the stories. Excellent: "The Beetle Horde," and
  "Tanks." Very Good: "Cave of Horror," "Invisible Death," and
  "Phantoms of Reality." Medium: "Compensation." Poor: "Stolen Mind."

  Please don't reprint any of Poe's, Wells', or Verne's works. My
  prejudice to Verne, Wells and Poe is that I have read all their
  works in other magazines.

  However, with all my criticizing, I think that your magazine is a
  good one.--James Nichols, 1509 19th Street, Bakersfield,
  California.

_Thanks, Mr. Marks!_

  Dear Editor:

  I purchased a copy of "our" new magazine to-day and I think it
  excellent. I am glad to see most of my old author friends
  contributing for it, but how about looking up E. R. Burroughs,
  David H. Keller, M. D., C. P. Wantenbacker and A. Merritt? They are
  marvelous writers. I see Wesso did your cover and it is very good.
  I have been a reader of four other Science Fiction monthly
  magazines and two quarterlies, but I gladly take this one into my
  fold and I think I speak for every other Science Fiction lover when
  I say this. Which means, if true, that your publication will have
  everlasting success. Here's hoping!--P. O. Marks, Jr., 893 York
  Avenue, S. W., Atlanta, Ga.

_A Fine Letter_

  Dear Editor:

  Having read through the first number of Astounding Stories, my
  enthusiasm has reached such a pitch that I find it difficult to
  express myself adequately. A mere letter such as this can give
  scarcely an inkling of the unbounded enjoyment I derive from the
  pages of this unique magazine. To use a trite but appropriate
  phrase, "It fills a long-felt need." True, there are other
  magazines which specialize in Science Fiction; but, to my mind they
  are not in a class with Astounding Stories. In most of them the
  scientific element is so emphasized that it completely overshadows
  all else. In this magazine, happily, such is not the case. Here we
  find science subordinated to human interest, which is as it should
  be. The love element, too, is present and by no means unwelcome.

  As for the literary quality of the stories, it could not be
  improved on. Such craftsmen as Cummings, Leinster and Rousseau
  never fail to turn out a vivid, well-written tale. If the stories in
  the succeeding issues are on a par with those in the first, the
  success of the magazine is assured.

  By the way, your editorial explanation of Astounding Stories was a
  gem. So many of us take our marvelous modern inventions for granted
  that we never consider how miraculous they would seem to our
  forebears. As you say, the only real difference between the
  Astounding and the Commonplace is Time. A magazine such as
  Astounding Stories enables us to anticipate the wonders of
  To-morrow. Through its pages we can peer into the vistas of the
  future and behold the world that is to be. Truly, you have given us
  a rare treat--Allen Glasser, 931 Forest Ave., New York, N. Y.

_The Science Correspondence Club Broadcasts_

  Dear Editor:

  The other day I came upon Astounding Stories on our local
  newsstand. I immediately procured a copy because Science Fiction
  is my favorite pastime, so to speak. I was very much overjoyed that
  another good Science Fiction magazine should come out, and a
  Clayton Magazine too, which enhances its splendid value still
  further. I have read various members of the Clayton family and I
  found each of them entertaining.

  After finishing the first issue, I decided to write in and express
  my feelings. The stories were all good with the exception of "The
  Stolen Mind." Just keep printing stories by Cape, Meek, Ray
  Cummings, Murray Leinster, C. V. Tench, Harl Vincent and R. F.
  Starzl and I can predict now that your new venture will be a huge
  success.

  The main reason of this letter is to ask your help in putting over
  Science Fiction Week. This will take place in the early part of
  February, the week of the 5th or after. We want your co-operation
  in making this a big success. You can help by running the attached
  article upon the Science Correspondence Club in your "Readers'
  Corner." It will be a big aid.

  I am sure, because you are the Editor of Astounding Stories, that
  you will be pleased to help us in this venture. Science Fiction is
  our common meeting ground and our common ideal.

  I hope to have a Big Science Fiction Week with your help.--Conrad
  H. Ruppert, 113 North Superior Street, Angola, Indiana.

  To the Readers of Astounding Stories:

  At the present there exists in the United States an organization
  the purpose of which is to spread the gospel of Science and Science
  Fiction, the Science Correspondence Club. I am writing this to
  induce the readers of Astounding Stories to join us. After reading
  this pick up your pen or take the cover from your typewriter and
  send in an application for membership to our Secretary, Raymond A.
  Palmer, 1431-38th St., Milwaukee, Wisconsin, or to our President,
  Aubrey Clements, 6 South Hillard St., Montgomery, Alabama. They
  will forward application blanks to you and you will belong to the
  only organization in the world that is like it.

  The Club was formed by twenty young men from all over the U. S. We
  have a roll of almost 100, all over the world. Its expressed
  purpose has been to help the cause of Science Fiction, and to
  increase the knowledge of Science. It also affords the advantage of
  being able to express your ideas in all fields.

  The Preamble of the Constitution which we have worked out reads:
  "We, the members of this organization, in order to promote the
  advancement of Science in general among laymen of the world through
  the use of discussion and the creation and exchange of new ideas,
  do ordain and establish this organization for the Science
  Correspondence Club."

  Article Two reads: "The institution will remain an organization to
  establish better co-ordination between the scientifically inclined
  laymen of the world, regardless of sex, creed, color, or race.
  There will be no restrictions as to age, providing the member can
  pass an examination which shall be prepared by the membership
  committee."

  The Club will also publish a monthly bulletin, to which members may
  contribute. It will also publish clippings, articles, etc., dealing
  with science.

  The membership will have no definite limit and the correspondence
  will be governed by the wishes of each member.

  Need more be said?

  I almost forgot to say that we have two of the best Science Fiction
  authors as active members, and three more who are doing their best,
  but because of such work they cannot be active.

  I hope my appeal bears fruit and that we shall hear from you
  soon.--Conrad H. Ruppert.

_But--Most Everybody Prefers the Smaller Size--and Price!_

  Dear Editor:

  Last night I was passing a newsstand and saw your magazine. I
  bought it then and there. I do not read any other stories except
  the fantastic stories. Astounding Stories looks all right, but may
  I make a suggestions? Why not increase the size of the magazine to
  that of Miss 1900 or Forest and Stream? It would certainly look
  better! You could also raise your price to twenty-five cents.
  Please print as many stories as possible by the following authors:
  Ray Cummings, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Murray Leinster, Edmond
  Hamilton, A. Hyatt Verrill, Stanton A. Coblentz, Ed Earl Repp and
  Harl Vincent.

  My favorite type of story is the interplanetary one. I wish you the
  best of luck in your new venture.--Stephen Takacs, 303 Eckford
  Street, Brooklyn, N. Y.

"_First Copy Wonderful_"

  Dear Editor:

  I have read the first copy of Astounding Stories and think it
  wonderful. I am very much interested in science fiction. I prefer
  interplanetary stories and would like to see many of them in the
  new magazine. Your authors are fine. The ones I like particularly
  are Ray Cummings, Captain S. P. Meek, and Murray Leinster. I wonder
  if I could subscribe to Astounding Stories? Will you let me know?
  Good luck to the new magazine.--Donald Sisler, 3111 Adams Mill
  Road, Washington, D. C.

_Congratulations_

  Dear Editor:

  Allow me to congratulate you upon the starting of your new
  magazine, Astounding Stories. Have just finished reading the first
  issue and it is fine. While the class of stories that you publish
  do not appeal to all, I feel quite sure that there are many like
  myself who will welcome your publication and wish it all
  success.--R. E. Norton, P. O. Box 226, Ashtabula, Ohio.


[Illustration: EDISON AND THE EARLY PHONOGRAPH]

Edison had always wanted a model laboratory, one that should be fitted
with the most perfect instruments obtainable, and supplied with all
the materials he could possibly require in any of his extraordinary
experiments. In 1886 he bought a house in Llewellyn Park, New Jersey,
and near the house ten acres of land, on which he built the laboratory
of his dreams. Here he had a large force of skilled workmen constantly
engaged in developing his ideas, and the expenses were paid by the
many commercial companies in which he was interested, and which
profited by the improvements he was continually making in their
machinery.

Many volumes might be written to tell of the “Wizard’s” achievements.
There has been no inventor who has covered such a field, and each step
he takes opens new and fascinating vistas to his ever-inquiring eyes.
Electricity is always his main study, and electricity he expects in
time will revolutionize modern life by making heat, power, and light
practically as cheap as air. But other subjects have concerned him
almost as much. He ranges from new processes for making guns to the
supplying of ready-made houses built of cement. Everything interests
him, every object tempts him to try his hand at improving on it.

The phonograph is his achievement, and the practical development of
the kinetoscope. He has built electric locomotives and run them, he
has made many discoveries in regard to platinum. His better known
patents include developments of the electric lamp, the telephone,
storage-batteries, ore-milling machinery, typewriters, electric pens,
vocal engines, addressing machines, cast-iron furniture, wire-drawing,
methods of preserving fruit, moving-picture machines, compressed-air
machines, and the manufacture of plate glass. He took out a patent
covering wireless telegraphy in 1891, but other matters were then
absorbing his attention, and he was quite willing to yield that field
to the brilliant Italian, Marconi. He feels no jealousy for other
inventors. He knows how vast the field is, and how many paths
constantly beckon him.

It is doubtless true that the great inventors are born and not made,
but many of them seem, nevertheless, to have drifted into the work
that gave them fame, or to have hit by chance on their compelling
idea. It was not so with Edison. He was beyond any doubt born an
inventor. With him to see was to ask the question why, and to ask that
question was to start his thoughts on the train that was to bring him
to the answer.

XV

MARCONI AND THE WIRELESS TELEGRAPH

1874-

At first sight the wireless telegraph seems the most wonderful of all
inventions and discoveries, the one that is least easy to understand,
and that most nearly approaches that magic which is above all nature’s
laws. Even if we do come to understand it it loses nothing of its
wonder, and the last impression is very like the first. We can
understand how an electric current travels through a wire, even if we
cannot understand electricity, but how that current can travel through
limitless space and yet reach its destination strains the imagination.
Yet wireless telegraphy is not a matter of the imagination, but of
exact, demonstrable science.

On December 12, 1901, a quiet, dark-skinned young man sat, about
noontime, in a room of the old barracks building on Signal Hill, near
St. John’s, Newfoundland. On the table in front of him was a
mechanical apparatus, with an ordinary telephone receiver at its side.
The window was partly open, and a wire led from the machine on the
table through the window to a gigantic kite that a high wind kept
flying fully 400 feet above the room. The young man picked up the
receiver, and held it to his ear for a long time. His face showed no
sign of excitement, though an assistant, standing near him, could
barely keep still. Then, suddenly, came the sharp click of the
“tapper” as it struck the “coherer.” That meant that something was
coming. The young man listened a few minutes, and then handed the
receiver to his assistant. “See if you can hear anything, Mr. Kemp,”
said he. The other man took the receiver, and a moment later his ear
caught the sound of three little clicks, faint, but distinct and
unmistakable, the three dots of the letter S in the Morse Code. Those
clicks had been sent from Poldhu, on the Cornish coast of England, and
they had traveled through air across the Atlantic Ocean without any
wire to guide them. That was one of the great moments of history. The
young man at the table was Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian.

We know that it is no injustice to a great inventor to say that other
men had imagined what he achieved, and had earlier tried to prove
their theories. It takes nothing from the glory of that other great
Italian, Columbus, to recall that other sailors had planned to cross
the sea to the west of Europe and that some had tried it. So James
Clerk-Maxwell had proved by mathematics the electro-magnetic theory of
light in 1864, and Heinrich Hertz had demonstrated in 1888 by actual
experiment that electric waves exist in the free ether, and Edison had
for a time worked on the problem of a wireless telegraph. Marconi
devised the last link that made the wonder possible, and caught the
first click that came across the sea, and to him belong the palms.
Judge Townsend, in deciding a suit in a United States court in 1905,
declared, “It would seem, therefore, to be a sufficient answer to the
attempts to belittle Marconi’s great invention that, with the whole
scientific world awakened by the disclosures of Hertz in 1887 to the
new and undeveloped possibilities of electric waves, nine years
elapsed without a single practical or commercially successful result,
and Marconi was the first to describe and the first to achieve the
transmission of definite intelligible signals by means of these
Hertzian waves.”

Marconi was born at Villa Griffone, near Bologna, in 1874, so that he
was under thirty when he caught that first transatlantic message. He
studied at Leghorn under Professor Rosa, and later at the University
of Bologna with Professor Righi. He was always absorbed in science,
and experimented, holiday after holiday, on his father’s estate. He
was precocious to an extraordinary degree, for in 1895, when only
twenty-one, he had produced a wireless transmitting apparatus that he
patented in Italy. Within a year he had taken out patents in England
and in other European countries, and had proposed a wireless telegraph
system to the English Post-Office Department. That Department, through
Sir William Henry Preece, Engineer-in-Chief of Telegraphs, took up the
subject, and reported very favorably on the Marconi System. Marconi
himself, at the House of Commons, telegraphed by wireless across the
Thames, a distance of 250 yards. In June, 1897, he sent a message nine
miles, in July twelve miles, and in 1898 he succeeded in sending one
across the English Channel to France, thirty-two miles. In 1901 he
covered a space of 3,000 miles.

Let us now see what it was that Marconi had actually done.

Wireless signals are in reality wave motions in the magnetic forces of
the earth, or, in other words, disturbances of those forces. They are
sent out through this magnetic field, and follow the earth’s
curvature, in the same way that tidal waves follow the ocean’s
surface. Everywhere about us there is a sea of what science calls the
ether, and the ether is constantly in a state of turmoil, because it
is the medium through which energy, radiating from the sun, is carried
to the earth and other planets. This energy is transmitted through the
free ether in waves, which are known as electromagnetic waves. It was
this fact that Professor Hertz discovered, and the waves are sometimes
called the Hertzian waves. Light is one variety of wave motion, and
heat another. The ether must be distinguished from the air, for
science means by it a medium which exists everywhere and is to be
regarded as permeating all space and all matter. The ether exists in a
vacuum, for, although all the air may have been withdrawn, an object
placed in a vacuum can still be seen from outside, and hence the wave
motions of light are traveling through a space devoid of air.

Professor Hertz proved in 1888 that a spark, or disruptive discharge
of electricity, caused electro-magnetic waves to radiate away in all
directions through the ether. The waves acted exactly like ripples
that radiate from a stone when it strikes the water. These Hertzian
waves were found to travel with the same velocity as light, and would
circle the world eight times in a second. As soon as the existence of
these waves was known many scientists began to consider whether they
could not be used for telegraphy. But the problem was a very difficult
one. The questions were how to transmit the energy to a distance, and
how to make a receiver that should be sensitive enough to be affected
by it.

Let us picture a body of still water with a twig floating upon its
surface. If a stone is thrown into the water ripples radiate in all
directions, these waves becoming weaker as the circles they form
become larger, or in other words as they grow more distant from the
point where the stone struck the water. When the waves reach the
floating twig they will move it, and when they cease the twig will be
motionless again. Should there be grasses or rocks protruding up from
the water the motion given to the twig by the waves would be lessened,
or distorted, or changed in many ways, depending on the intervening
object. Whether the waves will actually impart motion to the twig will
depend on the force by which these waves were started and upon the
lightness of the twig, or its sensitiveness to the ripples as they
radiate. If the water were disturbed by some other force than the
stone the twig would be moved by that other force, and the observer
could not tell from what direction the motion had come, or how it had
been caused. Applying this to wireless telegraphy one may say that a
device must be used that will send out waves of a certain length, and
that the receiver must be constructed so that it will respond only to
waves of the length sent by that transmitter.

There must therefore be accurate tuning of the two instruments. Let a
weight be fastened at the end of a spiral spring and then be struck.
The weight will oscillate at a uniform rate, or so many times a
minute. If this be held so that it strikes the water the movement of
the spring will create a certain number of waves a minute. If now a
second weight, attached to a second spring, be hung down into the
water, the waves caused by the first will reach the second, and if the
springs be alike the movements or oscillations will correspond. But if
the springs were not alike, or if, in other words, the two instruments
were not in tune, the wave motions would not be received and copied
accurately. Therefore in wireless telegraphy the instrument that is to
impart the motion to the electro-magnetic waves that fill the ether
must be tuned in accord with the instrument that is to receive the
motion of those waves.

The sending of the wireless message requires a source of production of
the electro-magnetic waves. This is obtained by what is known as
capacity, or in other words, the power that is possessed by any metal
surface to retain a charge of electricity, and by inductance, procured
when a constantly changing current is sent through a coil of wire.
This capacity and inductance must be adjusted to give exactly the same
frequency of motion to the waves, or the same oscillations, if the
receiver that is tuned to vibrate to those waves is to receive that
message accurately. The receiving station must have the means to
intercept the waves, and then transform them again into electrical
oscillations that shall correspond to those sent out from the
transmitting station.

As early as 1844 Samuel F. B. Morse had succeeded in telegraphing
without wires under the Susquehanna River, and in 1854 James Bowman
Lindsay, a Scotchman, had sent a message a distance of two miles
through water without wires. Sir William Henry Preece, by using an
induced current, had telegraphed several miles without a connecting
wire. But the discoveries made in regard to the Hertzian waves placed
the subject on a different footing, and the possibility of an actual
usable wireless telegraph was now looked at from a new view-point.

Professor Hertz had used a simple form of apparatus to obtain his free
ether waves. A loop of wire, with the ends almost touching each other,
had been his receiver, or detector. When he set his generator, or
instrument to create the oscillations, in operation, and held the
detector near it, he could see very minute electric sparks passing
between the ends of the loop of wire. This proved the existence of the
electro-magnetic waves.

In 1890 Professor Eduard Branly found that loose metallic filings
became good conductors of electricity when there were electric
oscillations at hand. He demonstrated this by placing the filings
between metal plugs in a glass tube, and connecting this in circuit
with a battery and electric indicator. Professor Oliver Lodge named
this device of Branly’s a “coherer,” and when he found that it was
more sensitive than the Hertz detector he combined it with the Hertz
oscillator. This was in 1894, and the combination of oscillator and
coherer actually formed the first real wireless set.

Wireless stations on shore are marked by very tall masts, which
support a single wire, or a set of wires, which are known as the
_antenna_. The antenna has electrical capacity, and when it is
connected with the other apparatus needful to produce the oscillations
it disturbs the earth’s magnetic field. For temporary service, as in
the case of military operations, the antenna is frequently attached to
captive balloons or kites, and so suspended high in air. On ships the
antenna is fastened to the masts. The step that led to this addition
was taken by Count Popoff in 1895, when he attached a vertical wire to
one side of the coherer of the receiver of Professor Lodge, and
connected the other side with the ground. He used this to learn the
approach of thunder-storms.

With a knowledge of electro-magnetic waves, with a high-power
oscillator, and a sensitive coherer, it remained for Marconi to
connect an antenna to the transmitter, and thus secure a wide and
practicable working field for the sending and receiving of his
messages. This he did in 1896, and it was this addition that made the
wireless telegraph of real use to men. Improvements in the transmitter
and receiver have constantly increased the power of the invention, and
have gradually allowed him to employ it over greater and greater
distances.

With Marconi’s successful demonstrations of wireless in England its
use at once began. The Trinity House installed a station at the
East Goodwin Lighthouse, which communicated with shore and proved of
the greatest value in preventing shipwrecks. The Marconi Wireless
Telegraph Company was organized in 1897, and made agreements to erect
coast stations for the Italian, Canadian, and Newfoundland
governments, and for Lloyd’s. The great shipping lines established
wireless stations on their vessels, and the antenna were soon to be
seen on points of vantage along every coast. On December 12, 1901,
Marconi in Newfoundland caught the message sent from Cornwall; on
January 19, 1903, President Roosevelt sent the first “official”
wireless message across the Atlantic to Edward VII, and in October,
1905, a message was sent from England across the mountains, valleys
and cities of Europe to the battle-ship _Renown_, stationed at the
entrance to the Suez Canal.

[Illustration: WIRELESS STATION IN NEW YORK CITY, SHOWING THE ANTENNA]

The system of operating wireless telegraphy is in some respects
similar to that of the ordinary telegraph. The Morse Code is largely
used in America, and a modification of it, called the Continental
Code, in Europe. When the wireless operator wishes to send a message
to another station he “listens in,” as it is called, by connecting his
receiving apparatus with the adjacent antenna and the ground. He has
the telephone receiver attached to his ears. Next he adjusts his
receiving circuits for a number of wave lengths. If he catches no
signals in his telephone receiver he understands that no messages are
being sent within his area. Then he “throws in” the transmitting
apparatus, which automatically disconnects the receiving end. He
gives the letters that stand for the station with which he wants to
communicate, and adds the letters of his own station. He does this a
number of times, to insure the other station picking up the call. Then
he “listens in,” and if he receives the clicks that show that the
other station has heard him he is ready to establish regular
telegraphic communication.

A number of distant stations may be sending messages simultaneously.
In that case the operator tunes his instrument, or in other words
adjusts his apparatus to suit the wave length of the station with
which he wishes to communicate. In this way he “tunes out” the other
messages, and receives only the one he wants. If, however, the
stations that are sending simultaneously happen to be situated near
together, as in the case of several vessels near a shore station, the
operator is often unable to do this “tuning out,” and must try to
catch the message he wishes by the sound of the “spark” of the
transmitting station, if he can in any way distinguish it from the
“sparks” of the other messages.

There are several ways of determining when the two circuits are in
tune. One is to insert a hot-wire current meter between the antenna
and the inductance, which indicates the strength of the oscillatory
current that has been established. A maximum reading can then be made
by manipulating the flexible connections, and this will show whether
the two circuits are in accord. The other method is by using a device
that indicates the wave length. This measures the frequency of one
circuit, and then the other circuit can be adjusted to give a
corresponding wave length. The larger the antenna the longer will be
the wave length and the greater the power of the apparatus. It is
usual to employ a short wave length for low-power, short-distance
equipments, and a long wave length for the high-power, long-distance
stations.

Wireless telegraphy has already proved itself of the greatest value on
the ocean. It has sent news of storms and wrecks across tossing seas
and brought rescue to scores of voyagers. Ships may now keep in
constant communication with their offices on shore. The great lines
send Marconigrams to each other in mid-ocean, and publish daily papers
giving the latest news of the whole world. Greater distances have so
far been covered over water than over land, but this branch of the
service is being rapidly developed, and it must prove in time of the
greatest value across deserts and wild countries, where a regular
telegraph service would be impracticable. In such a country as Alaska,
where there are constant heavy sleet and snow storms, the wireless
should prove invaluable.

The telegraph and cable companies did their best to ignore the claims
of the wireless systems, but they have been compelled to acknowledge
them at last. Rival companies have sprung up, using slightly different
varieties of apparatus. Each of the big companies that were ready to
compete with the Marconi Company by 1906, the German Telefunken
Company, the American National Electric Signaling Company, the
American De Forest Company, and the British Lodge-Muirhead Wireless
Syndicate, had certain peculiar advantages over the others. The laws
relating to the uses of wireless, and especially the rights of
governments to the sole use of the systems in case of war, are in a
confused condition, but eventually order must come from this chaos as
it did in the history of the telephone and telegraph.

Wireless has brought the possibility of communication between any two
individuals, no matter where they may be situated, within the realm of
fact. A severing of communication with any part of the world will be
impossible. Storms and earthquakes that destroy telegraph systems,
enemies that cut submarine cables, cannot prevent the sending of
Marconigrams. The African explorer and the Polar adventurer can each
talk with his countrymen. The use of this agency is still in its
earliest youth, but it has already done so much that it is impossible
to say to what a stature it may grow. It should cut down the rates for
using wire and cable systems, and ultimately place the means of
communicating directly with any one on land or sea within the reach of
every man. All the world’s information will be at the instant disposal
of whomsoever needs it, and all this is due to those electro-magnetic
waves that permeate the ether, waiting to be put into service at the
touch of man.

XVI

THE WRIGHTS AND THE AIRSHIP

Wilbur Wright 1867-

Orville Wright 1871-

Men have always wanted to be able to fly. So long as there have been
birds to watch, so long have men of speculative minds wondered at the
secret of their flight. Early in recorded history men built ships to
sail across the seas, but the problem of air navigation has always
baffled them. The balloon came into being, but the balloon for years
was only a toy, dependent on the wind’s whim, and of the least
possible service to men. The problem of aerial navigation was to
master the currents of the air as the sailing-vessel and the steamship
had overcome the waves and tides at sea.

The history of invention often shows that some great thinker, or
school of thinkers, has stated a scientific conclusion that
generations of later men have never dared to question. The laws of
Aristotle in regard to falling bodies were never doubted until Galileo
began to wonder if they could be true. Sir Isaac Newton had stated,
and mathematical computations had proved his words, that a mechanical
flying-machine was an impossibility. Any such machine must be heavier
than the air it flew in. The weight of Newton’s authority and the
weight of figures were compelling facts, such as scientists had no
mind to doubt. But in spite of these facts men could see that birds
flew, although they were often a thousand times heavier than the air
they went through. And that sight kept men speculating, in spite of
all the figures and scientific dicta of the ages.

It was known for centuries that if a kite was held in position by a
string reaching to the ground the wind blowing against it would keep
it supported in the air. Now if the kite, instead of being stationary
in moving air, were to be moved constantly through quiet air it would
also stay up. The motive power might be supplied by a motor and
propellers, but in order to do away with the string which holds the
kite in position the aeroplane, which is only a big kite in principle,
must have some way of balancing itself so that it will stay in the
proper position in the air.

A German engineer, Otto Lilienthal, made a study of the mechanics of
birds’ flights, and determined to learn their secret by actual trial.
He built wings that were similar to those of the hawk and buzzard, the
great soaring birds, and in 1891 he began to throw himself from the
tops of hills, supported by these wings, and glided through the air
into the valleys. In this way he learned new laws of flight,
contradicting many theories of the scientists, and opening a new world
of speculation. But in August, 1896, his wings broke in a sudden gust
of wind, he fell fifty feet, and died of a broken back.

It was this problem of balancing that had cost Lilienthal his life. He
had tried to balance himself by throwing his weight quickly from side
to side as he held to his “gliding machine.” His pupil, Percy S.
Pilcher, an Englishman, continued his experiments, trying the same
method of balancing, but in September, 1899, his wings broke, and he
met the same fate as his teacher. It seemed that men could not shift
their weight quickly enough to meet the gusts of wind.

Meantime new theories of flight were being worked out in the United
States. Professor S. P. Langley, of the Smithsonian Institution, had
made experiments with plates of metal moved through the air at various
rates of speed and at different angles, and had published his new
conclusions in regard to the support the air would furnish
flying-planes in 1891. In 1896 he built a small steam-aeroplane that
flew a distance of three-quarters of a mile down the Potomac River.
And in the same year Octave Chanute, of Chicago, with the aid of A. M.
Herring, built a multiple-wing machine and tried it successfully on
the banks of Lake Michigan. But the problem of balancing was not yet
solved, and here Wilbur and Orville Wright entered upon the scene.

The Wrights’ home was in Dayton, Ohio, and there they had spent their
boyhood, in no way distinguished from their neighbors. Their father
had been a teacher, an editor, and a bishop of the United Brethren
Church. He had traveled a great deal, and was an unusually
well-educated man. Their mother had been to college. Their two older
brothers and their sister were college graduates, and the younger boys
would have had the same education had their mother not died and they
decided to stay at home and look after affairs for their father, who
was often away. In telling the story of their invention in _The
Century_ for September, 1908, they said, “Late in the autumn of 1878
our father came into the house one evening with some object concealed
in his hands and, before we could see what it was, tossed it into the
air. Instead of falling to the floor, as we expected, it flew across
the room and struck the ceiling, where it fluttered a while and
finally sank to the floor. It was a little toy known to scientists as
a helicoptere, but which we, with sublime disregard for science,
dubbed a ‘bat.’ ... It lasted only a short time, but its memory was
abiding.” At that time Wilbur was eleven and Orville seven years old.

These two brothers, scientifically minded, started a bicycle shop, and
bade fair to become ordinarily prosperous citizens of Dayton, much
like their neighbors. They were, however, deeply interested in news
from the world of science and invention, and when they read in 1896
that Lilienthal had been killed by a fall from his glider they began
to wonder what were the real difficulties that must be overcome in
flying. Further reading awakened a deep interest in the problem of the
airship, and they worked upon it, at first as a scientific pastime,
but soon in all seriousness. They built models in their workshop, and
experimented with them. Then, in 1900, Wilbur wrote to his father that
he was going on a holiday to a place in North Carolina called Kitty
Hawk, to try a glider.

The Wrights realized in 1900 that the only problem to be solved was
that of equilibrium. Men had made aeroplanes that would support them
in motion, and also engines that were light enough to drive the planes
and carry their own weight and that of the aviator. But when the wind
blew the aeroplane was as likely as not to capsize. Their study was
how to keep the machine from turning over.

The air does not blow in regular currents. Instead, near the earth, it
is continually tossing up and down, and often whirling about in rotary
masses. There is constant atmospheric turmoil, and the question is how
to maintain a balance in these currents that bear the machine. Put in
technical form it is how to make the centre of gravity coincide with
the centre of air-pressure.

The shifting of the air-currents means that the centre of air-pressure
moves. The aeroplane is sailed at a slight angle to the direction in
which it is heading, and the centre of air-pressure is on the forward
surfaces of the machine. The wind strikes the front, but rarely
touches the back of the plane, and so gains a great leverage that adds
materially to its power to overturn the machine. As the wind veers
continually it is easy to see the aviator’s difficulty in keeping
track of this centre of pressure.

Both Lilienthal and Chanute had tried to balance by shifting their
weight, but this was extremely exhausting, and often could not be done
in time to meet the changing currents. The Wrights realized that a
more automatic method of meeting these changes must be found, and they
worked it out by shifting the rudder and the surfaces of the airship
as it met the air-currents.

The earlier aviators had found that two planes, or “double-deckers,”
gave the best results. The Wrights adopted this type, believing that
it was the strongest form, and could be made more compact and be more
easily managed than the single plane, or the many-winged type. They
built their gliding-machine of cloth and spruce and steel wire. But
instead of the aviator hanging below the wings, as in the other
planes, he lay flat across the centre of the lower wing. A horizontal
rudder extended in front of the plane instead of behind it. This not
only guided the flight of the machine, but counterbalanced the changes
of the centre of air-pressure. To steer, the wings were moved by cords
controlled by the aviator’s body. They considered that the shiftings
of the air were too rapid to be followed by conscious thought, and so
their plan was to have a plane that would balance automatically, or by
reflex action, as a bicycle is balanced.

Langley had adopted wings that slanted upward from the point at which
they joined, copying the wings of a soaring buzzard. The Wrights
doubted whether this was the best form for shifting weather, and built
theirs more on the pattern of the gull’s wings, curving slightly at
the tips. They were made of cloth, arched over ribs to imitate the
curved surfaces of bird’s wings, and were fastened to two rectangular
wooden frames, fixed one above the other by braces of wood and wire.

Their next step was to try to find some method by which they might
keep their gliding-machine continuously in the air, so that they might
gain an automatic balance. The old method of launching the plane from
a hill gave little chance for a real test. Study taught them that
birds are really aeroplanes, and that buzzards and hawks and gulls
stay in the air by balancing on or sliding down rising currents of
air. They looked for a place where there should be winds of proper
strength to balance their machine for a considerable time as it slid
downward, and decided to make their experiments at Kitty Hawk, North
Carolina, on the stretch of sand-dunes that divided Albemarle Sound
from the Atlantic Ocean. They calculated that their gliding-machine,
with 165 square feet of surface, should be held up by a wind blowing
twenty-one miles an hour. The machine was to be raised like a kite,
with men holding ropes fastened to the end of each wing. When the
ropes were freed the aviator would glide slowly to the ground, having
time to test the principle of equilibrium. This plan would also do
away with the former need of carrying the plane up to the top of a
hill before each flight.

They found in practice that their plan of raising the plane like a
kite was impracticable, and that the wind was not strong enough to
support it at a proper angle. They had to glide from hills as others
had done, but they discovered that their theory of steering and
balancing by automatically shifting surfaces worked very much better
than the old method of shifting the aviator’s weight.

In 1901 and 1902 the Wrights continued their gliding experiments at
Kitty Hawk. Their new machines were much larger, and they added a
vertical tail in order to secure better lateral balance. Sometimes the
wind was strong enough to lift the aviator above the point from which
he had started and hold him motionless in the air for half a minute.
They made new tables of calculation for aerial flight, and found that
a wind of eighteen miles an hour would keep their plane and its
operator in the air.

Their next step was to place a gas-engine on their aeroplane and
attempt actual mechanical flight. After many experiments they
succeeded, and on December 17, 1903, the first airship made four
flights at Kitty Hawk. In the longest flight it stayed in the air
fifty-nine seconds, and flew against a twenty-mile wind. It weighed,
with the aviator, about 745 pounds, and was propelled by a gas-engine
weighing 240 pounds, and having twelve or thirteen horse-power. That
test assured them that mechanical flight was possible.

The Wrights had now solved the real problem of aviation, equilibrium.
They were ready to try mechanical flights in places where the
wind-conditions were less favorable than at Kitty Hawk. They secured a
swampy meadow eight miles east of Dayton, and, using that secrecy
which they have always believed was necessary to the protection of
their interests, began to fly there. Their airship flew well in a
straight course, but there was difficulty in turning corners.
Sometimes it could be done, but occasionally the plane would lose its
balance as it turned, and have to be brought to the ground. In time
they remedied this, and on September 20, 1904, they were able to make
a complete circle. Later in that same year they made two flights of
three miles each around a circular course.

The Wrights’ system of balance, the great original feature of their
invention, is attained by what is called the warping of the
wings. When they are flying, and some cause, such as a change in their
position, or a sudden gust of wind, makes the airship tip, a lever is
moved, and the two planes warp down on the end that is canting toward
the earth. Simultaneously the two opposite ends of the planes warp up.
The lower ends at once gain greater lifting power, the upper ends
less. Therefore the airship stops tilting and comes back to an even
flight. The lever is instantly moved to keep the machine from tipping
to the other side.

    WILBUR WRIGHT
    ORVILLE WRIGHT

    CABLE ADDRESS:
    WRIGHTS, DAYTON

    WRIGHT BROTHERS

    1127 W. THIRD STREET
    DAYTON, OHIO

    July 22, 1911.

    George W. Jacobs & Co.,

    Philadelphia.

    Gentlemen:--

    Replying to yours of June 26th we are herewith enclosing a
    photograph of our first flight made at Kitty Hawk, North
    Carolina, on December 17, 1903.

    Yours truly,

    [Signature: Wright Brothers.]

[Illustration: THE WRIGHT BROTHERS’ AIRSHIP]

When the airship came to turn a corner it was apt to “skid.” It slid
from its balance, owing to the change in its course against the
currents of air. The Wrights overcame this by having the planes of
their machine warp at the same instant that the rudder shifts the
course, by this raising one wing and lowering the other, so that the
aeroplane cants over and makes the circle leaning against the wind, on
the same principle that a bicycler takes a curve on an angle instead
of riding upright. The problems of balance and of turning corners were
therefore both met and solved by warping the planes to meet the
conditions of the airship’s contact with the wind.

One of the chief reasons for the Wrights’ success was that they had
studied their subject long and faithfully before they tried to fly.
They had worked with their gliders several years, and had made new
calculations of the changing angles and currents of air. They had been
in no hurry, and when they built their first real airship they made
use of all the principles of aerodynamics that they had discovered.
They knew that their machine would fly before they tried it, because
they knew exactly what its various surfaces would do in the air. The
propeller was the only part of their airship they had not studied when
they began to build. When they found that they could not use the
figures that had governed the construction of marine propellers they
set to work to solve this problem in the same thoroughgoing way. They
mastered it, and their success with their propeller is the feature of
their airship in which they take the greatest pride.

The first official statement of their progress in flying was made in
letters of the Wrights in the _Aerophile_ in 1905, and to the Aero
Club of America in 1906. These declared that they had begun actual
flight with a motor-driven aeroplane on December 17, 1903, had then
spent the year 1904 in experimenting with flights in circular courses,
and had so learned the proper methods of control of the planes by 1905
that they had at last made continuous flights of eleven, twelve,
fifteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-four miles, at a speed of
about thirty-eight miles an hour, and had been able to alight safely
in each instance, ready to fly again as soon as their fuel was
replenished.

Until that date the inventors had been singularly successful in
keeping their experiments from public knowledge. They had reached
agreements with the farmers who lived near their field outside Dayton,
and with the local newspapers, that no notice should be taken of their
flights. But finally one of their flights attracted so much attention
that a score of men appeared with cameras, and the Wrights decided
that it was time to stop their experiments. They dismantled their
machines, made public statements of what they had accomplished, and
started to negotiate with various governments for the purchase of
their aeroplanes for use in war.

In December, 1907, the Signal Corps of the United States army invited
proposals for furnishing a “heavier than air flying machine.” The
Wrights submitted a bid, proposing to deliver a machine that would
meet the specifications for $25,000. Their offer, with those of two
others, was accepted. By now their names and something of what they
had accomplished were very generally known, and when they began the
preliminary tests of their machines at their old grounds at Kitty
Hawk, near Kill Devil Hills, a legion of reporters was on hand. The
Wrights still tried to preserve as much secrecy as possible, and the
newspaper men to furnish as much publicity. The flights could not be
concealed and the trials were announced as thoroughly satisfactory. On
May 10, 1908, ten ascensions in the government airship were made, the
longest being over a mile and a half. On succeeding days longer
flights were made, one of two miles at a speed of forty-six miles an
hour. Orville Wright made a flight with a passenger on board, and a
little later Wilbur flew eight miles, at a rate of forty-five miles an
hour. The reporters assured the world that the Wrights had proved the
success of the “heavier than air” machine. As one of them wrote,
“Then, bedraggled and very sunburned they tramped up to the little
weather bureau and informed the world, waiting on the other side of
various sounds and continents and oceans, that it was all right, the
rumors true, and there was no doubt that a man could fly.”

Kitty Hawk, the place the Wrights had chosen because the Weather
Bureau had told them the winds were strongest and steadiest there, now
became one of the chief foci of the world’s attention. The Wrights,
still quiet and unassuming, suddenly jumped into fame. The public
could not understand how these two men, bicycle-makers of Dayton, had
learned so much about airships. They did not appreciate that the
brothers had mastered every detail of flight long before, that they
had learned the fundamental principles of soaring and floating, diving
and rising, circling and gliding, before they attached the first motor
to their planes. They had been far more thorough and more resourceful
than those Europeans who had for some time experimented with aviation.
Henri Farman, who had caused a sensation in Europe by flying a
kilometer (five-eighths of a mile) over a circular course on January
13, 1908, came to this country, and heard what the United States
government was requiring in the tests. “I have done some flying,” said
he, “but I do not try to do what your inventors must do at Fort Myer.
I never fly in winds. Once I had a spill in France when I attempted
it.”

The government trials were held at Fort Myer, outside Washington. Here
the Wrights took their machines when they were satisfied that they
were in shape for the tests. Mr. Augustus Post, secretary of the Aero
Club of America, has graphically described in _The World’s Work_ for
October, 1909, his impression of Orville Wright’s flying in 1908. He
says that Mr. Wright and he left Washington about six o’clock on a
clear, still morning, bound for the flying field. “The conditions for
flight were perfect,” he continues. “Mr. Taylor, Mr. Wright’s
mechanic, got out the machine and it was placed on the starting-rail.
The weights were raised, and Mr. Wright took his place. None of us
expected anything more than a short flight down the field, with
possibly a circle. The machine was released, and away he went, rising
higher and higher, circling when he came to the end of the field and
continuing round. I had taken the time of starting and marked on the
back of an envelope each circle of the field. From a position of
strained attention and fixed gaze, Mr. Wright gradually became more
confident and comfortable; round and round he went for fully twenty
minutes, and then we began to realize that something wonderful was
taking place. Thirty minutes passed; we could hardly believe it. Mr.
Taylor came up and said: ‘Don’t make a motion; if you do, he’ll come
down’; and we all stood like statues, watching the flying man, every
nerve as tense in our bodies as though we were running the machine
ourselves. Mark after mark I made on the back of the old envelope--so
many that I had lost track of the number; it seemed an age since the
machine started, and it appeared to be fixed in the sky. We were
impressed that it could circle on forever, or sail like a bird over
the country, so positive and assuring and complete was this
demonstration. We knew that the problem of flight by an aeroplane had
been solved.”

An accident caused the flights to be suspended for a time, but a year
later the Wrights were ready for the official endurance test, a flight
of one hour, carrying a passenger. President Taft and a great audience
were present. Lieutenant Lahm was the passenger. Signal Corps men
raised the weight and fastened the end of the starting rope to the
aeroplane. Wilbur Wright, at the rear, turned the propellers and
started the motor. Orville Wright adjusted the spark, and took his
seat. He grasped the levers, spoke a few words of instruction to his
passenger, seated beside him, and gave the word to release the
machine. It glided down the track, gathering speed until it left the
rails. Then the forward planes rose, and the plane soared into the
air, flying swiftly. It circled around and around, each circle taking
about one minute. For the first ten minutes the motor did not move
smoothly, but after that it settled to perfection. The great audience,
watches in hand, kept their eyes on the airship. The hour mark was
passed, and there were wild shouts of applause and encouragement. Then
the plane broke the world’s record of one hour, nine minutes, and
forty seconds, that Wilbur Wright had made earlier in the year. Wilbur
Wright led in a cheer to those circling above. Then the airship began
to descend, taking the circles easily, and finally skimming down to
the ground. The motor was shut off, and the test was ended, the
machine having flown for one hour, twelve minutes, and forty seconds.
President Taft crossed the field and shook Orville Wright’s hand. “I
am glad to congratulate you on your achievement,” said he; “you came
down as gracefully and as much like a bird as you went up. I hope your
passenger behaved himself and did not talk to the motorman. It was a
wonderful performance; I would not have missed it.” Then he turned to
shake hands with Wilbur Wright. “Your brother has broken your record.”
“Yes,” said the other, smiling, “but it’s all in the family.”

Lieutenant Lahm said, “The machine was under perfect control at all
times. He apparently had given no conscious thought either to his
hands or to the levers. His actions all seemed involuntary. It had
hardly started on one of its dips before his hands were moved in the
proper direction to restore the balance. It seemed impossible for
anything to go wrong. I never knew an hour to pass so quickly as that
one up in the air. The first half seemed like ten minutes, and the
second scarcely longer. I hardly felt the vibrations of the engine,
but at first the rising and dipping were hard to get used to. The only
disagreeable sensation I experienced was a deafness from the whirring
motor. Sometimes the undulating movement was noticeable, but that was
all. The sensation of riding the air in an aeroplane is
indescribable.”

The speed test came on the day following the endurance flight. This
was to be made over a measured course of five miles from Fort Myer to
Alexandria, and back, making a total flight of ten miles over trees,
railroads, and rough country. Aviators declared this a more difficult
course than the crossing of the English Channel, owing to the great
rises and drops of the land, which made it almost impossible to
maintain a level course. Speed was a very important factor in the
government’s specifications for a successful airship, and the price to
be paid depended on this, which had been calculated to be forty miles
an hour. The government was to pay the Wrights $25,000 for the
airship, and a bonus of ten per cent., or $2,500, for every mile made
above the forty. For every mile less, to the minimum limit of
thirty-six miles an hour, the government was to deduct the same
percentage.

The machine that was making these tests was very similar to the one
that had been used at Fort Myer the year before. The amount of
supporting surface had been reduced by about eighty square feet, and a
change had been made in the lever that turned the rudder and
controlled the equilibrating device. This had originally consisted of
two levers, placed side by side. Now the top of one lever was jointed,
so that a sideways movement of the wrist was sufficient to move the
rudder for steering in the horizontal plane. Simultaneously the lever
could be pushed forward and pulled back to lift or lower the opposite
tips of the wings. In this way one hand could control both the
steering and the balancing of the planes.

In spite of the fact that the wind conditions were not exactly as he
wished Orville Wright decided to make the flight for speed on that
day. He made a good ascension, carrying Lieutenant Benjamin D. Foulois
with him as passenger. Twice he circled the field in order to get up
speed and reach sufficient elevation. Then, amid cheers of
encouragement from the immense throng that was watching, he turned
sharply past the starting-tower and flew between the flags that marked
the starting-line. Two captive balloons had been floated to show the
course and also to give an indication of the proper altitude to
maintain. The wind tended to carry the aeroplane to the east, but
Orville Wright was able to hold it on a fairly even course, and to
reach the balloon at Shuter’s Hill that marked the turning point. Here
the official time was taken by officers of the Signal Corps. On the
return the airship met with strong downward currents of air that bore
it groundward until it was hidden by the tops of trees. Mr. Wright
said afterward, “I had to climb like forty all the way back.” But he
managed to send his aeroplane higher and higher, and to bring it back
over the heads of the crowds at the finish line. There it swept about
in a circle, and landed easily near the aeroplane shed. What
aeronautical authorities declared to be the greatest feat in the
history of aviation had been successfully accomplished. The elapsed
time of the flight was fourteen minutes and forty-two seconds, which
meant that the airship had attained a speed of a little more than
forty-two miles an hour. The conditions of the Wrights’ contract with
the government had been in every respect more than fulfilled.

The Wrights carried Europe by storm, being received there with even
greater acclamations than in America. The French, as a nation, had for
some time been more interested in aviation than any other people.
France was the home of Montgolfier, Santos-Dumont, and Farman. At
first France looked with incredulity and suspicion on the Wrights’
claims. The French papers accused them of playing _le bluff_, and said
that “they argued a great deal and experimented very little,” which,
as a matter of fact, was exactly the opposite of the Wrights’ whole
history. But as soon as Wilbur Wright showed what he could actually
do, all this changed, and the French could not say enough that was
good about him. Delagrange, his nearest competitor, acknowledged
frankly that Wilbur Wright was his superior as an aviator. But he
could not understand the American’s quiet methods, and plan of
pursuing his own way regardless of public opinion. He found that
Wilbur Wright actually preferred to fly without an audience, and
thought nothing of disappointing the crowds that gathered to watch
him. On one such occasion, when Wilbur Wright found the weather
conditions unsatisfactory, he declined to fly. “If it had been I,”
said Delagrange, “I would have made a flight if I had been likely to
smash up at three hundred meters rather than disappoint those ten
thousand people.”

This novel charm of simplicity caught the French fancy. The Wrights
wanted to do everything for themselves. At Kitty Hawk they had lived
in a small shack, and cooked their own meals. Wilbur Wright had a
similar shack built on his flying-field in France, and planned to do
his own cooking. But this was too extreme for the French mind. When he
went to his shack he found a native cook installed there, and had to
submit to the hospitality of his hosts.

The Wrights were organizing companies in the different countries of
Europe, and wanted to attend strictly to their business. But wherever
they went they were fêted. They met the French President, the Kaiser,
the King of England, and the King of Spain, and they were dined and
publicly honored in all the great capitals. Germany turned from its
native hero, Count Zeppelin, to admire them. But everywhere they kept
that same quiet tone. They showed that they cared nothing to perform
hazardous feats simply because of the hazard, nor to establish
records. Wilbur Wright was asked if he would not try for the prize
offered to the first man to fly across the English Channel. He said he
would not at that time, because it “would be risky and would not prove
anything more than a journey over land.” And the public knew that this
was sensible caution, and not lack of courage.

Daring aviators sprang into fame at once. Most of these built their
machines according to their individual ideas, and there was a great
trying-out of different patterns. Blériot, a Frenchman, flew across
the English Channel in a monoplane in thirty-eight minutes. Instantly
he became the French idol. When he reached Paris at five in the
morning an enormous crowd welcomed him, and the cries of “Vive
Blériot!” could be heard for squares. He was dined at the Hôtel de
Ville, given the Legion of Honor, and money was subscribed for a
monument to mark the place near Calais where he commenced his flight.
Shortly after Roger Sommer rose in the country outside Paris on a
moonlight night, and flew for two hours, twenty-seven minutes, and
fifteen seconds, the longest flight made to that time. The world
recognized that the actual invention of the airship was one of the
greatest achievements of the ages. Said the _London Times_, “It is no
wonder that there should be great enthusiasm in France over the
cross-Channel flight of M. Blériot, and that the French papers should
talk of nothing else. Further enthusiasm will doubtless greet the
gallant attempt, which was all but successful, of M. Latham yesterday,
to repeat the achievement. Since the discovery of the New World no
material event has happened on this earth so impressive to the
imagination as the conquest of the air which is now half achieved.
Indeed, the conquest of the air is likely to be more vast and
bewildering in its results than even the discovery of the New World,
and one is inclined to wonder that men should take it as calmly as
they do.”

A great aviation week was held at Rheims, and almost all the world’s
famous aviators, except the Wrights, were there. Control of the
airships was shown to a remarkable degree. On one of the preparatory
days three heavier than air machines were manœuvring in the great
aerodrome at the same time. They were flying at high speed, when
suddenly Glenn H. Curtiss, an American, saw an Antoinette aeroplane
approaching him at right angles, and flying upon the same level.
Instantly he elevated the planes of his machine, and his aeroplane
obeyed his touch, shot upward, and flew over the Antoinette. There was
great applause from those who had been watching him. The manœuvre
showed how easily the airships were controlled.

Germany meantime was intensely interested in Count Zeppelin’s
dirigible balloons, which, although as long as a battle-ship, had
flown with great success. The German government paid $1,250,000 into
the Zeppelin fund for experiments, and contributed a large sum in
addition to the maintenance of a balloon corps. The German people
showed themselves as proud of Count Zeppelin as the French were of
Blériot, and the Americans of the Wrights.

The aviation week at Rheims was followed by other great airship meets
in other countries. The Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York in the
autumn of 1909 was the occasion of new records in flying, and served
to awaken Americans to a more intense interest in navigation of the
air. That meeting was followed by others in all parts of the United
States, and competitions for height and city-to-city flights became
matters of weekly occurrence. Yet America has not so far reached the
intense enthusiasm over flying that fills the lands of Europe.

The airship is on the market, ready to be purchased by whomsoever will
pay the price. The London daily papers advertise an agency that will
supply buyers with either the Blériot monoplane of the type
Calais-Dover, the Latham or Antoinette monoplane, or the Wright and
Voisin biplanes. Moreover the art of handling the aeroplane does not
seem unusually difficult to master, provided one has the taste for it.
Roger Sommer first sat in an airship on July 3d, yet on August 7th
following he made a world’s record flight outside Paris. “It is easier
to learn to fly than it is to walk,” Wilbur Wright has said.

The only American machines besides the Wrights’ biplanes which have
made a name for themselves are the Curtiss biplanes. Mr. Curtiss is
one of the most daring aviators in the world, and his flight down the
Hudson River attracted the widest attention. But there are questions
as to whether his aeroplanes do not infringe on certain patent claims
of the Wrights, and his flight was made under a bond that should
protect the Wrights in case it proved later that his biplane did
infringe on their title. Here it should be said that the Wrights are
as excellent business men as they are inventors, and intend to receive
due compensation for their years of work. At one time they offered to
sell their invention outright for $100,000, but since then their
patents have been upheld by the courts, and those patents cover a very
large area of the field of airship manufacture. The American market is
largely in their hands.

Every year lighter and lighter gas-engines are being made, and this
means that the surplus carrying power of the aeroplane can be
increased. Fuel can be carried for flights of greater and greater
distances, and rapid increases of speed can be attained. With
improvements in safety there seems no limit to the possibilities of
flight. So far a long train of casualties has marked the airship’s
progress. This was inevitable when men came to imitate the birds, and
trust themselves to the fickle currents of the air. But many aviators
have been drawn from a reckless class, and many accidents have been
due to a desire to thrill an audience rather than to learn more about
the laws of flight. The Wrights have held to the wise course. They
care nothing for spectacular performances or establishing new records
for their own glory. Their work is in the shops, devising improvements
that will make the airship safer and better fitted for commercial
uses. They are men of remarkable balance, and it was their quality of
unremitting care that made them the wonder of Europe, used above all
things else to the dramatic in men’s flights through air.

End of Project Gutenberg's Historic Inventions, by Rupert S. Holland