Langley's Flying Machine

Extract

Full accounts have now been published of the interesting experiments conducted by Professor S. P . Langley with his model “Aerodrome.” Both the “Strand Magazine” and “ McClure's Magazine” give almost identical accounts from the pen of the inventor, while in the “ Aeronautical Annual,” a somewhat more technical description is given.

These accounts go to show that which is so well understood by many of our readers, the extreme difficulty in the designing and constructing of such an apparatus. His well-known experiments with a whirling table gave the inventor valuable data to work upon, but the question of balance and behaviour in the air had to be studied, and this could hardly be done without constructing a complete working model, yet how could such a model be made until the principal conditions of flight were learned? So it seemed that the inventor was “ shut up in a sort of vicious circle.”