Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911 — John Shaqi
Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911Langley, S. P. (Samuel Pierpont)
History
Langley Memoir on Mechanical Flight, Parts I and II: Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Volume 27 Number 3, Publication 1948, 1911
Langley, S. P. (Samuel Pierpont)
Aeronautics; Flight
However, inasmuch as this aerodrome with its engines and boilers had
been completed at considerable expense, it was decided to use the
apparatus as far as it might be practicable, in order to learn what
must be done to secure a greater amount of success in the future. The
fundamental trouble was to get ‹heat›. In the first place there was
trouble with the burners, for it seemed to be impossible to get one
that would vaporize the gasoline in sufficient quantity to do the
work, and various forms were successively tried.
All of the early part of 1892 was passed in trying to get the boilers
to work at a steam pressure of 100 pounds per square inch. On account
of the defects in the tubes and elsewhere this required much patient
labor. The writer, even thus early, devised a plan of using a sort
of aeolipile, which should actuate its own blast, but this had to
be abandoned on account of the fact that the pear-shaped receivers
would not stand the heat. This necessitated a number of experiments
in the distillation of gas, in the course of which there was trouble
with the pumps, and a continual series of breakages and leakages,
so that the middle of April came before I had secured any further
satisfaction than to demonstrate that ‹possibly› the boilers might
have a capacity sufficient for the work laid out for them to do; but
subsequent experiments showed that even in this I was mistaken, for
it was only after additional jets had been put in between the coils
that I succeeded in getting an effective horse-power of 0.43 out of
the combination.
Finally, on the 14th of April, after having reduced the capacity
of the pumps to the dimensions given above (for the stroke was
originally 1.25 inch) I obtained the development of 1 full
horse-power by the engine for 41 seconds, with a steam pressure of
100 pounds per square inch, and a rate of revolution of 720 per
minute. But at the end of this brief period, the shafts sprung and
the worm was thrown out of gear. [p038]
I pass over numerous other experiments, for their only result was to
make it clear that the aerodrome, as it had been constructed, could
not be made to work efficiently, even if its great weight had not
served as a bar to its flight. It was, therefore, decided to proceed
with the construction of another.
After the failure of the first steam-driven model No. 0, which has
just been described, subsequent light models were constructed. These,
three in number, made with a view to the employment of carbonic acid
or compressed air, but also to the possible use of steam, are shown
in Plate 10, Nos. 1, 2, 3; on the same scale as the larger model
which had preceded them. In describing these, it will be well to
mention constructive features which were experimented on in them, as
well as to describe the engines used.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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