Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.bookcove.net. *Story of the Aeroplane* By C. B. Galbreath, M. A. PUBLISHED JOINTLY BY F. A. OWEN PUB. CO., Dansville, N. Y. and HALL & McCREARY, Chicago, Ill. _INSTRUCTOR LITERATURE SERIES--No. 253_ COPYRIGHT, 1915 F. A. OWEN PUBLISHING CO. _Story of the Aeroplane_ Table of Contents The Ocean of Air Early Attempts at Aviation Early Flying Machines Nineteenth Century Experiments Claims of Maxim and Ader Langley’s Tandem Monoplane Experiments with Gliders Aviation at the Beginning of the Present Century The Kite The “Plane” Defined Essentials of the Aeroplane The Wright Brothers and Their Problem Balancing the Machine At Kitty Hawk The First Flight Machine Balanced by Warping of Planes Newspaper Reports Verified Trial Flights at Fort Meyer Fatal Accident Wilbur Wright Wins Fame in France Wright Brothers Honored United States Government Requirements Successfully Met Recent Improvements Future of the Aeroplane *Story of the Aeroplane* The Ocean of Air Around the dry land of the earth are the oceans of water. We may never have seen them, but we have knowledge of them and their navigation, and their names suggest very definite and concrete objects of thought. We sometimes do not realize, however, that we live and move and have our being at the bottom of a vaster and deeper ocean that covers to a depth of many miles the whole earth, and to the surface of which man nor beast nor bird has ever ascended; an ocean with currents and whirlpools and waves of more than mountain height; an ocean in which we are as much at home as are the finny tribes and the monsters of the deep in their watery caverns. This is the ocean of the air. We are about to consider man’s efforts to rise from the bottom of this ocean and wing his flight a little way through the atmosphere above him. His excursions upward are limited, for he could not live near the surface heights of this ocean, vast and deep and boundless. The art and science of his flight through the air, because of its relation to the flight of birds, we call aviation. (_Avis_: Latin, a bird.) Early Attempts at Aviation “The birds can fly and why can’t I?”