The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical ConquestThompson, Holland
History
The Age of Invention: A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest
Thompson, Holland
Inventions -- History; Inventors -- United States
On the 14th of June the Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce biplane, piloted by
John Alcock and with Arthur Whitten Brown as observer-navigator, left
St. John's, Newfoundland, and arrived at Clifden, Ireland, in sixteen
hours twelve minutes, having made the first non-stop transatlantic
flight. Hawker and Grieve meanwhile had made the same gallant attempt in
a single-engined Sopwith machine; and had come down in mid-ocean, after
flying fourteen and a half hours, owing to the failure of their water
circulation. Their rescue by slow Danish Mary completed a fascinating
tale of heroic adventure. The British dirigible R34, with Major G. H.
Scott in command, left East Fortune, Scotland, on the 2d of July, and
arrived at Mineola, New York, on the sixth. The R34 made the return
voyage in seventy-five hours. In November, 1919, Captain Sir Ross Smith
set off from England in a biplane to win a prize of ten thousand pounds
offered by the Australian Commonwealth to the first Australian aviator
to fly from England to Australia in thirty days. Over France, Italy,
Greece, over the Holy Land, perhaps over the Garden of Eden, whence the
winged cherubim drove Adam and Eve, over Persia, India, Siam, the Dutch
East Indies to Port Darwin in northern Australia; and then southeastward
across Australia itself to Sydney, the biplane flew without mishap.
The time from Hounslow, England, to Port Darwin was twenty-seven days,
twenty hours, and twenty minutes. Early in 1920 the Boer airman Captain
Van Ryneveld made the flight from Cairo to the Cape.
Commercial development of the airplane and the airship commenced after
the war. The first air service for United States mails was, in fact,
inaugurated during the war, between New York and Washington. The
transcontinental service was established soon afterwards, and a regular
line between Key West and Havana. French and British companies began
to operate daily between London and Paris carrying passengers and mail.
Airship companies were formed in Australia, South Africa, and India. In
Canada airplanes were soon being used in prospecting the Labrador timber
regions, in making photographs and maps of the northern wilderness, and
by the Northwest Mounted Police.
It is not for history to prophesy. "Emblem of much, and of our Age of
Hope itself," Carlyle called the balloon of his time, born to mount
majestically but "unguidably" only to tumble "whither Fate will."
But the aircraft of our day is guidable, and our Age of Hope is not
rudderless nor at the mercy of Fate.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
GENERAL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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