The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Science
The book of wonders : $b gives plain and simple answers to the thousands of everyday questions that are asked and which all should be able to, but cannot answer...
Curiosities and wonders; Encyclopedias and dictionaries; Questions and answers; Science -- Miscellanea; Technology -- Miscellanea
Freckles are generally caused by the exposure of unprotected parts of
the body to the sun, but this will not cause freckles on all people.
Only people with certain kinds of sensitive skins freckle. What happens
when freckles are produced in this way is this: The sunlight shining on
the face, neck or arms of anyone who has a tendency to freckle, has a
peculiar action on certain cells of the skin which produces a yellowish
brown coloring pigment, which remains for a time.
Then again the skins of some people are so peculiarly sensitive the
cells develop this kind of coloring matter in almost any kind of light
and such people are, so to speak, apt to be freckled for life.
[Illustration: First successful power-driven aeroplane. The Langley
monoplane with steam engine, which flew over the Potomac River in 1896.]
The Flying Boat
When Did Man First Try to Fly?
~HOW MAN LEARNED TO FLY~
Man’s desire to conquer the air is older than recorded history. When a
kite was flown for the first time the principle of aviation, or dynamic
flight, was uncovered. For centuries man has sought the mechanical
equivalents for the things that keep a kite flying steadily in the
air,--the power that lies in the cord that keeps a kite headed into the
wind; an equivalent for the wind’s own power; an equivalent for the
tail which controls the kite’s lateral and longitudinal balance.
Each separate part of the modern flying machine, or aeroplane, was
worked out long ago, with the exception of the gas engine light enough
and reliable enough to be used for this work. The present generation
knows dynamic flight as a commonplace thing, not because we are so much
more clever than previous generations in designing flying machines,
but because of the development of the modern gasoline or internal
combustion engine.
Who Invented Flying?
No one invented flying, nor did any one man invent all the separate
parts of the flying machine. They are the result of evolution,--of the
combined work and thought of hundreds of men, many of whose names are
unrecorded. To attempt to find the true beginning of the modern flying
machine would be as difficult as attempting to discover who planted
the seed of the tree from which one has gathered a rose. But the tree
from which all the flying machines, or aeroplanes, of today have sprung
undoubtedly is Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley, third secretary of the
Smithsonian Institution.
Some of the Men Who Helped.
Taking the most conspicuous names of scientists who worked out various
details of the aeroplane during the past century we find that a century
ago Sir George Cayley built a machine on lines very similar to those
accepted today, and he went so far as to foretell the necessity of
developing the internal combustion engine before dynamic flight could
be a success. Mr. F. H. Wenham, in 1866, also built a flying machine
along conventional lines and tried to fly it with a steam engine, which
of course, proved too heavy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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