One reason why nearly everyone in the United States was disinclined to swallow the reports about flying with a machine heavier than air was that important scientists had already explained in the public prints why the thing was impossible. When a man of the profound scientific wisdom of Simon Newcomb, for example, had demonstrated with unassailable logic why man couldn’t fly, why should the public be fooled by silly stories about two obscure bicycle repair-men who hadn’t even been to college? Professor Newcomb was so distinguished an astronomer that he was the only American since Benjamin Franklin to be made an associate of the Institute of France. It was widely assumed that what he didn’t know about laws of physics simply wasn’t in books; and that when he said flying couldn’t be done, there was no need to inquire any further. More than once Professor Newcomb had written that flight without gas-bags would require the discovery of some new metal or a new unsuspected force in Nature. Then, in an article in _The Independent_--October 22, 1903, while the Wrights were at Kitty Hawk assembling their power machine--he not only proved that trying to fly was nonsense, but went further and showed that even if a man did fly, he wouldn’t dare to stop. “Once he slackens his speed, down he begins to fall.--Once he stops, he falls a dead mass. How shall he reach the ground without destroying his delicate machinery? I do not think that even the most imaginative inventor has yet put on paper a demonstrative, successful way of meeting this difficulty.” [Illustration: THE FIRST POWER PLANE. A side view of the 1903 plane at Kitty Hawk.] In all his statements, Professor Newcomb had the support of other eminent authorities, including Rear Admiral George W. Melville, then chief engineer for the United States Navy, who, a year or two previously, in the _North American Review_, had set forth convincingly the absurdity of attempts to fly. The most recent Newcomb article was all the more impressive as a forecast from the fact that it appeared only fifteen days after one of Professor Langley’s unsuccessful attempts at flight. That is, Langley’s attempt seemed to show that flight was beyond human possibility, and then Newcomb’s article explained _why_ it was impossible. Though these pooh-poohing statements by Newcomb and other scientists were probably read by relatively few people, they were seen by editors, editorial writers, and others who could have much influence on public opinion. Naturally, no editor who “knew” a thing couldn’t be done would permit his paper to record the fact that it had been done.