THEORY, DEVELOPMENT, AND USE.


While every craft that navigates the air is an airship,
all airships are not flying machines. The balloon,
for instance, is an airship, but it is not what is known
among aviators as a flying machine. This latter term
is properly used only in referring to heavier-than-air
machines which have no gas-bag lifting devices, and are made to
really fly by the application of engine propulsion.

Mechanical Birds.

All successful flying machines--and there are a number
of them--are based on bird action. The various
designers have studied bird flight and soaring, mastered
its technique as devised by Nature, and the modern flying
machine is the result. On an exaggerated, enlarged
scale the machines which are now navigating the air
are nothing more nor less than mechanical birds.

Origin of the Aeroplane.

Octave Chanute, of Chicago, may well be called "the
developer of the flying machine." Leaving balloons and
various forms of gas-bags out of consideration, other
experimenters, notably Langley and Lilienthal, antedated
him in attempting the navigation of the air on
aeroplanes, or flying machines, but none of them were