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The estimated cost of the invention is $200, and the matter has been brought before local capitalists with the view of giving it a thorough test.

Herald New York
8 Dec 1906.

WRIGHT BROTHERS AT THE AERO SHOW

Men Said To Be the First to Fly Say They Owe Their Lives to Caution.

ADMIT AIR IS DANGEROUS

Ohio Experimenters Decline to Discuss Their Negotiations with France——Would Not Ride in Tracy's Automobile.

Wilbur and Orville Wright, of Dayton, Ohio, whose claims to having been the first men to fly are supported by Octave Chanute, of Chicago, former president of the Western Association of Engineers, and by a score of witnesses in their home town, were the centre of attraction yesterday at the Aero Club show which is being held in conjunction with the Automobile show in Grand Central Palace.

Mr. Chanute, A. M. Herring, Captain Thomas S. Baldwin, Leo Stevens, J. C. McCoy, Augustus Post and Professor Pickering, of Harvard, all of whom have had practical experience in navigating the air in balloons or airships, were also at the show, making it the most representative gathering of aeronauts ever brought together in this country.

Aeronautics in its various phases was discussed informally and the keen popular interest in the prospect of man adding the air to his conquests in the near future was manifested by the way the visitors to the show crowded about the aeronauts whenever a discussion was started.

But most interesting of all the meeting was one between Wilbur Wright and "Joe" Tracy, of racing automobile fame. When the two men were presented to each other neither for a moment said a word, each eying the other.

"All the money in the world couldn't get me to do what you have done," said Mr. Tracy.

"And I wouldn't ride in your automobile for all of Rockefeller's wealth," replied Mr. Wright.

It is a most regrettable fact," remarked Mr. Chanute, "that during the next year there is every reason to expect that many experimenters with flying machines will be injured. Now that there is so much popular interest in the solution of the problem of navigating the air some men will surely try to go too fast. Some of them will surely break their legs, and I only hope that it will not be their necks. I know of eight men in France alone who are working at the problem, and there will be as many, if not more, in this country during the year. They should take plenty of time to become accustomed to flights in gliding machines before they trust themselves to motor driven aeroplanes, but I am afraid they will not have the patience the Wright brothers displayed."

"The secret of our being alive to-day," said Wilbur Wright, "is that we have been from the first extremely cautious. Perhaps we could have made long flights three years ago if we had been willing to take the chances, but it is more likely that we would have been killed. We went at the problem slowly, taking each step so gradually that by the time we had our machine in successful operation we were accustomed to meeting the emergencies that continually confront a man in the air."

Both Wilbur and Orville Wright declined to make any comment on the recent despatches from abroad regarding their negotiations with the French government. John Brisben Walker gave a dinner last night at the Century Club in their honor, at which Mr. Ohanute, Mr. Post and others were present.


Monster Building is Thronged All Day Long and Many Sales Are Reported by Exhibitors.

Wind helps some when it comes to the small boy with the kite, but there is such a thing as too much wind when the flying monsters of science are let loose. It was the intention of several of the exhibitors of the Aero Club exhibition, which is held in conjunction with the Automobile Show in Grand Central Palace, to give a kite sailing demonstration from the roof of the building.

Some of the kites were shown, but there was such a gale of wind that the experiments promised could not be carried out with the success that would surely have attended better atmospheric conditions, while some of the flying monsters were not even sent up, it being considered unsafe.

Those that were sailed were the kites of Henry Rodemeyer of Jersey City Heights and some of the Samuel F. Perkins kites. A huge Blue Hill box kite, such as is used in making scientific observations, was taken to the roof, but it was not considered advisable to send it up in such a high wind.

There was another experiment on the roof that was hardly what could be called a success. It was an effort to give a practical demonstration of a wind wagon. It is the invention of Prof. W. H. Pickering of Harvard University and is nothing more in appearance than a tricycle fitted with a two-bladed wooden propeller that works from the back of the seat. The power from the propeller is conveyed to the driving wheels by a belt.

It was found necessary to hitch a tow line to the contrivance to start the motion, and unfortunately it was found that the machine stopped when the tow was released. There were several efforts made to have the machine operate merely by wind power, and each was unsuccessful.


Gazettee Pittsburg
8 Dec 1906

GREAT PRIZE FOR AN AERIAL FLIGHT

$50,000 Posted by London Paper for a Successful Soar of 180 Miles.

SANTOS-DUMONT'S OPINION.

[SPECIAL CABLE TO THE GAZETTE TIMES.]

LONDON, Dec. 8.——How little we should have believed 25 years ago that headline in one of the newspapers of London could read: "Shall We Learn to Fly?" And yet today this is the case, and M. Santos Dumont has neared the solution of the problem. The Daily Mail of London has offered a £10,000 prize to the aeronaut who shall fly 180 miles from London to Manchester.

Santos Dumont says he does not dare to say this will be the case within a year or two, but that he does dare to assert that the prize will be carried off within a measurable distance, for the word "impossible" is now to be struck out of the dictionary.

The great aeronaut's idea is that a life belt will do for the air what it does for the water. It will counterbalance the dead weight of the body. "Throw a child," he said, "who cannot swim into deep water and he will struggle and sink, but fix a life belt around him and he will be able to propel himself and keep the body, which corresponds to the dead weight of a motor, floating without the aid of a life belt. In the air we are like the child who cannot swim. We cannot counterbalance the weight of the motor, but little by little if we learn to propel ourselves with an aerial life belt and at the same time expand our wings, we shall be able to motor as well in the air as on land."

If Santos Dumont can get o motor which shall not exceed one kilogramme per horse power he will approach the solution of the problem.

"The future," said the undaunted believer in the aeroplane, "belongs to the audacious, and the madman of today will turn out to be the sage of tomorrow. This was the case with the motor car industry."

In the petroleum congress on the 30th of August, 1900, he said: "Gentlemen, in five years' time I invite you to another congress, and if God grants me life I hope to see you arrive at the congress from all parts of the globe, not by boat, not by railway, not by motor car, but in flying machines, which shall give you a foretaste of heaven. It seems," said M. Santos Dumont, "that I was only a year out of my reckoning."