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Cortlandt Field Bishop announced [[?]] at the close of a meeting of the Directors yesterday.        
   "I cannot tell the value of the prize nor the name of the donor." said Mr. Bishop.  "I will say, however, that the man making this substantial offer is one of our best-known citizens.  I have been authorized to appoint a committee to formally accept the gift, and to draw up conditions for its competition.  When these conditions are accepted by the donor his name and the value of the prize will be announced.
   Samuel H. Valentine and Augustus Post were appointed a committee to select the members of the American team for the international balloon race to be held Oct. 19 at St. Louis.  Six candidates have already applied, being Leo Stevens, Roy Knabenshue, Dr. Julian P. Thomas, Alan R. Hawley, J. C. McCoy, and George Walsh.  The entries do not close until Feb. 1, and by that time Mr. Bishop said he believed the number would be considerably enlarged. 
   "You can state," continued Mr. Bishop, "that Lieut. Frank P. Lahm, the present holder of the Gordon Bennett International Balloon Cup, has been selected by the Directors as a member of the team this year.  That leaves two men to pick from the other applicants.  No elimination race will be held, as that would be impossible, and would hardly be productive of satisfactory results.  The committee will consider the past experience of all candidates, and will soon send out blanks asking them to reply to certain questions.  By Feb. 20, at least, the records will be thoroughly revised, and I hope that the entire team can be announced at that time." 
   The Aero Club at yesterday's meeting granted its first license as an aeronautic pilot to J. C. McCoy of this city.  Mr. McCoy received his license under the provision that a pilot duly licensed by any affiliated club may [[?]] and receive a license by another club.  Mr. McCoy went to France last year to perfect himself in aeronautical matters, making over ten ascensions, and qualified as an official pilot of the Aero Club of France.  The new rules governing the issuance of licenses for pilots by the Aero Club of America follow the general form of the foreign rules, stipulating that ten ascensions must have been made by the applicant, one of these at night and one entirely alone.
   The issuance of a pilot's license by the club to Mr. McCOy indicates that the latter will be a competitor for the Lahm Aeronautic Cup.  This cup is offered by the club in commemoration of Lieut. Lahm's victory last year.  It can be competed for at any time during the present year after March 1 but is restricted in competition to licensed pilots or those who can show proof of having made ten ascensions.  The trophy will be awarded to the contesant who first exceeds in balloon flight 648 kilometers, about 320 miles, the distance traveled by Liet. Lahm from Paris to England in the international event.
   The winning distance of the first victor must be exceeded by the second victor, and so on, and each winner will be empowered to hold the trophy until his record has been exceeded.  Contesants may start at any time and in any locality in the United States, but notice must be sent to the Aero Club at least one hour before the ascent, and a full report of the descent and place of landing must follow within twenty-four hours after the completion of the trip.  The name of each winner will be inscribed upon the cup, and if one contestant should remain the holder of the cup for three years it will then become his personal property.
   Mr. Bishop said that he had just received from the Aero Club of Great Britain the official entry and fees for its three competitors in the international race next October.  The entries from the French Club were made some time ago and before Feb. 1 Mr. Bishop expects to receive entries from Germany and probably from Italy, Spain, and Belgium.  The Secretary of the Treasury has just informed the club that all balloons coming from abroad for the purpose of competing for the Gordon Bennett Cup may be admitted under bond, duty free, and under this racing bond they will be permitted to remain here six months.
   The Directors completed arrangements for moving into their new quarters at 12 East Forty-second Street early next week.

[[image]]
A TETRAHEDRAL KITE ARRANGED [[?]] FOR TOWING
The wings are composed of Japanese waterproof paper.
(From the National Geographic Magazine for January.)

be maintained in the air if it had a very much less velocity....It might be the part of wisdom to begin our first experiments at gaining experience in the air with machines travelling at such moderate velocities as to reduce the chances of a fatal catastrophe to a minimum....

THE TETRAHEDRAL PRINCIPLE
   In my paper upon the tetrahedral principle in kite structure I have shown that a framework having the form of a tetrahedron possesses in a remarkable degree the properties of strength and lightness.  This is specially the case when we adopt as our unit structure the form of the regular tetrahedron, in which the skeleton frame is composed of six rods of equal length, as this form seems to give the maximum of strength with the minimum of material.  When these tetrahedral frames or cells are connected together by their corners they compose a structure of remarkable rigidity, even when made of light and fragile material, the whole structure possessing the same properties of strength [[?]] lightness inherent in the individual cells [[?]] so formed exhibit remarkable stability the air under varying conditions of wind, and I stated in my paper that the kites which had the largest central spaces seemed to be the most stable in the air.  Of course, these were the structures that were composed of the largest number of unit cells, and I now have reason to believe that the automatic stability of these kites depends more upon the number of unit cells than upon the presence of large empty spaces in the kites, for I have found, upon filling in these empty spaces with unit cells, that the flying qualities of a large kite have been greatly improved.  The structure, so modified, seems to fly in as light a breeze as before, but with greatly increased lifting power, while the gain in structural strength is enormous.

TESTING A MANY CELLED STRUCTURE.
  To test the matter I put together into one structure all the available winged cells I had in the laboratory - 1,300 in number.  These were closely attached together, without any other empty spaces in the structure than those existing between the individual cells themselves when in contact at their corners. . . . This kite (the Frost King) not only flew well in a breeze estimated at not more than about ten miles an hour because it did not raise whitecaps, but carried up a rope ladder, several dangling ropes ten and twelve metres long, and more than two hundred metres of manilla rope used as flying lines, and in addition to all this, supported a man in the air.
  The whole kite, impedimenta and all, including the man, weighed about 131 kilograms (288 pounds), and its greatest length from side to side was six metres at the top and three metres at the bottom.  The sloping sides measured
  Under the action of her aerial propellers this clumsy craft is unable to attain a higher speed than four miles an hour;  and yet she is able to face a sixteen-mile white cap breeze and make headway against it, instead of drifting backward with the wind.  Under such circumstances her speed is materially reduced, but the point I would direct attention to is this, that she is not stopped by a current of air moving with much greater velocity than her maximum possible speed in a calm.  Of course, there would be nothing remarkable about this if her propellers were acting in the water instead of in the air, but they were not.  They acted exclusively in the air, and the water was only an additional resistance to be overcome.

  

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