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The sizes of the machines that will be built is another matter for the future to determine. It being a law of geometry that the areas of structures increase with the squares of their linear dimensions, while bulks and weights increase with their cubes, it is evident that at some point the gain of weight over area will impose a limit that cannot be passed. Against this, however, is the likelihood that there may not be much use for Leviathans of the air. Traffic experts agree that the secret of all rapid transit is the maintenance of speed, it being the slowings down and the stops that chiefly account for the slow average speeds on vehicles for short distances. Most evidently, the existence of the expensive large-unit vehicles on land is mainly due to the necessity for highly specialized, prepared highways, while on water it has been found an essential means to high speed and maximum safety. In the air, conditions are different. Here the inexpensive and ideal small-unit vehicles, suggested in some degree by the automobile, and likewise emancipating its users from other people's routes, stop, and time schedules, will find an unlimited field for development. Moreover, such development will progress under the stimulus of lower first cost and maintenance costs than apply to any other system of travel. 

Airplanes will be inexpensive to build because their construction[[?]] calls for little use of complex forms in resistantemetals. Wood, wire and fabric of common qualities, and at low cost, are almost the extent of what is necessary, barring the question of motors, which will be cheaply manufactured in quantities, to standardized designs.