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A Quarter Century of Aviation Progress
(Continued from page 15)

in the development of heavier-than-air craft, and the Wright Brothers, Glenn Curtiss, and other pioneer builders were soon found making exhibition flights in Europe.

In 1909 Aviation was taken seriously throughout the world and history-making aviation events followed each other in rapid succession. Chief among these was the winning, by Glenn Curtiss, of the first Gordon Bennett Airplane Trophy Race during the world's first air races, held near Rheims, France. Contestants were from three nations. After numerous crack-ups and many delays caused by wind velocity of more than fifteen miles per hour, Glenn Curtiss won the main event at a speed of 47 miles per hour. What a contrast to the speed now made in the free-for-all feature event of the National Air Races, now approaching 300 miles per hour!

Unlike the present "Race Horse Start" used in the National Air Races where the pilots take off together and jockey for position, the procedure 25 years ago was for each pilot to make a turn of the course at some time during the day when he felt conditions were most favorable. The one making the best time was declared the winner. In the famous race won by Curtiss it was hours before the judges agreed that he was winner over Bleriot by six seconds. Again a contrast to the electrical and mechanical timing apparatus used at the National Air Races, making it possible to announce the winner and his speed to one thousandth of a mile per hour in less than one minute after the finish of the race. 

In the same year—1909—we learn that the first Air Mail letter was carried and Orville Wright circled the Statue of Liberty and later circled New York City.

The first advertisement appeared in 1909 in an American magazine headed "Drive an Airplane," and just 25 years ago, July 25th, Louis Bleriot made the front pages throughout the world when he flew across the English Channel, a distance of 25 miles in 37 minutes, thereby completing the first flight between nations. Little did they dream that eighteen years later a young American would hop off from New York and land in Paris on a non-stop flight.

Following Bleriot's flight, the Wright Brothers on July 30th completed Government tests with the first cross-country flight of ten miles with a passenger; Orville was the pilot and Lt. Foulois, now General Foulois, Chief of the Air Corps, was a passenger. Thru this flight the Wright Brothers won the first military contract. What a contrast, when in 1931, during the Air Corps maneuvers, seven hundred of Uncle Sam's fighting planes were flown in formation over Chicago and New York City, led by Gen. Foulois, the original one-man Air Corp.

The events which happened in Aviation since 1909 are familiar to all of us, and need not be repeated. We have seen the ocean crossed and recrossed by plane and dirigible innumerable times; have seen the world encircled in slightly more than a week, and have witnessed the shrinking of our own continent from two days by plane and several nights by rail, until now one may travel comfortably and safely from coast to coast in a day's time.

The present development of aviation was forecast with uncanny accuracy by Victor Lougheed, one of the pioneer aeronautical engineers. The following is a quotation from his book "Vehicles of the Air," written and published in 1909—"Travel on land will be reduced to the extent that it is slow, inefficient, expensive and inflexible. Travel on water will become a mere adjunct to that of the air. The world will be narrowed by the speeds attained....Throughout the territories of every nation of the earth there will appear leveled, circular, landing areas, perhaps provided with strange-appearing starting devices and probably bordered with low, capacious, shed-like housing. Automobiles will be at hand to afford rapid transportation to the business center of adjoining communities.... There will develop a technique and a language of aerial navigation, and experts will become skilled in battling with fog and rain and storm, and in seeking out the lanes of the atmos-

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[[image caption]]The first International Gordon Bennett Cup races held in the United States at Belmont Park, N. Y., in 1910.

phere in which to add to their speed.... Of many sizes and at many altitudes midgets and leviathans.... will speed over every corner of all the lands and seas, and in the nights of that future time the eye-like gleams of their searchlights will mingle to the uttermost ends of the earth, beacons of science and romance and progress and brotherhood." Imagine the faith that could write this prophecy at a time when a flight of ten miles was an accomplishment. When we realize that his prophecy has been all but fulfilled in a quarter of a century, is it any wonder that scientists and engineers are taking seriously the probability of aerial travel thru the Stratosphere at a speed of 500 to 600 miles per hour before the next quarter of a century is ended. 

A glance through the records indicates that Aviation has constantly been spurred on by frequent air meets and daring attempts to be the first to accomplish some pioneering feat. In nearly all exhibitions these new records have been stimulated by the posting of cash prizes, so it has been a natural development that the National Air Race Classics now in their 14th year have come to be regarded as laboratories for the testing of new ideas, designed to increase speed and safety. Modern developments are traceable directly to principles learned in the building of racing planes strong enough and fast enough to win high speed air classics. 

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