Flight Not Improbable

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Frontmatter

2. 1. How It All Began

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   After almost two months at sea the Havre Paquet entered the muddy Mississippi River delta; many of its passengers stood on deck, as they were anxious to start a new life in America where “the air is more free.” One of the passengers traveling with his six-year-old son Octave in the cabin section, was the cultivated 42-year-old Joseph Chanut; he too looked for a new and better life.

3. 2. Flight Is Not Improbable

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   America has long been known as a nation of inventive tinkerers. As the Honorable Samuel S. Fisher, United States Commissioner of Patents, told his audience in 1869, “The truth is we are an inventive people. Invention is by no means confined to our mechanics. Our merchants invent, our soldiers and our sailors invent, our schoolmasters invent, our professional men invent, aye, and our women and our children invent. Looking at the events of the last century, any one of these tinkerers, or inventors, is touched with enough genius to influence history.”

4. 3. Theory—Investigating—Practical Flying

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   Almost one-hundred years earlier, Sir George Cayley prophesied, “I feel perfectly confident, that this noble art [of flying] will soon be brought home to man’s general convenience, and that we shall be able to transport ourselves and families, and their goods and chattels, more securely by air than by water, and with a velocity of from 20 to 100 miles per hour [1].”

5. 4. Collaboration for Progress in Flying Machines

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   The editors of the New York Times had anticipated manflight to be the crowning glory of the nineteenth century, but greeted the twentieth century in a less optimistic mood. “Everything thus far attempted in the way of aerial navigation has assumed a mathematical impossibility as its starting point and a mechanical paradox as its objective … The magic carpet of the oriental fairy tale had a distinct advantage over anything in the line of modern invention; it charmed the fancy without inviting disappointment as the result of calculation.”

6. 5. Two Eventful Years of Intertwined Development

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   In a well-researched paper on airplane wing trussing, Felix W. Pawlowski from the University of Michigan discussed in 1916 what was needed to create a successful aircraft structure. “Prominent mechanical engineers like Sir Hiram Maxim (1894) with his huge multiplane craft, and Otto Lilienthal (1895) with his monoplane, could not produce a simple and statically clear structure to combine the wings of their machines. A bridge engineer was the first to do so; it was Octave Chanute who introduced the bridge truss into the biplane, and the idea was adopted immediately by most airplane builders.”

7. 6. The Persistent Experiments to “Wing the Air”

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   Reading of Jules Verne’s death in March 1905 made Chanute pull one of his favorite books from the shelf, “The Clipper of the Clouds,” [1] which can indeed be considered the ultimate manifesto of the nineteenth century’s quest for heavier-than-air flight. Learning from others and sharing information was part of growing in the engineering profession; Chanute’s philosophy about technical education was that a student should be well grounded in the general principles of science, taught where to look for information and learn how to use the tools of knowledge.

8. 7. Internationalism, Idealism and Materialism

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   Internationalism was, and still is, one of the striking features of the development in aviation; enthusiasts from around the globe studied stability and balance, methods of taking off and landing, best material and shape for the wing, power plant and propeller, the various types of construction using different known materials, and the relative merits of monoplane, biplane or triplane.

9. 8. New People, New Designs, New Ideas, New Problems

   Simine Short

   Abstract

   As the public became more interested in aviation, the initial age of the flying machine slipped into history, and the age of the practical airplane entered reality. As Hudson Maxim commented, “We of the twentieth century hardly realize the privilege which is given us to watch the revolution of the airplane.”

10. 9. When Will We All Fly?

    Simine Short

    Abstract

    To make the general public more aware of the advances in transportation, the almost two-week long Hudson-Fulton Celebration (September 25–October 9, 1909) celebrated the 300th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the Hudson River and the 100th anniversary of the first successful application of steam to river navigation by Robert Fulton, when he and his team traveled in the Clermont from New York to Albany in 36 hours. Another fifty years later, The World offered a $10,000 prize to the first person to travel by air from New York to Albany.

11. 10. Some Final Words …

    Simine Short

    Abstract

    Tackling the frontier of flight at the end of the 19th and the early 20th century inspired a new generation of innovative thinkers. One of these men was Octave Chanute, a civil engineer who had vision and dreamed dreams, usually making them come true.

12. Backmatter