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On the Flight of Birds and Aërial Navigation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2017

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Extract

“The subject of flight is one which ought to be approached in the most unprejudiced manner, and so great and many are the advantages and benefits that would accrue to the human economy by its realization, that it at once places itself as the highest and noblest aim for the inventive mind.

“That aërial navigation is possible there can be not the slightest doubt, we have so many and so varied illustrations in nature; it may probably be on account of having such a variety of natural models continually before us, that the one true principle which governs them all is hidden amidst a complexity of means. There are birds, insects, and animals, capable of controlling and making subservient to their will the most unruly of the elements; is it too much therefore to expect that man, created lord of all, who has outrivalled by his in genuity and skill the power and speed of the strongest and swiftest of the animal creation,—is it too much to hope tha the shall by application unravel the mystery of aërial flight ?

Type
Research Article
Information
The Annual Reports of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain (1867 - 1893) , Volume 13: Thirteenth Annual Report for the year 1878 , 1878 , pp. 30 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Aeronautical Society 1878

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References

NOTE.—Showing that the elevating power of the bird, the rising ofa boy's kite, and the elevator devised by myself, are one and the samein principle:—Suppose we stand in the open air holding the arms out horizontally on the kites is just the same as though we were standing still and thecurrent of air was blowing with the same velocity as our run.

Suppose now that the air is quite calm, we still stand with the arms held out sideways, a kite in each hand, at the proper angle, instead ofrunning forward, suppose we dash our arms and kites forward, our bodyremaining stationary, the influence on the kite surface is the same aswhen either a current of air meets it, or when we run with the kite andmeet the air, our arms supply the place of the string of a kite, they alsotransmit the motion. Having thrown our arms and kites forward, wenow reverse the plane of the kites and dash our arms backward, thekites held in the hand get a double resistance, they meet the current ofof air following up the first stroke. This is exactly how a sparrow risesvertically by the side of a house, it is exactly how a kite flies, exceptthat the kite does not reverse itself. And it is exactly and actually theplan and principle of my double-acting elevator.