Experiments in Aerodynamics

Abstract

* (m) O * ' suggestion to, it is just that I should mention a remarkable one by Mr. Wenham, which appeared in the first number of the London Aeronautical Society's report, 24 years ago, and some by Penaud in UAeronaute. The reader, especially if he be himself skilled in observation, may perhaps be willing to agree that since there is here so little yet established, so great a variety of tentative experiments must be made, that it is impossible to give each of them at the outset all the degree of accuracy which is ultimately desirable, and that he may yet find all trustworthy within the limits of their present application. I do not, then, offer here a treatise on aerodynamics, but an experimental demonstration that we already possess in the steam-engine as now constructed, or in other heat engines, more than the requisite power to urge a system of rigid planes through the air at a great velocity, making them not only self-sustaining, but capable of carrying other than their own weight. This is not asserting that they can be steadily and securely guided through the air, or safely brought to the ground without shock, or even that the plane itself is the best form of surface for support ; all these are practical considerations of quite another order, belonging to the yet inchoate art of constructing suitable mechanisms for guiding heavy bodies through the air on the principles indicated, and which art (to refer to it by some title distinct from any associated with ballooning) I will provisionally call aerodromics* With respect to this inchoate art, I desire to be understood as not here offering any direct evidence, or *From &spodpoft&i to traverse the air; depodpopof, an air-runner. 6 EXPERIMENTS IN AERODYNAMICS. expressing any opinion other than may be implied in the very description of these experiments themselves. It is just to say, finally, in regard to the extreme length of time (four years) which these experiments may appear to have taken, that, beyond the fact of their being in an entirely new field, nearly all imply a great amount of previous trial and-failure, which has not been obtruded on the reader, except to point out sources of wasted effort which future investigators may thus be spared, and that they have been made in the intervals of quite other occupations, connected with administrative duties in another city. CHAPTER II. CHARACTER AND METHOD OF EXPERIMENTS. The experiments which I have devised and here describe, are made with one specific object, namely, to elucidate the dynamic principles lying at the basis of the aerial mechanical flight of bodies denser than the air in which they move, and I have refrained as a rule from all collateral investigations, however important, not contributing to this end. These experiments, then, are in no way concerned with ordinary aeronautics, or the use of balloons, or objects lighter than the air, but solely with the mechanical sustentation of bodies denser than the air, and the reader will please note that only the latter are referred to throughout this memoir wh...

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