A Flying Machine.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 156, 4 July 1896, Page 3 (Supplement)

A Flying Machine.

Worked bt Stbam.

The following amplifies a cable meßsagt which appeared in 'The Herald' last month —

Professor Bell, of telephone fame, has publicly announced thab he has witnessed a trial of steam aerodrome which, he thinks, will prove to be an incident ol historic importance. The inventor (says bhe ' Standard' New York correspondent) is Prpfeesor Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution ab Washington. The machine rose in spirals of a hundred yards in diameter to a heighta of one hun« dred feet, and completed a course of half a mile, at bhe rate of bwenfey miles an hour. When bhe steam supply failed the aero< drome descended without injury. The experiment was repeated several times. Professor Bell sayß what he saw was sufficient to prove thab mechanical flight through the air is practicable. Prefossoi Langley says a larger machine will enable him "to economise the steam by a condenser, and thab thus longer flights may be taken. The aerodrome is worked solely by propellers ; no gas is used. The 'Chronicle's ' correspondent says bh« machine 4a built of steel, and is about) s thousand feimea heavier than the air which supports ib, much as thin ice supports the swift Bkater. The machine in motion suggeabs a huge bird, soaring in large curves. No passengers were carried in the trial trips. A New York journalisb, by the way, has iußb made an efforb, and with a certain measure of success, to fly with the machine some time ago invented by Herr Liliisnbhal.

Ib looks as though there were a possibility of ' the invention of flying' forming a chapter in the history of bhe century ye 6! '• '.