THE COST OF FLYING.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 295, 17 June 1909, Page 6

THE COST OF FLYING.

m — Fifteen years ago, remarks . the Daily Mail, one of the first exhibitions of motor cars held ii> England was seen at Olympia. As the primitives machines made their painful way rotind a small arena, it seemed impossible that they could ever" be anything but clumsy 'toys. Yet a few weeks ago a battalion of Guards was carried to Hastings and back in motor cars, at an average speed of over twenty miles an hour, with scarcely an accident. If one were to prophesy" that in. another fifteen, years Guards would be hurried off to the coast by aeroplane, the unimaginative might scoff, unmindful of our experience with the motor caT. In the same week a great exhibition, of aeroplanes was held at Olympia. "This exhibition is going to set all London talking.' It is going to make people realise that the aeroplane is not merely a theme for joliing, a fad,

a toy, but a. realty, a practical machine for flying, an invention that has come to stay. Up to now people have not understood this. They have heard of flights ,at Pan, at Le Mans, in the United States, always a long way off. They have said to themI selves that it was just a passing craze. Now they can go to Olympia, and as they cross the threshold they will imagine they have stepped suddenly into one of Mr H. G. Wells's stories of the future, when aeroplanes ply re- s gularly between London and Paris, and when, wars are fought in the air." A man with £500 or £600 to spare, and a spirit of adventure to satisfy, could walk in and order, not a theoretical flying machine, 1 but a machine "that had actually made flights. Some of the machines, of course, were purely theoretical: One,, catalogued at £1000, ■ had not yet been tried, but with fine confidence, the makers offered it "ready for the air." Another, offered at £1200, was also untried, but the inventor ' threw in tuition free, as an inducement t6 some adventurous spirit to buy it. A journalist asked one inventor why he •Jiad not flown, his model. "Well, I'm frightened of smashing it," he said. An amiable . Frenchman demonstrated with a pair of real goose wings in each hand the action of a bird.' . People regarded him anxious- i ly, expecting to see him any moment , rise from the floor and sail across to j the gallery. "I have discovered the secrets of Nature," he said. "My wings are built on the principle of a goose." Aside he added, connden--tally: "Dp you know any one who take a half -share in my discovery? My machine is built like j a bird, and the aviator sits inside — about where the gizzard is. I'm looking for a partner." "We fear he is still looking.