PART I. THE ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES AIR THEIR GRIEVANCES The Lecture Hall at the Royal Flying Corps School for Officers was deserted. The pupils had dispersed, and the Officer Instructor, more fagged than any pupil, was out on the aerodrome watching the test of a new machine. Deserted, did I say? But not so. The lecture that day had been upon the Elementary Principles of Flight, and they lingered yet. Upon the Blackboard was the illustration you... more...

LONDON AND NORTH WESTERN RAILWAY. According to Mr. Punch, one of the greatest authorities of the day on all such subjects, the nearest way to Euston Station is to take a cab; but those who are not in a hurry may take advantage of the omnibuses that start from Gracechurch Street and Charing Cross, traversing the principal thoroughfares and calling at the George and Blue Boar, Holborn, the Green Man and Still, Oxford Street, and the Booking... more...

To increase the highways transport resources as one of the means of strengthening the entire transportation system of the country, and for the purpose of avoiding the waste incurred by running transport vehicles empty, return-load bureaus are established. These bureaus are a means of bringing together the shipper having goods to move and the operator of an empty vehicle which is possibly running to the point for which the goods to be shipped are... more...

The carbureter measures the fuel charges for the engine and automatically mixes them with the proper amount of air to form a highly combustible gas. The Marvel Model "S" Carbureter is of the automatic air valve, heat controlled type. Its outstanding advantages are: 1. Simplicity of construction and operation. 2. Quick starting in any weather. 3. Automatically controlled heat application to ensure complete vaporization of fuels. 4. Economy in... more...

TUESDAY LECTURE The Compass Everyone is supposed to know what a compass looks like. It is marked in two ways—the old way and the new way. Put in your Note-Book this diagram:   The new way marked on the outside of the diagram, starts at North with 0°, increases toward the right through East at 90°, South at 180°, West at 270° and back to North again at 360° or 0°. The old way, marked on the inside of the... more...

Screw Propellers from 1858 to 1862. During the maple sugar season of the spring of 1858, a well-to-do farmer, of western New York, whittled out a spiral or augur-like screw-propeller, in miniature, which he thought admirably adapted to the canal. He soon after went to Buffalo, and contracted for a boat to be built, with two of his Archimedean screws for propulsion by steam. Although advised by his builders to substitute the common four-bladed... more...

CHAPTER I.INTRODUCTORY North-West Donegal.  A fine afternoon in September.  The mountain ranges were bathed in sunshine and the scarred and seamy face of stern old Errigal seemed almost to smile.  A gentle breeze stirred the air and the surface of the lakes lay shimmering in the soft autumnal light.  The blue sky, flecked with white cloudlets, the purple of the heather, the dark hues of the bogs, the varied greens of bracken,... more...

I did not come to-day with the idea of bringing you anything new. On the contrary, I have come here to get the inspiration which association with those from the outside gives. There is no hope for this place unless we can keep in contact with the remainder of the United States. In isolation we think in a vacuum, and it is only when we know what you are thinking of on the outside that we get the impulse which leads to construction. I think I can... more...

PREFACE. “It is the duty—the imperative duty—of every individual (however humble) to express conscientiously, but calmly, his public opinions, for by such means truth is elicited.” Hence it may be permitted the writer of the annexed Letter to observe, that a momentous question is now brought to the notice of the people of Great Britain,—that it ought not to be neglected, until perhaps a voice from her colonial... more...

The Wright Brothers’ Aeroplane By Orville and Wilbur Wright   THOUGH the subject of aerial navigation is generally considered new, it has occupied the minds of men more or less from the earliest ages. Our personal interest in it dates from our childhood days. Late in the autumn of 1878 our father came into the house one evening with some object partly concealed in his hands, and before we could see what it was, he tossed it into the... more...