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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (March 1, 1908)
? j r--- - ' ' ,mh " ' .' " , " - i. hi w '.'.ni ' ' """ jCWigam1"1 ;i 'M-.-y"' - '" - 'Li ..j . i ry''-;; y V- V';;r :- v Portland, Oregon, .sunday,. morning, march, i, 190a 433 v -' VA . . ':: ; . 9 PearGDjiSiS aoafcbcoobilec T MUST be recognized that the most marvelous advance in humanity s domination of the elements, beside which the first dugout that traversed the waters was but a poor prototype, has come ix here, real and in full flower. And mankind is going about its business as though nothing more surprising had oc curred than the blowing up pf another 'Mont Pejee; it. could -not be much lesi gi fated. ' 4 With the winning of the Deutsch Archdeacon prize, Henri Farman, at Paris, has demonstrated lhat man can fly through the air. And the thoughtof man, the emo .tions of his spirit, tfie activities of his world, have actually been less stirred than marvelous advance in humanity's WmZ-S lSWWKlf vfli i , . - rs -! . : ,r ' " : V . " they were by one recent sensational trial for Whatever it may be, the art of flying, murder. , ; - if the lessons of history teach truly, is the Is tt jhat the supreme triumph, the most imminent accomplishment which de dream of the ages, the ambition of the gen- mands acquisition by men living today. The erattons, has come by stages so 'gradual . railroad, the steamboat, the automobile mar us mnuing acntevemeni was wnouy discounted? Or is it that the full measure of its significance is so vast that the human imagination, in this age sf material long' ings, falls back upon its husks and acorns, hopeless of realizing the grandeurs it hps found, content to wait the large fulfilment of the promise? "Nor-Nor-Nor-Nor West from Sourabaya to the Baltic! Ninety knot an hour to the Skaw! Mother Rugen's tea house on the Baltic And a dance with Ella Sweyn at Elsinore!" HAT is the song of the air which Rudyard 1 Kipling wrote for his story, "With the Night Afail,M more than two -years ago, when he told of -a&ip through the air on a mail packet at the time in the future when aerial navigation should be as far advanced to ward perfection as navigation of .the sea is i ii - - - - , Jfc it cvnie. - is;;;;: mii rriVZ m I::.' KKfeS m 'ji:'i ., II . f. v I , " - ' ' SV? practicing upon his equilibrium; already he is cTPf AT Wi iVZlI SSTS'- -H VT 1 I' i"" - k V : far from being helpless. , 't i- iiv 14 S. sV'V t," The change is only in the nature of the base 'jlu'rjl fv J& , YirL" ; IXjT i 1 ItiSUsOjiJU i I A 8,. u 1 on which he poises himself. Beginning with the, r.ST l.CfrDft'tyvS' L ' XrtviM , - - " T - ".i ' - tr ' - . ' tivV- : ? J acquisition of the art of equipose for a lmng, Sf jt&iSSi Tgj ' ' tA . t 4t,r V V( TVfr V . V V . inverted cone when, as the child, he learned to fclflAVw ri XCj IMZ- i r;-.--T. y,,J. 11 " rr.M-HrSi. "y iiswll ufnffVJsMF . ,'3b ; " ;,; .H:&!!.!:;; 1 - IT , CM T .Hi how swiftly they have developed from curi- osities of transportation .to necessaries of everyday existence And who, if -fie be not qualified to serve as engineer or chaufeur, dare now admit his reluctance to be a passenger? What, then, must all of us do t since we must learn to fly?, advanced today. It is the most baffling, as well as one of the most thrilling, stories which that master of tales has ever told, for it bears, as an unmistakable mark of his genius, the uncompromising stamp ol the man who has "arrived" in all that aerial navigation can be honed to mean. Glinting everywhere through its pages are references to discoveries, .inventions, strange, new victories of science, and marvels of force and control of which he alone has had the pre- i,,,!. iiiui.i n il I...HMI 11- i, - M ' I ' - ' vision all essential to the ultimate completeness of man's dominion over the air, all attained after or in the millennium of universal peace, the conquest of the unconquered Poles, the addition of thirty years to the ordinary span of man mortal life. . There, in that nerve-tingling prophecy, Kip ling drops one single passing taunt amid the hurtling flight of his 200-mile an hour postal packets, his huge grain airships and flying sana toria for consumptives at the- "progress" of our era and his own. The shaft-bearings of the packet in which he flies in that distant future came from old "Number 97," which took them over from the old Dominion Light, which had them out of the wreck of the Perseus aeroplane "in the years when men still flew kites over thorium engines." " , Those days, this day, are in "the years wlien men still fly kites over engines." This day, this year, marks the birth of the greatest science of the world, the birth over which the world has been in throe for a century. If it does not mean to us who are living now all that Kip ling's fancy painted it to be, it surely means more than the knowledge of , any living man can suffice to accurately describe. First of all, it means to the average man the tight-rope skill in flying which he had to acquire timidly , as a boy on skates and in the water and later, even more timidly, on the bi cycle. m ' Awkward as he may foresee himself in the air, the average man has, nevertheless, already won half his battle in the mrt of flying. From the time he commenced to walk he has been practicing upon his equilibrium; already he is far from being helpless. The change is only in the nature of the base V t 1 l l.f T : : Tit iU. r . on wnicn ne poises nuiweu. juegiuuiug miu uio, acquisition of the art of equipose for a living, inverted cone when, as the child, he learned to t.'?:., ;.s.t JUr- frfw,-'-. t-.-;:--;. : l i i r " i Y " 'ft rJ.r- T "V i 1 j, t 1 ' . f L ' .! ." t .,''.:-....'.;;.; I -j 3 v .: r t,f ' t . . " ' - 4 . ' ' . -..',..."..,. , '. '(.'..'.;: ,:.";! 'rVr Si..? .rl'i,: . - . " , V " ; u : 'i':fr'''yx'':'! v 'V: ., ' fcii- , -i ' ' ' - - . '.L. r maintain his body upright upon the tiny pedes tal of the foot he proceeded to the more diffi cult feat of reducing the base to monorail so narrow as to be almost a knife edge the runner of the ice skate. J:: It is there that ttajb into practice the principle of eq'uipose by means -of motion the secret of all equilibrium where) , a body is poised upon an inadequate and unstable base. How great is the gain in ease of poise ; : becomes apparent when, without forward move- ( ' ment, one tries to stand on one .foot, or (an int possibility except for the most, expert) to stand! .: still on one skate runner for more than an in--stant. The ballet dancer's highest skill is not 'dis played white she is Vnaking those delightful ':. , gyroscopic pirouettes and whirls; it is shown 1 when, poised on the great toe of one foot, she; stands' immovable, with no aid whatever from!,-; the forces involved in movement At a greater elevation from the ground, but , upon the same basis of the monorail, the bicycle : demonstrated afresh humanity's peculiar adapt;, ability to equipoise. All that were required by, j human muscles, brain and nerves were tho ; minimum of base and the minimum of motion. : The next stage, inevitably, was the total dis-; carding of a solid base l.-.:. ;-X:,Zl-li ' i But even that had been successfully prao-j -ticed, from the times when 'the first specimen of the pithecanthropus fell into the creek and j -swam out again. The swimmer has a persist- ' ently liquid and unstable base; but with this inestimable compensation: his center of grar-! ity is so low that it'is most easy for him to, preserve any position. Indeed, his base in the 1 water is so broad and so low tiiat be is almost.' as firm in posture as the pyramids of the Nilev If, nowj we; drop the phrase "flying through; , the air" and use instead "swimming through! the air,' we will have a much more accurate, foretaste of the sensation which many of us . doubtless are destined to experience before we die perhaps within years as few as those which elapsed between . the first high-wheeler and the modern drop-frame bicycle. (CONTINUED ON INSIDE PAGE)
