Part 13

The mine that goes farther down than any other in the world is the rock salt mine near Berlin, Germany which is 4,175 feet. It is not, however, straight down but somewhat slanting. The Calumet Copper Mine near Lake Superior is at a depth in some places of 3,900 feet.

The deepest boring in the world is an artesian well at Potsdam, Missouri, which is 5,500 feet deep or more than one mile straight down.

What Is Color?

~WHAT PRODUCES THE COLORS WE SEE?~

What is termed the color-sense is the power or ability to distinguish kinds or varieties of light and their distinctive tints. We owe the faculty of doing this to the structure of the eye and its elaborate connecting nerve machinery. The eye in man is specially sensitive to light, and the sensations we feel through it enables us to distinguish the different colors. Over 1,000 monochromatic tints are said to be distinguishable by the retina of the eye, though these numerous tints are, in the main, merely blendings or combinations of the three primary color-sensations, the sense of red, of green and of violet. Each of these colors, it has been demonstrated, is produced by light of a varying wave length, while white light is only light in which the primary colors are combined in proper proportion. Colored light, on the other hand, as Newton proved, may be produced from white light in one of three ways: First, by refraction in a prism or lens, as observed in the rainbow; second, by diffraction, as in the blue color of the sky, or in the tints seen in mother-of-pearl; and third, by absorption, as in the red color of a brick wall, or in the green of grass--the white light which falls upon the wall being wholly absorbed, save by the red, and all that falls upon the grass being absorbed except the green. In art, color means that combination or modification of tints which is specially suited to produce a particular or desired effect in painting; in music, the term denotes a particular interpretation which illustrates the physical analogy between sound and color.

Where Did the Term Dixie Originate?

The term was applied originally to New York City when slavery existed there. According to a myth or legend, a person named Dixie owned a tract of land on Manhattan Island and had a large number of slaves. As Dixie’s slaves increased beyond the requirements of the plantation, many were sent to distant parts. Naturally the deported negroes looked upon their early home as a place of real and abiding happiness, as did those from the “Ole Virginny” of later days. Hence “Dixie” became the synonym for a locality where the negroes were happy and contented. In the South, Dixie is taken to mean the Southern States. There the word is supposed to have been derived from Mason and Dixon’s line, formerly dividing the free states from the slave states. It is said to have first come into use there when Texas joined the Union, and the negroes sang of it as Dixie. It has been the theme of several popular songs, notably that of Albert Pike, “Southrons, Hear Your Country Call”; that of T. M. Cooley, “Away Down South where Grows the Cotton,” and that of Dan Emmett, the refrain usually containing the word “Dixie” or the words “Dixie’s Land.” During the Civil War, the tune of “Dixie” was to the Southern people what “Yankee Doodle” had always been to the people of the whole Union and what it continued, in war times, to be to the Northern people, the comic national air. The tune is “catchy” to the popular ear and it was played by the bands in the Union army during the war as freely as by those on the other side. During the rejoicing in Washington over the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, a band played “Dixie” in front of the White House. President Lincoln began a short speech, immediately afterward, with the remark, “That tune fairly belongs to us now; we’ve captured it.”

How Big Is the Earth?

The third planet in order of distance from the sun, Mercury and Venus being nearer to it. It is in shape a sphere slightly flattened at the poles and bulged at the equator, hence it is called an oblate spheroid. The equatorial diameter or axis measures 7,926 miles and 1.041 yds., and the polar diameter is 7,899 miles and 1.023 yds. The earth revolves upon its axis, completing its diurnal or daily revolution in a sidereal day, which is 3 minutes and 55.9 seconds shorter than a mean solar day. It revolves around the sun in one sidereal year, which is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9 seconds. Its orbit or path around the sun is an ellipse, having the sun in one of the foci. The earth’s mean distance from the sun is 93,000,000 miles. Its axis is inclined to the plane of its orbit at an angle of 23° 27′ 12.68″. The circumference at the equator measures 24,899 miles. The total surface is 196,900,278 sq. miles, and the solid contents is 260,000,000,000 cubic miles. As we descend into the earth the temperature rises at the rate of 1° Fahr. for every 50 ft. At the depth of 10 or 12 miles the earth is red-hot, and at a depth of 100 miles the temperature is such that at the surface of the earth it would liquefy all solid matter in the earth.

What Causes Hail?

Hail is the name given to the small masses of ice which fall in showers, and which are called hailstones. When a hailstone is examined it is found usually to consist of a central nucleus of compact snow, surrounded by successive layers of ice and snow. Hail falls chiefly in Spring and Summer, and often accompanies a thunderstorm. Hailstones are formed by the gradual rise and fall, through different degrees of temperature (by the action of windstorms), and they then take on a covering of ice or frozen snow, according as they are carried through a region of rain or snow.

With regard to rain, it may be said, in popular language, that under the influence of solar heat, water is constantly rising into the air by evaporation from the surface of the sea, lakes, rivers, and the moist surface of the ground. Of the vapors thus formed the greater part is returned to the earth as rain. The moisture, originally invisible, first makes its appearance as cloud, mist or fog; and under certain atmospheric conditions the condensation proceeds still further until the moisture falls to the earth as rain. Simply and briefly, then, rain is caused by the cooling of the air charged with moisture.

Why Does a Human Being Have To Learn to Swim?

It is strange, isn’t it, that almost every animal, excepting man and possibly the monkey, knows how to swim naturally; others such as birds, horses, dogs, cows, elephants, can swim as soon as they can move about alone.

The trouble with man in this connection is that his natural motion is climbing. He has been a climber ever since he was developed from the monkey, and when you throw him into the water before he has learned to swim, he naturally starts to climb and as a climbing motion won’t do, for swimming, the man will drown.

This climbing motion is as much of an instinct in man and monkeys as the instinct in dogs which causes him to turn round once or twice before he lies down just as his forefathers used to do ages ago when, as wild dogs, they first had to trample the grass before they could lie down comfortably.

Why Do I Get Cold in a Warm Room?

I suppose you mean the instances when you get cold while in a warm room even when you are perfectly well. This will happen often when all of the moisture in the room outside of what is in your body, is evaporated by the heat in the room. The remedy is, of course, to keep a pan of water some place in the room as the air has become too dry.

While heat is necessary to evaporate water, the process of evaporation produces cold. The quicker the evaporation the sharper the cold feeling produced. Now your body is continually evaporating the water from your body which comes out in the form of perspiration through the pores of the skin. This is one of nature’s ways of taking the impurities and waste out of the body. You know, of course, don’t you, that more than one-half the waste material which the body expels from the system comes out through the pores of the skin rather than through the canals.

When the air in the room becomes too dry, the evaporation on the outside of the body proceeds faster and makes you cold. By keeping water in some vessel in the room you keep the air of the room from becoming too dry.

Why Do They Call Them Wisdom Teeth?

The wisdom teeth are the two last molar teeth to grow. They come one on each side of the jaw and arrive somewhere between the ages of twenty and twenty-five years. The name is given them because it is supposed that when a person has developed physically and mentally to the point where he has secured these last two teeth he has also arrived at the age of discretion. It does not necessarily mean that one who has cut his wisdom teeth is wise, but that having lived long enough to grow these, which complete the full set of teeth, the person has passed sufficient actual years that, if he has done what he should to fit himself for life, he should have come by that time at the age of discretion or wisdom. As a matter of fact these teeth grow at about the same age in people whether they are wise or not.

What Makes Freckles Come?

Freckles are generally caused by the exposure of unprotected parts of the body to the sun, but this will not cause freckles on all people. Only people with certain kinds of sensitive skins freckle. What happens when freckles are produced in this way is this: The sunlight shining on the face, neck or arms of anyone who has a tendency to freckle, has a peculiar action on certain cells of the skin which produces a yellowish brown coloring pigment, which remains for a time.

Then again the skins of some people are so peculiarly sensitive the cells develop this kind of coloring matter in almost any kind of light and such people are, so to speak, apt to be freckled for life.

[Illustration: First successful power-driven aeroplane. The Langley monoplane with steam engine, which flew over the Potomac River in 1896.]

The Flying Boat

When Did Man First Try to Fly?

~HOW MAN LEARNED TO FLY~

Man’s desire to conquer the air is older than recorded history. When a kite was flown for the first time the principle of aviation, or dynamic flight, was uncovered. For centuries man has sought the mechanical equivalents for the things that keep a kite flying steadily in the air,--the power that lies in the cord that keeps a kite headed into the wind; an equivalent for the wind’s own power; an equivalent for the tail which controls the kite’s lateral and longitudinal balance.

Each separate part of the modern flying machine, or aeroplane, was worked out long ago, with the exception of the gas engine light enough and reliable enough to be used for this work. The present generation knows dynamic flight as a commonplace thing, not because we are so much more clever than previous generations in designing flying machines, but because of the development of the modern gasoline or internal combustion engine.

Who Invented Flying?

No one invented flying, nor did any one man invent all the separate parts of the flying machine. They are the result of evolution,--of the combined work and thought of hundreds of men, many of whose names are unrecorded. To attempt to find the true beginning of the modern flying machine would be as difficult as attempting to discover who planted the seed of the tree from which one has gathered a rose. But the tree from which all the flying machines, or aeroplanes, of today have sprung undoubtedly is Dr. Samuel Pierpont Langley, third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

Some of the Men Who Helped.

Taking the most conspicuous names of scientists who worked out various details of the aeroplane during the past century we find that a century ago Sir George Cayley built a machine on lines very similar to those accepted today, and he went so far as to foretell the necessity of developing the internal combustion engine before dynamic flight could be a success. Mr. F. H. Wenham, in 1866, also built a flying machine along conventional lines and tried to fly it with a steam engine, which of course, proved too heavy.

[Illustration: One of Dr. Langley’s first models; a biplane with flexible wing-tips and twin propellers. 1889.]

~EARLY TYPES OF FLYING MACHINES~

M. A. Penaud, a Frenchman, in experimenting with models, seems to have been the first to discover the necessity of vertical and horizontal rudders in maintaining balance. Mr. Horatio Phillips, an Englishman, discovered, and patented, the use of curved instead of flat surfaces for the planes. Otto and Gustav Lilienthal are said to have been the first to attempt to balance aeroplanes by flexing or bending the wings. Various others, including Messrs. Richard Harte, Boulton, Mouillard, worked out ideas for balancing machines by the use of auxiliary planes which could be set at different angles with regard to the line of flight, thus forcing the machines to different positions by the force of the air rushing against them.

Dr. Langley, trained in scientific investigation, conducted an elaborate series of experiments covering many years and costing thousands of dollars to test and prove the value of the claims of the earlier investigators. Some things which he thought he was the first to discover,--such as the effect of the vertical and horizontal rudders,--he later found had already been proven by others. Independently he covered the entire field of experiment and after building hundreds of small models he succeeded, in 1896, in making a machine weighing several pounds equipped with a very light steam engine which flew safely as long as the fuel lasted. For his early experiments Dr. Langley was afforded financial assistance by Mr. William Thaw of Pittsburg. After the success of his small machines Dr. Langley was asked to undertake the construction of a large, man-carrying machine, and Congress voted him $50,000 to carry on the work. A large share of this was spent on the development of a very light gasoline engine. The machine finally was completed, but was twice broken through defective launching apparatus. Congress and Dr. Langley were so ridiculed by the public press that the machine was temporarily abandoned. Not, however, until after Dr. Langley had successfully flown a steam driven machine much larger than many of the racing aeroplanes of today.

But eight years after Dr. Langley’s death, which is said to have been due to the heart-breaking disappointment he suffered in trying to demonstrate the large machine, Glenn H. Curtiss, at the request of the Smithsonian Institution, rebuilt the old Langley machine and succeeded in making a flight with it at Hammondsport, N. Y., on May 28, 1914.

[Illustration: THE FIRST MAN-CARRYING AEROPLANE

First successful man-carrying aeroplane. Designed by Dr. Langley in 1898; flown by Glenn H. Curtiss at Hammondsport, N. Y., 1914.]

[Illustration: Front view of big Langley machine in 1914.]

While longer flights probably will be made with this machine none will attain greater importance, because this first flight with it was sufficient to establish for all time the fact that Dr. Langley built the first man-carrying machine equipped with a gasoline engine and able to fly and raise itself with its own power. This was considerably more than was accomplished by other machines for some time after Dr. Langley’s death. The Langley machine not only lifted the weight it was designed to fly with, but also carried pontoon and other fittings, added by Mr. Curtiss to make flight from the water possible, which added 340 pounds to the original weight of the machine.

[Illustration: THE MACHINE WITH WHICH BLERIOT FLEW IN EUROPE

Copy of early Langley model with which Bleriot made first circular flight in Europe.]

The connection between Dr. Langley’s work and present machines is now very easy to trace, though not obvious until 1911, when the Smithsonian Institution published memoirs written by Dr. Langley in 1897, and some memoirs of Mr. Octave Chanute, a French engineer who resided in Chicago, and who forms one of the main connecting links. The chain is practically completed by notes left by the late Lieut. Thomas Selfridge, U. S. A., America’s first martyr to aviation.

Dr. Langley’s knowledge is represented in modern aviation by three distinct lines. The central and most direct line is through Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, to the Aerial Experiment Association, and thence to Mr. Glenn H. Curtiss, and finds its expression in what is known as the Curtiss type of machines.

Another line is that carried by a Mr. A. M. Herring to Mr. Chanute and by him transmitted to Mr. Wilbur Wright, finding expression in the Wright type of biplane.

The third line is that leading to the modern monoplane school; M. Bleriot having first copied in toto the tandem monoplane form, generally known as the Langley type, and later, with the development of better gasoline engines, developing into the monoplane as known today.

With the exception of M. Bleriot it is doubtful if the others fully realized the source of their inspiration,--not to call it information.

Dr. Bell was interested in Dr. Langley’s work for more than ten years before Dr. Langley gave up. He observed many of the trials, and his reports of the first successful flights are incorporated in the official publications of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Bell began some independent experiments, but following Dr. Langley’s death he formed the Aerial Experiment Association, to carry on the work left by Dr. Langley. The members of this organization were, Mr. Curtiss, at that time the most successful builder of light motors; Lieut. Thomas H. Selfridge, U. S. A.; Mr. J. A. D. McCurdy and Mr. F. W. Baldwin, two young Canadian engineers. Mrs. Bell financed the project, furnishing the sum of $35,000 for the experiments.

~WHAT TWO BROTHERS ACCOMPLISHED FOR FLYING~

The Wright Brothers, for Wilbur Wright was joined by his brother Orville in the experiments, were the first to reap success from the seeds of Dr. Langley’s sowing. Mr. Chanute had been experimenting with a biplane form of motorless glider with little success, because of lack of means for balancing the machines in the air, until he was joined by a former employe of Dr. Langley. He appears to have imparted to Mr. Chanute the secret of the stabilizing effect of the Penaud tail, or combination of vertical and horizontal rudders. Thereafter hundreds of successful gliding flights were made with the Chanute biplane, though Chanute seems not to have grasped the full significance of the rudders,--though it was well understood by Dr. Langley. To the Chanute machine, as described to him, Mr. Wright added first the idea of flexing or warping the wings, after the fashion set by the Lilienthals. He found, however, as Dr. Langley had found years before, that in attempting to correct lateral balance in this way caused the aeroplane to swerve to such an extent that the fixed vertical rudder, as originally employed, did not correct the upsetting tendency that was developed. Mr. Wright then arranged his rudder in such a way that when the wing was warped the rudder turned in a way to offset the swerve. This combination was patented all over the world and has resulted in much complicated litigation.

To this machine the Wright Brothers added a gasoline motor in December, 1903, and with it made numerous flights during 1904-5. Their claims were not generally credited however until a later date for their experiments had been conducted with considerable secrecy, and during 1906, 1907 and until late in 1908 they did no more flying.

In the meantime M. Bleriot had made a copy of one of the early Langley tandem monoplane models and made some fairly successful flights with it in Europe. Later, as gasoline motors developed in power for weight, he reduced the rear surface until the modern monoplane evolved.

While Bleriot was working in Europe, Dr. Bell’s Aerial Experiment Association in America was evolving still another type of machine, and the members of the association made the first successful public flights in America. Mr. Curtiss won the Scientific American Trophy for the first time on July 4th, 1908, by a straightaway flight of more than a kilometer. The balancing system employed by the A. E. A. differed from that employed by the Wrights and by Bleriot in that small auxiliary planes took the place of warping planes for righting the machine. This they claimed to be a superior method, first, because it eliminated the use of the rudder as being absolutely essential to the balance of the machine; second, because it enabled them to make the main planes rigid throughout, and consequently stronger than the flexible planes.

There are several other names that must be mentioned in connection with the early history of successful flight; these are the Frenchmen, Messrs. Henri Farman, Maurice Farman, the brothers Voisin, and Santos Dumont. These produced some of the first notably successful aeroplanes in Europe but seem to have discovered nothing which has had any marked effect upon the later development of flying machines. M. Farman adopted the auxiliary planes used by the A. E. A. and modified them to suit his ideas.

~WONDERFUL RECORDS OF AEROPLANES~

Volumes could be, in fact, have been written about the exploits of the first demonstrators of the practical heavier-than-air flying machines,--of the crossing of the English Channel by Bleriot, of the flights by Wilbur Wright at Rheims, France; of Mr. Curtiss’ winning of the first Gordon Bennet International speed trophy and his flight down the Hudson from Albany to New York; of Orville Wright’s flight at Fort Meyer, and the death of Lieut. Selfridge who was flying with him. The barest record of these interesting accomplishments would fill volumes. Of the aeroplane proper it is enough to say here that since 1908 its development has been too rapid for accurate recording. In strength, in speed, in reliability, in size and carrying capacity, it has developed at a remarkable rate. At this writing the speed record is about 130 miles per hour; the duration record is more than 24 hours, non-stop; the distance record is some 1,300 miles in one day; the altitude record some 26,000 feet. New records succeed the old ones with such rapidity that probably before this can be printed all these present records will have been greatly eclipsed.

[Illustration:

AEROPLANE “RED WING” HAMMONDSPORT, N.Y.

FIRST AMERICAN PUBLIC FLIGHT, MAR 12 1908]

[Illustration: The biplane in which G. H. Curtiss flew from Albany to New York in 1910.]

Meantime the aeroplane has developed greatly in other directions. In flying over land with the early types of machines many fatal accidents occurred, particularly to the fliers who gave exhibitions everywhere during 1909, 1910 and 1911. A majority of these accidents were indirectly due to the fact that a very smooth surface is required for landing a fragile machine running at high speed. The obvious expedient was to develop machines capable of rising from and alighting upon the water.

[Illustration: SOME FAMOUS FOREIGN MONOPLANES