Atwood and his St. Louis-New York Flight

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ONLY a few. years ago, Prof. Simon Newcomb. an authority who was quoted the world over. branded the heavier-than-air flying machine as a mechanical absurdity. I consider the demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machines, and known forms of force, can ;Je united fn a practicable machine by which men can fly long distances through the air, as complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical fact to be was one of his dicta. He followed it up with the statement: Let us discover a substance a hundred times as strong as steel, and with that some form of force hitherto unsuslected, which will enable us to utilize this strength, or let us discover some way of reversing the law of gravitation, so that matter may be repelled from the earth instead of being attract2d to it, and then, and not till then, we may have a flying machine To drive home his conviction as far as possible, he concluded: There is every reason to believe that mere ingenious advances with our present means and forms of force will be as vain in the fuie as they have been in the past." What would Prof. Newcomb say if he were now alive? What comment would he make on the flight of a young man from St. Louis to Chicago and from Chicago to New York in a machine that did not involve the discovery of new forces or material, in a machine which was as subject to gravitation as a thing of metal and wood and canvas can be? It may be said that Atwood's performance unquestionably proves that the flying machine has a future for swift transportation, when speed is more to l,e considered than cost. Atwood assures us that his

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