No such machine can navigate the air unless
guided by something having life. Apart from this, it could be of
little use to us unless it carried human beings on its wings. We
thus meet with a difficulty at the first step--we cannot give a
brain and nervous system to our machine. These necessary adjuncts
must be supplied by a man, who is no part of the machine, but
something carried by it. The bird is a complete machine in itself.
Our aerial ship must be machine plus man. Now, a man is, I
believe, heavier than any bird that flies. The limit which the
rarity of the air places upon its power of supporting wings, taken
in connection with the combined weight of a man and a machine,
make a drawback which we should not too hastily assume our ability
to overcome. The example of the bird does not prove that man can
fly. The hundred and fifty pounds of dead weight which the manager
of the machine must add to it over and above that necessary in the
bird may well prove an insurmountable obstacle to success.
I need hardly remark that the advantage possessed by the bird has
its attendant drawbacks when we consider other movements than
flying. Its wings are simply one pair of its legs, and the human
race could not afford to abandon its arms for the most effective
wings that nature or art could supply.
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