The mathematician
of to-day admits that he can neither square the circle, duplicate
the cube or trisect the angle. May not our mechanicians, in like
manner, be ultimately forced to admit that aerial flight is one of
that great class of problems with which man can never cope, and
give up all attempts to grapple with it?
[Illustration with caption: PROFESSOR LANGLEY'S AIR-SHIP]
The fact is that invention and discovery have, notwithstanding
their seemingly wide extent, gone on in rather narrower lines than
is commonly supposed. If, a hundred years ago, the most sagacious
of mortals had been told that before the nineteenth century closed
the face of the earth would be changed, time and space almost
annihilated, and communication between continents made more rapid
and easy than it was between cities in his time; and if he had
been asked to exercise his wildest imagination in depicting what
might come--the airship and the flying-machine would probably have
had a prominent place in his scheme, but neither the steamship,
the railway, the telegraph, nor the telephone would have been
there. Probably not a single new agency which he could have
imagined would have been one that has come to pass.
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