The Age of Invention Part 11

In the first years of the World War Curtiss built airplanes and flying boats for the Allies. The United States entered the arena and called for his services. The Navy Department called for the big flying boat; and the NC type was evolved, which, equipped with four Liberty Motors, crossed the Atlantic after the close of the war.

The World War, of course, brought about the magical development of all kinds of air craft. Necessity not only mothered invention but forced it to cover a normal half century of progress in four years. While Curtiss worked with the navy, the Dayton-Wright factory turned out the famous DH fighting planes under the supervision of Orville Wright. The second initial here stands for Havilland, as the DH was designed by Geoffrey de Havilland, a British inventor.

The year 1919 saw the first transatlantic flights. The NC4, with Lieutenant Commander Albert Cushing Read and crew, left Trepa.s.sey, Newfoundland, on the 16th of May and in twelve hours arrived at Horta, the Azores, more than a thousand miles away. All along the course the navy had strung a chain of destroyers, with signaling apparatus and searchlights to guide the aviators. On the twenty-seventh, NC4 took off from San Miguel, Azores, and in nine hours made Lisbon--Lisbon, capital of Portugal, which sent out the first bold mariners to explore the Sea of Darkness, prior to Columbus. On the thirtieth, NC4 took off for Plymouth, England, and arrived in ten hours and twenty minutes. Perhaps a phantom ship, with sails set and flags blowing, the name Mayflower on her hull, rode in Plymouth Harbor that day to greet a New England pilot.

On the 14th of June the Vickers-Vimy Rolls-Royce biplane, piloted by John Alc.o.c.k and with Arthur Whitten Brown as observer-navigator, left St. John's, Newfoundland, and arrived at Clifden, Ireland, in sixteen hours twelve minutes, having made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. Hawker and Grieve meanwhile had made the same gallant attempt in a single-engined Sopwith machine; and had come down in mid-ocean, after flying fourteen and a half hours, owing to the failure of their water circulation. Their rescue by slow Danish Mary completed a fascinating tale of heroic adventure. The British dirigible R34, with Major G. H.

Scott in command, left East Fortune, Scotland, on the 2d of July, and arrived at Mineola, New York, on the sixth. The R34 made the return voyage in seventy-five hours. In November, 1919, Captain Sir Ross Smith set off from England in a biplane to win a prize of ten thousand pounds offered by the Australian Commonwealth to the first Australian aviator to fly from England to Australia in thirty days. Over France, Italy, Greece, over the Holy Land, perhaps over the Garden of Eden, whence the winged cherubim drove Adam and Eve, over Persia, India, Siam, the Dutch East Indies to Port Darwin in northern Australia; and then southeastward across Australia itself to Sydney, the biplane flew without mishap.

The time from Hounslow, England, to Port Darwin was twenty-seven days, twenty hours, and twenty minutes. Early in 1920 the Boer airman Captain Van Ryneveld made the flight from Cairo to the Cape.

Commercial development of the airplane and the airship commenced after the war. The first air service for United States mails was, in fact, inaugurated during the war, between New York and Washington. The transcontinental service was established soon afterwards, and a regular line between Key West and Havana. French and British companies began to operate daily between London and Paris carrying pa.s.sengers and mail.

Airship companies were formed in Australia, South Africa, and India. In Canada airplanes were soon being used in prospecting the Labrador timber regions, in making photographs and maps of the northern wilderness, and by the Northwest Mounted Police.

It is not for history to prophesy. "Emblem of much, and of our Age of Hope itself," Carlyle called the balloon of his time, born to mount majestically but "unguidably" only to tumble "whither Fate will."

But the aircraft of our day is guidable, and our Age of Hope is not rudderless nor at the mercy of Fate.