Episode 1, Season 1: “The Race for Air” TRANSCRIPT Thanks for popping on your headphones and joining us for an episode of Ballsy History, a podcast about big personalities and little-known stories. Settle in for a tour of the outrageous acts, incredible stories, and outsized characters that shape history. We’re your hosts Elizabeth, Elise, Elliot, and Maureen. We’re glad you’re tuning in. ________________ Today on our show we’ll learn about the man who was supposed to become the first to build a successful flying machine. How did a trained astrophysicist with financial backing from the US government end up giving up on his quest just nine days before the Wright brothers successfully flew at Kitty Hawk? Samuel Pierpont Langley had every advantage in the race to fly but he lost out to a pair of small town businessmen known to this day for launching the aerial age. ________________ At the beginning of the twentieth century there was a boom as people worldwide tried to figure out how to fly. People’s imaginations had been captured as hydrogen balloons became all the rage in Paris and Britain; and an even larger airship combining a balloon and an internal combustion engine was flown by a Brazillian around the Eiffel tower. Everyone wondered, “Who would be the first to figure out how to build a craft for a sustained, powered flight?” In the United States, Samuel Pierpont Langley desperately wanted to be that man. ________________ If you have visited Hampton, Virginia you’ve been close to the Langley Research Center. Its 800 acres of land include numerous wind tunnels and aircraft test facilities. In 1920 it was originally dedicated as Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. A fitting tribute to a man who spent the final portion of his life trying to take flight. Born in 1834, Langley earned an international reputation for his work in physics and astronomy and by publishing a book on aerodynamics. He was also secretary of the respected Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Before switching his focus to flight, Langley was the first director of the rather broken down Allegheny Observatory, which was part of the Western University of Pennsylvania. Little by little he was able to improve and build better observatory equipment, including a telescope used to observe the position of the stars as they crossed the celestial meridian. He raised money for the department in large part by distributing standard time to cities and railroads. Up until then, clocks were manually wound and time tended to be imprecise. At noon the sun was directly above your head. But with the arrival of railroads, a lack of standard time was dangerous. Using astronomical observations, Langley devised a precise time standard, including time zones, that became known as the Allegheny Time System. Twice a day, the Allegheny time signals gave the correct time to all railroads in the US and Canada. Langley devoted his time at the Observatory to researching the sun and produced hundreds of drawings of solar phenomena, many of which were the first the world had seen. He also invented the bolometer, an instrument used for measuring far infrared radiation. Here was a man who understood how to invent and capitalize on problem-solving. He was named third Secretary of the Smithsonian, but even before that he had already submitted reports about ideas related to flight to the institution. He thought air resistance was not as great as Newton said and that existing engines could overcome this and sustain heavier than air flight. His published work ignited the imagination of others, including Orville and Wilbur Wright. (VO the music: Samuel Pierpont Langley, bets his reputation and tens of thousands of government dollars that he would build the world's first powered, man-carrying flying machine.) Inspired by an 1886 lecture on the possibility of manned flight, Langley became determined to figure out how. By the 1890s he had built and tested a number of models, which were powered at first by giant rubber bands. He considered various engines — gasoline, carbonic acid gas, electric, even gunpowder — but at the time, such engines would have been too large, too dangerous or not powerful enough. He settled on steam, and after a number of failed attempts, he built two gasoline-fueled, steam-powered models that flew beautifully. The little planes, each about 16 feet long, soared away from their launching pad, a houseboat on the Potomac River. They held a steady course on an even keel, one covering 3,300 feet, the other reaching 4,200 feet and a speed of 30 miles an hour. Langley’s tandem wing configuration — two sets of wings of almost equal span set one behind the other — for what he called his "aerodromes” had a large dihedral; that is, the wings formed a squashed V when seen head-on. This gave them stability in flight. He wrote, “I have brought to a close (my) work … and for the next stage, which is the commercial and practical development of the idea, it is probable that the world may look to others.” He should have quit there and basked in his success. But these small-scale powered flights intensified his dream of building an aerodrome big enough to carry a man and the US military saw great value in his work, financing the continuation As the Army and Navy geared up for the Spanish-American War in 1898, Secretary Langley's enthusiasm for flight stirred their interest. The Department of War invested $50,000 to undertake the largest research project in U.S. history. A committee was formed of experts from the Navy, Army, and the US Naval Observatory who concluded that manned flight would be a valuable asset to the war machine. The obvious (and only) choice to lead the project was Samuel Langley. He wrote to a friend at Cornell that "an aerodrome capable of a speed of 30 miles an hour maintained for three hours, carrying an 'aeronaut' and possibly some missiles may be attempted." Langley had "cast iron ways” including the conviction that simply reproducing those successful models on a grand scale would result in a man carrying "Great Aerodrome." This would require, among other things, a lot of horsepower in a lightweight engine, a daunting prospect. But he needed help and it arrived in the form of a young Charles Matthews Manly—a brilliant engineering student about to graduate from Cornell. One of Manly's first tasks was to supervise the construction of a remarkable gasoline engine designed by a Hungarian immigrant in New York, Stephen Marius Balzer. Langley contracted with Balzer for the world's first "aero engine" to power what he hoped would be the world's first manned airplane, already being built in a shop behind the Smithsonian Castle. Trying to meet Langley's requirements for less weight and more power, Balzer put together a rotary, so the entire engine turned around the driveshaft. But Balzer had a terrible time getting it to work properly, or to generate adequate horsepower. Time dragged on. Month after month passed. Manly's note to Langley indicated his growing frustrations. "I am rather at a loss to explain how it is that one day Mr. Balzer thinks the present cylinders will work, and the next day he thinks that the engine will have to be rebuilt..." Manly wrote in July 1899. As more time passed and more problems arose with Balzer's engine, Manly decided to give up on the rotary concept. He turned Balzer's rotary engine into a fixed radial, cooled by water instead of air. By March 1901 the radial engine was putting out 18 hp, but Manly foresaw the need for more and replaced Balzer's heavy pistons with light ones and increased the size of the cylinders. Two years later, the rebuilt engine was spinning the aerodrome's two propellers at the rate of 575 revolutions per minute. "The engine proper," wrote Manly, "weighs 120 lbs., and develops on test 52 brake horsepower...." Because he felt it safest to fly over water, Langley, meanwhile, spent half his money building a houseboat with a catapult to launch his newest craft. A catapult launch meant the plane would go from a dead stop to a flying speed of 60 mph in just 70 feet. By September, the Great Aerodrome roosted on its catapult atop a bulky houseboat in the Potomac. Langley was moving ahead. With so much money invested, Langley’s test flights could not be done quietly or privately. When the first test flight took place in 1903 it was a national spectacle. Thousands of people showed up, including members of Congress. On October 7, Manly climbed aboard, started the engine and ran it up to full speed. It had taken him and Balzer a total of five years to create; with five cylinders radiating star-like from its driveshaft. Once the engine was whirring at full throttle, he signaled for the plane's release. The car started down the track under the combined impetus of the launching springs and the propellers, then there was a slight jerk and the machine plunged forward, a wing clipped part of the catapult, and it fell downward. Manly had no time to shut down the engine before hitting the water. He got dunked, but swam away unhurt. Much of the airplane's structure was crushed when it hit the water. The much-touted flying machine had slipped into the water "like a handful of mortar" according to one reporter. The press was gleeful about sharing the story of failure to fly. After all, the majority of the public thought the idea of man flying was “bunk.” A typical headline read, “Nothing Aerial About the Aerodrome: It Sinks, Swims, then is Taken Home.” Langley repaired his dream machine for another try. On December 8, 1903, Manly crawled back into the cockpit, revved up the engine, signaled, and...the machine fell apart as it left the catapult—and again plunged into the Potomac. The wings had simply snapped in the rush of air. This time Manly nearly drowned in the icy river, and when he got back aboard the houseboat he swore up a storm in front of all the invited dignitaries. Just over one week later, the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk and won the race for the air. Langley had focused on scaling up his small models without accounting for the fact that on the full-sized plane, drag would be increased exponentially. The Wrights started with full-sized gliders and had flown them for years. They knew how to fly. In Dayton, Wilbur and Orville Wright worked on propeller design, a lightweight engine, and wings that mimicked the way pigeons flew. What they put together solved the problem of controlling flight, which Langley’s craft would never have achieved even if it had taken to the air. Wilbur and Orville took turns flying their plane for as long as 59 seconds over the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The craft cost them about $1,000. Within a year, they were making flights of five miles at a time; within two years, they were flying distances of 20 to 25 miles. In November 1904 the Wrights offered to sell planes to the War Department. They weren’t seeking a subsidy; they wanted to sell planes for military reconnaissance and communication. But they received the same form-letter refusal that the War Department routinely sent to “flying machine” cranks. And the government wasn’t done with playing down the Wright brothers achievement. In 1914, the Smithsonian attempted to restore Langley’s reputation by altering the aircraft and then concluding it was the first machine “capable” of manned flight. As a result the Wright’s loaned the Wright Flyer overseas to the London Science Museum in 1925, believing it to be “the only way of correcting the history of the flying machine, which by false and misleading statements has been perverted by the Smithsonian Institution.” After the Smithsonian admitted in the 1940s to misrepresenting the Langley Aerodrome, Orville agreed to donate the aircraft to the institution. It finally arrived at the Smithsonian in 1948, where it is one of the most popular exhibits. Samuel Langley’s failure to fly overshadowed the remaining years of his life. He died in 1906 after a series of strokes. That’s all the tale we have for today. Thanks for sharing a little bit of time with all of us at “Ballsy History.” Next up: “The Plague Docs”: We’ll learn about how plague doctors, clad from head to toe in oiled leather, wearing goggles with crystal eyepieces, and beaked masks, came to represent a “costume of death” even as they sought to heal. Tune in again soon! Thank you!