Courtesy of Flying Magazine.The Vickers-“Vimy” bomber.This plane carried Captain J. Alcock and Lieutenant A. W. Brown from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes.
Courtesy of Flying Magazine.The Vickers-“Vimy” bomber.This plane carried Captain J. Alcock and Lieutenant A. W. Brown from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes.
Courtesy of Flying Magazine.
The Vickers-“Vimy” bomber.
This plane carried Captain J. Alcock and Lieutenant A. W. Brown from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes.
In conclusion, then, it may be safely laid down as an axiom that the conveyance which reduces man’s time in travelling from one place on this globe to another will sooner or later be adopted by him. No matter what the discomforts or the dangers or the expense may be in the beginning, he will eventually find a wayto change the inconvenience into the greatest luxuries, the expense will be reduced to within the means of all, and the dangers will be diminished to infinitesimal proportions. It was so in the beginning, it is so now, and it will be so till the end of recorded time. It was so with the recalcitrant camel, the ponderous elephant, the wild horse. It was thus that man transformed the floating log, which he propelled with his feet, into a floating palace, driven thousands of miles across the greatest of oceans. Likewise he metamorphosed the puny stationary steam-engine into a demon that is more powerful than a thousand horses, and that rushes him across the broad spaces of the earth faster than the fastest deer.
Indeed, with the aeroplane, man has already done what was considered for countless ages as the acme of the impossible—he has learned to fly; and in the short space of a decade and a half he has flown faster, farther, and he has performed more convolutions than the noblest birds of prey—yes, it may safely be said that he has made the once marvellous imaginary flight of the magic carpet of the Arabian Nights—when compared with the aerial exploits of the fliers in the Great War—fade into the most diminutive insignificance and the tamest fiction.
Before long then we may reasonably expect that all the capitals of the world will be connected by air lines. Already regular landing-places have been established from London via Paris, Rome, and Constantinople toBagdad and Cairo. Peking and Tokio will next be added. The flight from London to New York will also soon be an accomplished fact. Then all the capitals of Central and South America will be joined up. The distance from South America to Africa is about the same as that between America and Europe. By reducing the time of travel between all those places to hours the aeroplane will make mountains dwindle into ant-hills, rivers to creeks, lakes to mud-holes, and oceans and seas to ponds. The globe will be aerially circumnavigated. Tokio and Peking will be as accessible to New York as London now is, and vice versa. Then there will be no east or west and with the new aerial age will come a new internationalism founded on speedy intercommunication and good-will toward all man-kind.