From - Tue Mar 11 05:36:53 2003 Received: by gasherbrumII.peakpeak.com (mbox snowbear) (with Cubic Circle's cucipop (v1.31 1998/05/13) Tue Mar 11 05:35:59 2003) X-From_: snowbear@peakpeak.com Tue Mar 11 05:35:30 2003 Return-Path: Received: from peakpeak.com (mt8.peakpeak.com [206.168.3.152] (may be forged)) by gash2.peakpeak.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id FAA04751; Tue, 11 Mar 2003 05:35:25 -0700 Sender: snowbear@gash2.peakpeak.com Message-ID: <3E6DD80C.CEE599E5@peakpeak.com> Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 05:35:24 -0700 From: Pam North X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12-20 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Douglas, Laura" , "Green, Guerin" , "North, Pam" Subject: Article Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mozilla-Status: 8001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-UIDL: a94b1199a2110000 THOSE COLORADO MEN AND THEIR FLYING MACHINES by Pam North Colorado had its own share of inventors who envisioned sailing through the skies in machines. As early as 1888, an airship using flapping wings for propulsion was designed by Charles H. Morgan of Gunnison, and his patented invention was even featured in Scientific American. The machine was constructed of metal ribs along which a series of tubes (holding compressed gas) ran the length of the machine, giving it a football shape. A skin of either metal or silk, a fishtail-shaped rudder, and a valve system to control the concentration of gas to regulate altitude were the other main components of the airship. His dream existed only on paper, however; no actual prototype of Morgan's design is known to ever have been constructed. A flying machine of enormous proportions was conceived in 1907 by George L. O. Davidson, who was a resident of the Denver suburb of Montclair. The aircraft was supposed to be able to carry 100 passengers, and fly from Chicago to New York in three hours. Davidson was certain that he had discovered the real secret to flight. His machine had "gyroscopic rotary lifters," 110 eight-foot blades which revolved horizontally on vertical shafts (similar to a helicopter) that could be tilted to control lift. A pair of 50-horsepower steam engines provided power. A million-dollar prototype was constructed in 1908, which managed to rise forty feet in the air over Davidson's backyard before exploding - breaking windows for blocks, injuring the pilot, and putting an abrupt end to Davidson's aspirations. By 1928, despite the fact that the accepted theory of flight had evolved to the knowledge that fixed wings could be lifted by the horizontal movement of air, Denver's Jonathan Caldwell still believed in Morgan's theory that aircraft should fly with moving wings as birds do. Caldwell founded Gray Goose Airways that year, recruiting a sales staff of ten to sell 10,000 shares in his newly-formed company (he actually managed to sell between $8,000 and $10,000 worth). The company supposedly developed an "ornithopter," a machine that flapped its wings like a goose, and was connected to a motorcycle. The wings were equipped with numerous flexible fabric valves designed to open on the upstroke and close on the downstroke, and power was provided by a pilot who, needless to say, would have to be highly athletic to accomplish that task. The airship's impractical, human-powered design was a total failure; the aircraft's first flight ended in disaster when the tail broke off and landed on the inventor, who luckily survived the incident unharmed. His theories would not translate into any successful aircraft design, however, and public sentiment soon turned against him as he began to be viewed as the perpetrator of a scam. He moved to Orangeburg, New York in 1931, then subsequently to Madison, New Jersey, still touting Gray Goose Airways as a new passenger and freight airline. In each area he soon was prohibited from selling his stock as his reputation caught up with him, and eventually he was charged with fraud. In 1934 he moved to the Washington D.C. area, and after a series of failures at designing other aeronautically imperfect aircraft, he finally disappeared into anonymity. While Colorado's inventors did not amount to much in the annals of aeronautical history, they nevertheless proved to have imagination and creativity in their own right. Wonder what they would think of DIA and men on the moon.