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Samuel Langley's successful flights of his model Aerodromes Number 5 and Number 6 in 1896 led to plans to build a full-sized, human-carrying airplane. Langley's simple approach was merely to scale up the unpiloted Aerodromes to human-carrying proportions. This would prove to be a grave error, as the aerodynamics, structural design, and control system of the smaller aircraft were not adaptable to a full-sized version. Langley's primary focus was the power plant. The completed engine, a water-cooled five-cylinder radial that generated a remarkable 52.4 horsepower, was a great achievement for the time.

Despite the excellent engine, the Aerodrome A, as it was called, met with disastrous results, crashing on takeoff on October 7, 1903, and again on December 8. Langley blamed the launch mechanism. While this was in some small measure true, there is no denying that the Aerodrome A was an overly complex, structurally weak, aerodynamically unsound aircraft. This second crash ended Langley's aeronautical work entirely.

Transferred from the Smithsonian Institution to the United States National Museum.

Manufacturer:

Smithsonian Institution

Date: 1903

Country of Origin: United States of America

Dimensions:
Wingspan: 14.8 m (48 ft 5 in)
Length: 16.0 m (52 ft 5 in)
Height: 3.5 m (11 ft 4 in)
Weight: 340 kg (750 lb), including pilot

Materials:
Fuselage: Steel Tubing Wings and Tail: Wood with Percaline (light-weight cotton) Covering

Physical Description:

Piloted tandem-wing experimental aircraft built and unsuccessfully tested by Samuel P. Langley in 1903. Fifty-two-horsepower, five-cylinder radial gasoline engine turning two pusher propellers via geared transmission system. Percaline covering. Natural fabric finish; no sealant or paint of any kind.

Professor Samuel Pierpont Langley (1834-1906) was a leading scientific figure in the United States in the latter nineteenth century, well known especially for his astronomical research. He became the third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1887. Langley had begun serious investigation into heavier-than-air flight several years earlier while at the then Western University of Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh (now the University of Pittsburgh). He had erected a huge, 18.3 m (60 ft) diameter whirling arm at the university's Allegheny Observatory to perform aerodynamic research. At full speed, the tips of the whirling arm approached seventy miles per hour. Langley mostly ran tests with flat plates, but he also mounted small model airplanes he called aerostats, and even stuffed birds, on the arm. He also conducted an extensive series of experiments with rubber band-powered models.

Langley described these investigations and provided a summary of his results in Experiments in Aerodynamics, published in 1891. He then moved away from purely theoretical aerodynamic research, and began work aimed at engineering an actual flying machine. In 1891, he started to experiment with large, tandem-winged models, approximately 4 m (13 ft) in wingspan, powered by small steam and gasoline engines. Another large whirling arm, 9 m (29.5 ft) in diameter, was set up at the Smithsonian to test curved wing shapes and propellers, probably in connection with the design of these large powered models that Langley called aerodromes.

After several failures with designs that were too fragile and under-powered to sustain themselves, Langley had his first genuine success. On May 6, 1896, Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 made the first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia. Two flights were made that afternoon, one of 1,005 m (3,300 ft) and a second of 700 m (2,300 ft), at a speed of approximately 25 miles per hour. On November 28, another successful flight was made with a similar model, the Aerodrome No.6. It flew a distance of approximately 1,460 m (4,790 ft).

Langley's aeronautical experiments appeared to have concluded with the successful flights of Aerodromes No. 5 and 6, but privately he intended to raise funds to begin work on a full-scale, human-carrying aircraft. He believed his only real hope of securing the kind of funding necessary was from the federal government. The breakthrough came when Langley's friend and colleague, Charles D. Walcott, of the U.S. Geological Survey, offered to present the proposal to President McKinley. A panel was created to review Langley's work up to that time. The panel, which included Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, met at the Smithsonian in April 1898. After a week of deliberations, they approved a grant of $50,000 from the Board of Ordnance and Fortification for Langley to construct a full-sized aircraft. The outbreak of the Spanish-American War only five days earlier contributed to the panel's favorable and speedy decision.

Serious work on the airplan

[Nikon D70 Tamron 28-300VC ISO200 1/125s F9.5 75mm effective F9.5 > dcraw H0wWq3o1T> Gimp]

I finished the last ISO200 roll that I had on me walking east just before I got here and I didn't want to put in another roll just before I was about to leave. Then I ran off 10 more shots with the D70. Half of which were probably not going to be all that impressive, and half of which were shots like this.

...I mean, yes, I know that I was able to turn these around quickly, but these shots just have a significantly different "look and feel" from film. The look is completely a product of the gamma and offset used in the raw-conversion, the brightness & contrast used in post-editing *and* the monitor configuration, which altogether is *always* a struggle to get right with digital, and there's always just a slight hint of chroma-noise...plus the Bayer-blur. I wish that I had shot this with film, really. If only to have for comparison.

I had no idea that the sky was going to light up that well and it lit-up really, really well. But shooting film just removes a couple of steps of "digitization" and that makes a big difference in the final output. "Digital" is quick & easy and sure it can be relied on to "give you something". Film, shot well, will beat it quite often simply because digital is two steps back for every 3 or 4 steps forward. There is no question that the D70 will beat film for fine-detail even at 6MP but quite often I don't need all that fine-detail and the main emphasis is on color and overall sharpness. I'd rather shoot film as long as I don't have to deal with a really tricky technical scene, the scene isn't HDR, isn't so "fine" that it can't withstand even a hint of grain and I don't need to get every erg of fine-detail out of the lens or isn't a bright sky and a high ISO is needed, and I don't absolutely need the shot. It's basically got to be something of a throwaway as a scene but a major bonus if the shot comes out well.

I've got 5,000 digital shots of the Jefferson Memorial.
This I *definitely* would rather have shot with film.
There's simply no way that the D70 would shoot this so well that I would never be antzy about how it would look on film and on this scene there is just no need for all the fine-detail that it can produce.

So now this is a third shot that I want to retake with film. The timing is so critical though..literally walking here from the west side of the Tidal Basin I just caught the sun in a perfect position for a shot to the east. 5 seconds later it was gone. So I want this shot on film, another shot from the west side kitty-corner here, and another series behind the Congress with faster film or a tripod at a higher exposure. Tough to be in 3 places at once...on a day with a clear sky, low humidity and good clouds :)

Too late and the sun is too low and the sky is too dark, too early and the sky hasn't reached its peak colors. Those pinks & purples are hard to catch at just the right time on a bunch of scenes on the same evening. There's maybe an hour of good light to work with at most and you can never be sure what the clouds are going to be like.

Of course I haven't even taken the film that I shot here in for development yet, much less looked at the results. And certainly shooting landscape shots with film at twilight is a little more tricky than with digital, as the exposure has to be dropped to get good results with digital (especially if you're going to bracket and make an HDR shot), and that's not a good idea with film. So with film you always run the risk of the foreground just getting lost in the shadows, and you can't check for that on-camera at the scene like with a digital camera. Still with film you can shoot it at 0eV evaluative and hope for the best. It's a balancing-act. Like any such thing, get it right and you'll be happy, get it too wrong and life is full of regrets. That's why I brought both the D70 and the N80. Also it just happened to be "their turn" since I shot the 500si at the Baltimore Inner Harbor the outing before. Still one can't shoot both film and digital at the same time and I'm not quite at the point where I can walk around with two fullframe bodies and matching lenses.

I think the main thing is to have a cheap wide yet fairly-long zoom lens on the film camera and leave it on there, so one can take shots that are neither too wide or too long without having to swap lenses, yet leave the mundane yet necessary and the tricky technical shots to digital gear on a tripod or with VR. Then evaluate the scene and when deciding if it's worth shooting, also decide on what medium, and then it isn't such a big deal to shoot film and digital at the same time. That's not going to solve all the problems but it will help to reduce their severity & frequency..."ameliorate them" ;) and if it's a really big deal then just shoot both ways.

So the Tamron 28-80 that I