{ title: 'The sun. (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, January 11, 1920, Page 72, Image 72', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030431/1920-01-11/ed-1/seq-72/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030431/1920-01-11/ed-1/seq-72.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030431/1920-01-11/ed-1/seq-72/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/sn83030431/1920-01-11/ed-1/seq-72/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: New York Public Library
Aerial Bicycle Foretells I Day When Boys May Fly Secret Trials of the Aviette in -- France Set Eyerybody Talking About Mechanical Mystery Winged Bike for\ the Moment Overshadows Interest in Dwarf Airplanes Br STERLING HEILIG. Paris, December 20, 1010. COUNTRY lwys will skim over fences to school. .They will hit the ground, pedal, gather force and scoot into the air again. And down again and up again! Mammu, iu the evening, seeing limniy home 'so early, will inquire: \How did you comet\ with worried intuition. And the boy will brag; eke proud and guilty: \Cut across over Bigelow's corn cribs!'' Then mamma will fling up her arms and exclaim: \Do you bear that, father? Jimmy's been flying high again 1\ In cities boys will plague their parents to join u suburban aviette links. \Will you promise never to jump the river! Will you promise never to quit tho links? Remember the boy who tried to skim shantyMown and broke his leg! Do you hear me, Oswald !\ s The Aerial Bike. The world moves. In Paris, the llrst grand public success the clou of . tlie after-wa- r is the Aeronautical Salon; and the clou of the Aeronautical Salon is something that isn't in it. Everybody is talking about the aviette, the aerial bike. \It is known to exist! The Nieuport peoplo havo mnde ond flown it!\ \The Kieuporisf You're away behind the times! The Renanlts and five firms have made a combination for the patents.\ \Of course there's nothing in the Solon. That dwarf David aeroplane weighs 440 pounds and lands at a rate of forty miles per hour. Don't fool yourself. The aviette is completely different.\ So they talk, and mostly whisper. They say that it is \different and that there is a \trick\ of great nov- elty. Some claim that it's just n little difference, like that which permitted Wil- bur Wright to rise and soar in France while tho French were jumping, although thoy hod more powerful motors than the American. Others say that \a mechani- cal discovery has been made,\ almost a new mechanieal principle! It has to do with the transmission of man power. For example, it may be cited as some- thing doubtless more than n curiosity of rumor that the .following story is being widely printed, doubtless with a purpose, 'dnd copied in good faith by scientific pipers. At bottom it may be looked on as ar feeler, or a bluff, or an intimidation, all quite different, as may be. The niggci in the woodpile is obviously the unex- plained reference to \the fifth and sixth pedals.\ Here is the story: D'Arville'c Flight. \\In 1851, on August 1, at 4 A. M.. at Neuilly, on (he banks of the Seine, Thomas d'Arville rose to a height of 300 feet by working on the fifth and sixth pedals of his winged machine and planed a. distance equal to the width of tho Champ de Mars.\ Then follow what purport to be the signatures of eleven witnesses to a proces yprbal led by one Villemessant. ,,1t may well bo that such proces verbal exists: there were practical jokers iu those old days, not to inquire further, fiut the interesting thing, in any case, is the fact of its being dug up and ex- hibited at tho present moment, as if, for jrample, to discredit in advance corfain anticipated patents as based on old stuff known ill 1851. Or to claim participa- tion in such patents, or to draw out scraps of information prematurely from innocent third parties. In any case, bore's' your mechanical mystery the mystery of the aviette, in everybody's mouth at present. Man power, hand power, foot power. It is claimed to have to do with some system or short series of pedals. \A thing which is told in detail, on the Otter hand, is quite different. It&relates to trials of the ono aviette which openly and ostensibly bears the nime of a. great pirplanc firm, the Nfeu-o- rt concern. Trials at Longchamps. These trials at dawn in such a public place as the wide roadway fronting the Longebanips race course entrance have beeri witnessed, apart from those d, principally by sporting youth. Evidently the Nienports know what they re doing,- - showing or not showing, and whv and wherefor. The rider, whose name is connected with the chief viaibl. devico of this aviette. ii Gabriel Poulain, former bicycle ehampion, newly returned from tho wars. jj \It is a bicycle whose hind wheel isj ttnalier than its froj wheel. On this, bike k ;ed a sort of biplane the spreadl of whose upper planes, ax metres (yarns) a rtd a half bv two metres .20, eivps as hearing surface on the air of about fifteen square yards. Tho lower plane measures four metres by one metre .40. At the rear there is a small direction rudder. t\The \pilot sitting on the saddle in the fftolrc of the apparatus, is & little below it's centre of gravity. The total weight of tlw apparatus, constructed of very light weed and thin varnished silk, is ortj-fv- r pounds, the bike alone weighing tweaty-fon- r pounds. And the lions, they sh.v, have been established for the ensemble to quit the earth at a roll- ing speed of 22 1-- 3 miles rlcr hour. llising and righting are obtained by varying the slant of the plnnes on the air, and as tho planes ere fixed rigidly tn the bicycle- - frame 4bo trick of varvine the slaut is simple and ingenious. Tho pnrt of tho frame resting on tho hub (nnvc) of (he hind wheel enn slido on the axle and thus describe, in sinking downward, nn arc, the centre of whosft circle is the hub of the front wheel. At the moment when the cyclist thinks he has his necessary rolling, speed upon the grouud (about ten yards per second) he slips a hand lever attached to the handle bar, which shoots open tho holt holding the bieycle frame on the hind wheel's hub. To Try for Prize. With n jerk of the haunches he makes it slip off, frame and saddle sinking under him, and, the whole apparatus except the wheels themselves being of n piece, it pivots on the hub of the front wheel, dragging the plnnes with it and thus giv- ing them the slant desired to favor the attack on the air, &c. Poulnin, they say, is experimenting on this aviette to win the 10,000 decametre purse instituted by Robert Peugeot iu 1913. The purse goes to the cyclist who by his own means (i. c, without n motor and by his own muscular force.only) slinll first get his aviette off the ground and into the air iu a \leap\ or \skim\ of at least ten yards in both senses, ten yards in altitude and ten yards in distance. The distance, Poulain beats currently and considerably to tho extent of double, treble they say, but in doing so he does not get tho 10 yards altitude. Also, they say, he has made his 10 yards altitude and more. It is not diffi- cult. But going in for altitude he regu- larly sideslips or otherwise capsizes. Others say that he beats tho purse con- ditions when he pleases, just like playing! But not in front of Longebanips race conrse. The manufacturing firm is not quite ready for the pure. They can win it in half an hour's notice. The prize .to- day is not 10,000 francs. The prize is the aviette! The war, you understand, interrupted the great search. It is not enough to cinch wings to a bike. I remember those first trials the year before the war. The Peugeot prize was originally 5,000 francs for a 5 yard jump without altitude condi- tions, and a dozen variously devised bikes with planes attachod disclosed that amateurs only were feeling their way. Rettich'a Flight. Remember Frank Rettiehf He is the lad whose machine rose twice and skimmed 9 feet and then, 11 feet at the height of a man's knees. Earlier than this, before Wilbur Wright had come to France and showed them how, the Far-ma- and Bleriols were, nqt doing much belter with their motors! Some say shin bones. Perhaps it was both. nothing. Frank, got off jhe ground by unaided means, being thrown into the air, without jumping off a height, without a motor. He rose from (he ground and skimmed 11 feet by his muscular force, bis legs, b'gosh! The name, Frank Rettich, will go down the ages along with that of Wilbur Wright and Santos-Dumon- t. He was the THE SUN, SUNDAY, JANUARY 11, 1920. first bike skimmer of the nir; and 'hi exploit was at once as humble and as immense as the crowds of lads who will follow him! Rcttich did not win tho Peugeot purse, but an aviette- - dub, formed on the spur of the moment by Aero Club members, handed him $250 as n mark of esteem. So another new thing lind como into the world an nvietlc club, the first aviette club! Thenceforth the Peugeot contests nt the Pare des Princes made something of n stir.- - Emmanuel Aimo declared the skimming biko to be nt hand. Henri Far-ma- n (who alone had made sixteen foot skim3 with n motor) and Ernest Arch- deacon (who had contradicted Wilbur Wright before he saw him) declared, .on ii 2 VAVvi' W authority, that \human progress cannot increase the power of legs and nrms. Nobody listened. The boys were skim- ming. I remember the Inst contest. Ono hundred and eighty winged bikes were entered, and 100 were actually brought to the popular track in the Boulogne suburbs. Sixty started. Fifty-nin-e \also ran.\ Among them, Jacquelin, the old favorite cycling cham- pion, disappointed everybody. With a nifty looking apparatus designed by nn engineer of roads and bridges, he could not quit the dirt. One teriflc \yacht\ bore down on the judges with trys'ls, stuns'ls, jibs and awn- ing stretched to slide upon the breeze. When Cap put on n spurt of speed it reared like Fidgety Ann and fell upon its side with n dull thud. \He has powerful gearing all. the same!\ they said, surprised to see him get that \truck with awning\ off tho ground. His nnmo was Collot. And his gearings were camouflaged with pasteboard 1 Looking back on tho general French ignorance about bearing surfaces before the war, it is declared now that Collot must havo had powerful gearing! Collot's name crops up again in Decem- ber 191,0! There were biplanes. Their inventors, mostly, had put them nn tricycles to support their vaster \bear- ing surfaces.\ Their speed was that of what the French call n \hygienic walk.\ One party had a Wright \vertical rud- der.\ None bothered about warping, ANOTHER TYPE of BABY AIRPLANE -- 95 MILES without WORKING 8 LSL AVI ETTE. as FLOWN by GABRIEL POULAIN tnTRIALS LONGCHAMRS. MM-PLAN- B- - FRAME A\ FRONT WHEEL HUB A PIVOT. AEROPLANE, SECRET TRIALS of AERIAL BICYCLE SAID -- io SKIM TEN YARDS S7 MORS LATERALLY , EASILY. none could change the slant of liia planes force would be thrown on nature of electromagnetic power I think while in movement. Ono party had i. the aerial propeller. I hey call it gravitation. He halted, sweat-wood- propeller at the rear and an in- - Only his whi'cls did not quit the earth, ing, pufling, exhausted. He said: \I genious gearing to it; at the moment when They seemed held to it by something very know what's wrong with my machine. I his wheels should quit the earth his pedal mysterto.. and quite invisible in the shall rectify it !\ Then the war came. Painleve's Version of the (Continued from Preceding Page.) stroke to the Meuse, but failed through the fault of a dozen politicians. I make no comment on tho grotesque description of tho Parliamentarians, frightened by tho battle, telephoning wildly to the Minister of War on tho evening of April 10. I merely repent that it is incomprehensible that a war correspondent, unless ho had never seen u battlefield, should consent to put his name to such inventions. 3. The recital, moreover, turns short. In tho written galejade, from which it is bor- rowed, the Minister immediately gives the order demanded of him. And undoubt- edly that is idiotic, but at least it is logi- cally idiotic. While tho recital of M. Wytho Williams has not even logic for itself. These wild telephone calls of tho ICth of April result in this: that on April 29, thirteen day3 later, I had stopped the offensive. By what process? Let us follow the recital: 4. \Tho offensive did not ccaso imme- diately, but from that day it was so hin- dered by political interventions that it was no longer possible to rcsumo tho big drive of the beginning. And yet on the evening of April 10 the French had car- ried not only the first line, but also the second. Answer: Tho High Command pursued the offensive energetically up to the 19tb, moderately from tho 19th to the 27th of April, the day when ho hnsstated that it had to be stopped. The author, in speak- ing of line, evidently means to speak of position. For tho Germans had received the orddr to hold on to the first position while evacuating the first line of that position. Now, (hough Ave bad taken Hie first line, wo lield almost no part of the second line of the first position. 5. \The English Government,\ the arti- cle says, \whose intelligence department SMALLEST AO H.Pj automatically at Paris is\ remarkably well organized, believed it to be its duty to intervene. On April 18 Lloyd George sent a telegram to Haig asking him the reasons on account of which the French Government desired to interrupt the action ns well as his per- sonal opinion.\ Tho English Government had no need of any intelligence service to recall the conversation held on April 10 between M. Albert Thomas and Lloyd George. But we see theirs: The French Minister in- trigues to stop the offensive, and tho Eng- lish Prime Minister, informed through his information service, intervenes. 0. Marshal Haig's letter of the 19th is analyzed in tho most inexact manner. It replied, the article says, \ to what was tho principal argument of the Parliamentary clamor; to wit, the enormous losses of tho French army. It explained that tho fig- ures had been greatly exaggerated. This offensivo ins for Franco the last occasion to obtain victory. Haig finally predicted ' what happened at Cheniin des Dames, where tho German attacks which wcro pursued during the inontlis of Juno and July, cost many more French lives than the offensive of April. Answer: Tho number of losses had not been exaggerated, they raised no Parlia- mentary clamor and Marshal Haig's letter made no allusion to them for tho very sim- ple reason that they did not exist; for on the eighteenth wo had no information on this subject. Marshal Haig confined him- self ta nsk, with much force, for the con- tinuation of the battle, under the form of n battle of the Somme, a conception quite different from that of Gen. Nivelle. As to the losses of the French army in Juno and July, they are one-thir- d of the lo3tcs of April and May. 7 England hastened to make the keen- est representations to .France. That is absolutely falso; no royresento- - 1917 Drive lon was made under any form to the French Government, and when Marshal Haig came to Paris on the 2Gth it was upon my formal request. 8 But although the battle continued, the article says, life had departed from it; the Parisian press, under tho influence of the official affirmations which were given it, kept up its frantic clamor that the French armies were sacrificed. Answer: Wo tshall seek in vain in the wholo Parisian press from April 10 to 30 a single article which is not a dithyrambio article on the results of tho offensive. !) On April 25 Gen. Nivelle took pro- ceedings at the Elyscc before President Poiucare. At this moment the number of the losses with which the press was feed- ing tho public had reached 350,000 men hors de combat. Answer: Geti. Nivelle look no steps at the Elyseo on April .25. He was colled to the Elyseo on' April 25 by the Govern- ment. As to the prcs3 it had not spoken a word about the lose?; the statement is a pure lie. 10 This number (150,000 men) sur- passes by far, the article' says, the already very exaggerated number given out by Justin Godart. Tho latter luid announced to the Council of Ministers 95,000 wounded and 25,000 dead, u total of 320,000 men put hors de; com- bat. It is now established that the . estimates of Godart were the result of an \administrative error\ consisting in writing the same wounded twico and three times. How ho came to exaggerate the number of the dead I do not know. When Nivelle saw President Poincaro on April 25, the true figures were in his possession. They amounted to 54,000 wounded a'nd 15,000 killed, or a total of 09,000 men put hors de combat for the nine first days of the battle. We havo elucidated in a definitive fash- - Hut (before the war enmc), a littll bike with phenomenally small wings, slightly warped and curiously pitched and trebly braced, camo flitting toward us. Just be- fore the judges' stand nt the attained speed Of 22 1-- 3 miles per hour, tho rider, with a jerk of the hips, appeared to lift his front, rose, and b'gosh, with n second effort, seemed to change his piano slant again. At onco ho dipped to left that second jolt;, they said, had made him cap- size. Ho struck the track and broke. But when they measured it they found that he had skimmed sixteen feet. It was nn im- - posing sight, historical. Few had seen the skims \of Rcttich, and this was greater. 'Do I win!\ tho party asked. \You win!\ tbey answered, \but can't you do better?\ \l'cs he said,, \I can. Just offer $2,000 for ten yards and I will \ show you how to do it!\ ' ' Such was the origin of the present Decametre purse. His name was Paul Didier. Certainly at that moment he had no overhead plane. Photographed immediately after his skims, .tho picture - shows him sitting among wings nt tho height ofJii3 handlo bar. They say that his device was merged into certain patents which aro about to receive improvements .of world interest. Didier was killed in the war. And now the entire affair is different. What do tho great manufacturers care for 10,000 francs which Didier craved and pleaded to win ! The prize, I say, is the aviette itselL Hcnco all this secret diplomacy about new gearings and mechanical surprises. Purses aro no longer of any consequence. The real thing is tho skimmer, for Jimmy to skim over the barn ! That Failed ion the story of the losses increased by 70 per cent., if not doubled and trinlcd. It ' t was tho Collier's articlo which put in cir culation tho falso figures, 15,000 killed, 54,000 wounded, and opened tho cam- paign. These numbers flguro in i memoirc of Gen. Nivelle, from which. M. do Civricux prepared his book, which, of course, adopts these figures. 11 England's attitude, tho article says, became more and more urgent. On April 20 Marshal Haig camo to Paris to confer with MM. PoincareRibot and Painleve. Instead of giving tho real number of the losses furnished by Gen. Nivelle on the preceding day, these leaders of the French nation, in tho desiro to furnish nn argu- ment in favor of tho cessation of tho of- fensive, fell back on Godart's figures: 95,000 wounded nnd 25,000 dead, or nn in- crease of more than 70 per cent. All that is but an odious lio from tho first word to the last. The figures, a littlo less a to killed, a little more as to wouuded, communicated to Marshal n.iig were furnished by headquarters. All that lying story, which has run- - through cer- tain newspapers, is reproduced religious- ly by M. de Civricux. 12 In face of tho arguments of Mar- shal Haig (weakening of tho cueiny re- serves, while two entire French armies wcro still in reserve in the single sector of tho Aisne) the French Government gavo him the assurance that tho battle would continue. Marshal Haig returned to his headquarters on April IS. The next day in the morning, the 19tb, M. Painleve, Minister of Wnr, sent a telegram to Gen. Nivelle, ordering him to immediately stop the offensive in its ensemble. It is now retnhlishod and proved flint on tin sanm day the general order had been given to the German army to at once prepare for a Continued on Seventh Page, 1 1 . . 3 At 1 it
