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7. From the Locomotive to the Aeromotive
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chapter 7 From the Locomotive to the Aeromotive still yearning for challenges, excitement, and new discoveries in the engineering field, the fifty-one-year-old Chanute left the Erie in 1883, to embark on a self-directed career as a civil engineer. Three years later, he explained: The busy men who are developing this country need to keep up with new discoveries and progress even before they are reduced to practical account, and to look into the future as well as in the past; they especially need that personal contact, which nothing can replace, with men of science, to learn of what is being done and hoped for, and to make known what new information is needed to remove obstacles to their own progress. Engineers particularly owe it to themselves . . . to make the other members acquainted with whatever new facts or ideas they may have acquired outside of the routine of their profession. . . . Here they can indulge in pure science without regard to the practical use or bearing of the facts which they have discovered, and, provided always that they stick accurately to the facts, the resulting discussion cannot fail in being of value to them as well as to the listeners.1 Early in his working life, Chanute had become interested in the unconventional topic of manned flight, but in the interest of his career and social standing, he did not discuss it publicly. Now approaching what he considered the end of his professional career, this seemed an opportune time to investigate mechanical flight,2 but only as a “side issue.” Believing that the well-informed professional should “think out” the unresolved problems of aeronautics and not just “think of” them, Chanute tackled this subject with an unbiased engineering mind and with the approval of his family. He firmly believed it possible that the century that had seen the development of the ocean steamer, the submarine, and the railroad might witness success in aerial navigating. But for the flying machine to join the other modes of transportation, visionary engineers needed to become involved, so that “the subject could be cleared of much rubbish, and placed upon a scientific and firm basis,”3 Chanute wrote in 1882 to Fred Brearey, the secretary of the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. From the Locomotive to the Aeromotive 183 The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) reorganized its Mechanical Science Section (or Section D) in 1884, and Chanute’s longtime friend and frequent collaborator Robert Thurston accepted its chairmanship for the 1885 meeting. To broaden the scope of Section D, he wanted members of every branch of engineering to participate. Chanute, who had been elected an AAAS Fellow in 1877, attended the 1885 meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Thurston convinced him to chair Section D in 1886. Chanute was at first reluctant, as he handled a heavy consulting workload, but he also knew that being the vice president of Section D would allow him more opportunities to entice others to help advance the sciences and possibly share his curiosity, aeronautics. The 1886 Buffalo Meeting Having read a communication in the Aeronautical Society report on the flying habits of soaring birds, submitted by Israel Lancaster from Chicago, Chanute wondered if these birds could provide insight into the potential for humans to fly. Traveling back to Kansas City after signing the contract for his next tie treating plant, Chanute stopped in Chicago, met Lancaster, and listened to his observations that soaring birds used air currents to remain airborne. This topic would undoubtedly interest engineers and scientists, so he invited Lancaster to speak at the next meeting of Section D in August 1886.4 Lancaster agreed, so Chanute mailed guidelines on how to prepare a talk for a scientific audience and submitted his name for membership in the AAAS. Vice President Chanute had invited twenty papers on a wide range of mechanical engineering topics to be read at the 1886 AAAS meeting in Buffalo, New York. In his keynote address, he pointed out that men depended on each other to develop abstract scientific knowledge into useful applications, because “information is so widely scattered, and covers so many different fields of science, that it is only by patient effort and much searching that the needed knowledge is gained.”5 Because flying machines were what imaginative writers discussed when talking about future mechanical inventions, he thought a paper on bird flight would interest many listeners. Lancaster, the last speaker that afternoon, described his models that...