Ornithopter

Down a sunny street in St. Augustine, Fla., sped an automobile excitedly tooting and towing a fantastic bicycle. Fourteen-foot wings flapped great currents of air on either side of it. Flushed, intense, George White sat optimistically astride his invention. He pedalled furiously to force the wings to a rate of 100 flaps per minute, cast off from the car, rose gracefully in air. Like some prehistoric monster, the ornithopter, wings glistening in sunlight, described a gigantic parabola and came, back to earth. It had traveled eight-tenths of a mile in one minute and 36 seconds (rate of 30 m.p.h.).

Inventor White, satisfied, took the machine back to his laboratory for further study. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, army aviator and flying instructor, his stern mistress is aerodynamics. Quietly, persistently he has worked to prove his theory that a bicycle, like a bird, can gain forward momentum by upward strokes of wings.

His bicycle's wing skeleton is made of chrome molybdenum, that strong, light, beautifully tempered metal whose high value was discovered during the War, which has become important in airplane construction. This framework is covered with noninflammable celluloid upon the surface of which are distributed many "feathers" (strips of the molybdenum). The whole machine weighs 117 pounds, can be built for $350.

The problem of flying through the air by foot power, for a minute and a half at least, seems solved. There remains the problem of how to get started. At present the automobile acts as starter. Later Inventor White plans to take off from hillsides after installing a two and a half horsepower compressed air motor to get him up and give the 100 "wing flaps per minute necessary for flight.