| The Aeronautic Society of New York |
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bravely sacrificed set after set of his beautifully made and costly little four-bladed pro- pellers; but he overcame the trouble in the end. The difficulty was really due to the terrific starting speed of his motor. The use of a friction clutch, made by a fellwo mem- ber, Adrien C. Beckert, solved the problem There were, by this time, many machines on the way to completion at the Park. The first among them, after Mr. Kimball's, to get out upon the track was the big triplane constructed by Morris Bokor. Mr. Bokor had for some months been in the employ of Mr. Kimball, and built his triplane during his spare hours and on Sundays. His machine was mainly notable for its dihedral rear rudders, and for a pendulum arrangement which, carrying both the engine and operator, was to give automatic lateral stability. The prin- cipal surfaces were 28 ft. by 6 ft. 6 in., the upper pair spaced 6 ft. apart, and the lower ones separated by 5 ft. The engine was a British-American 26 h. p. driving two 8-ft. propellers of 6 ft. 6 in. pitch, and proved to be of insufficient power to raise the apparatus, which weighed much over half a ton. To decrease the weight, Mr. Bokor replaced his wheeled chassis by light skids, and adopted a wheeled truck for launching. Still, however, his apparatus clung with distressing affection to Mother Earth. But one Saturday afternoon it moved a bit on top of the truck in running at high speed down the track. Mr. Bokor reported a near-flight, and was more certain even than he had ever been that the next day he would take to the air. |
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Mr. Bokor made many changes, and eventually took his machine to Arlington, N. J., where it won a prize of $500 for excellence of construction, the first money prize ever won by a flying machine in America. Subsequently he took it to Westbury, L. I. But it never go over its persistent refusal to leave the safety of the solid earth. |
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