Especially helpful were the writings of Octave Chanute, a celebrated French-born American civil engineer, builder of bridges and railroads, who had made gliders a specialty, and Samuel Pierpont Langley, an eminent astronomer and head, or secretary, of the Smithsonian. Formerly the director of the Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh and a professor of astronomy and physics at the Western University of Pennsylvania, Langley was one of the most respected scientists in the nation. His efforts in recent years, backed by substantial Smithsonian funding, had resulted in a strange-looking,
...more
