Page:Air-ships and Flying-Machines.pdf/10

 729 will be necessary to popularize it by means of the pen. For this reason I am writing this first article.

For a long time, I have been solicited to express my opinions on the state of the aëronautic question, and until now I have refused, thinking that action was more serviceable than writing. But some recent interviews have shown me that there is much prejudice to be destroyed and much scepticism to combat, the existence of which concerns the future of aërial navigation and its practical utility, which is denied by some men who have never mounted the car of a spherical balloon, and who, in consequence, are no more competent for the discussion of the question than I should be for the interpretation of Babylonian hieroglyphics.

I believe it to be the duty of those who have made a study of aëronautics to destroy the errors implanted in the minds of the public by those who are ignorant of the first word of this branch of science. It is for this reason, I repeat, that I have decided to publish this first article.

And if a single article is not enough, I shall write a series of as many articles as the balloons I construct or the ascensions I make, for I perceive in closing this one that it is shorter and more convenient to pen a system of aërial navigation on paper than to set it in motion and make it perform its functions.

And, if it is impossible to set forth the vast and multiple problems of aeronautics within the narrow limits of magazine articles, I am resolved to publish in different languages the voluminous manuscript in which, for four years, I have summed up, for my own instruction, in the form of a treatise, the scientific principles and the historic facts of aërial navigation, from the more remote times until the present day.

This book will be, I hope, a revelation to readers so often deceived by authors who are ignorant of even the elements of the aërial question. In it I shall explain why and how I became an aëronaut, and I shall not be content till every person is an aëronaut, either in air-ships or in aëroplanes, but in the open air and not "en chambre."

A. Santos Dumont.