Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/386

382

air, and it may be found in the end that this advantage will more than counterbalance the chances of failing to the earth. However these things may be or whatever may happen or not happen, there is every reason to congratulate Messrs Orville and Wilbur Wright on their great achievement and on the careful scientific research which preceded it and on which it rests.

This is true in spite of the catastrophe that has occurred since these words were put in type. It appears that government officials are responsible for requiring the premature delivery of an aeroplane that would carry two persons. To an outsider it would seem that ballast should have been tried, and that protective clothing should have been worn.

At the seaside laboratory of Roscoff, in 1893 and subsequently, Dr. L. Boutan made the first submarine photographs by means of a submerged camera. He was not successful with a camera immersed directly in sea water, owing to the lack of a suitable lens, but got clear and good photographs with cameras enclosed in water-tight boxes, both with sunlight and in deeper water