Page:The Fun of It.pdf/159

Rh and character of a paddle-winged airplane which had never existed.

Juan de la Cierva was the name of the author, and he was a thoughtful, adventurous, inventive person, with an abiding interest in flying and flying machines. He really came to invent the autogiro because of an airplane accident. One day, at a local airdrome, he had witnessed a crack-up in land­ing. Though no one was hurt the incident con­vinced him that aviation would never amount to much unless some of its hazards were removed. The hazard he thought of particularly was that due to fast landings. Coming in at express train speeds, as is necessary in most planes, was to him a serious barrier to future progress. He, therefore, calmly set out to do what no one else had been able to do—think out a contraption which should possess high speed in flight and low speed, with control, in landing.

I cannot say how he evolved his theory nor how long it took him. But a story is told of him after he finished. Gathering up the sheets covered with abstruse formulas, he handed them to an engineer friend and said,

“Now you build it.”

It is not to be inferred from that remark that Señor Cierva leaves the problems of construction entirely to others. On the contrary, for the dozen years that autogiros have been struggling in their present state of development, he has been actively connected with these details. Further, I imagine he