Catapult For Aeroplanes.

New York Times 100 years ago today, November 13, 1912:
Device for Launching Airships from Warships Successfully Tested.
    WASHINGTON, Nov. 12.— What naval aviation experts declare will make this a red-letter day in the history of aviation was the successful test here to-day of a catapult device for launching aeroplanes from battleships. The scheme, the invention of Capt. Washington I. Chambers, in charge of the navy aviation work, involves the shooting of the aeroplane along a steel plank by means of compressed air. On the plank, which is level and thirty feet long, the aeroplane sits on top of a car, which drops from under when the end of the plank is reached.
    Lieut. T. G. Ellyson. navy aviator, had attained a speed of forty miles an hour to-day when his hydro-aeroplane had gone the thirty feet along the plank. He started his engine just a fraction of a second before the compressed air was turned on. The machine had started to rise before it left the plank. It was in a dead calm that the test was made.
    It is proposed to construct launching devices similar to that successfully tried to-day, on top of the turrets of the battleships, one probably at each end of the vessel, so that an aeroplane may be started off in either direction. To-day's test was witnessed by Capt. Chambers, Glenn Curtiss, and a number of army and navy aviators.