Ocean Flight In Day Possible, Says Bell.

New York Times 100 years ago today, April 3, 1913:
Airships Could Triple Their Speeds, Driving Aloft in Rarified Atmosphere.
AIR DRIFT ALSO AN AID
Machine's Rush, He Argues, Would Condense the Air, Creating a Normal Density for Aviator.
Special to The New York Times.
    WASHINGTON, April 2.— Dr. A. Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and a pioneer in the use of heavier-than-air flying machines, enthusiastically discussed to-night Lord Northcliffe's offer of $50,000 for the first flight across the Atlantic in a hydro-aeroplane within seventy-two consecutive hours. While certain modifications in existing machines ought to be effected, Dr. Bell repeatedly said that as aerial science stood to-day the English publisher's offer is a good sporting chance for airmen.
    "There are machines existing to-day," said Dr. Bell, "which, if they can continue doing for twenty hours what they have done already for shorter periods, will make the flight possible in a single day. The seventy-two hours is a much longer time than will be needed. If the ocean is to be traversed in an airship at all, it will be in far less time than Lord Northcliffe allows.
    "If I were to make the flight," went on the veteran inventor with boyish enthusiasm, "I wouldn't make any allowances for alighting at sea and replenishing my fuel. To make the trip at all, it ought to be done in a single spurt. While hydro-aeroplanes can take to the water and arise again into the air, their chances are against their doing anything of the sort. There is also very little likelihood of their finding the supply ship from which to replenish their tanks. Even if the wings of the airship are not injured by the descent, the chances are that once on the water, it would remain there until picked up, or until, under the buffetings of the sea, it went lower still and disappeared."
    Dr. Bell reviewed the possibilities as if he were himself about to compete for the prize. The obstacles to be overcome and the extraordinary possibilities opened out by the offer he explained as eagerly as if he were recounting adventures through which he had already passed. This much Dr. Bell said before the idea seemed to strike him that he needed to justify his enthusiasm. Then he referred to his laboratory notes and stenographic reports of conversations with the Canadian inventor, F. W. Baldwin, in 1909, looking to long flights by aeroplanes through high altitudes.
    The conclusion which they reached had never been published, said Dr. Bell, as all his efforts to induce Mr. Baldwin to put his ideas in writing failed.
    Mr. Baldwin is a grandson of a Premier of Upper Canada, who held office before the federation of the northern provinces. He studied under Dr. Bell in the latter's early airship experiments at Hammondsport, N.Y., and there made the first public flight in a heavier-than-air machine in what was then called the Aerodome, Red Wing.
    Dr. Bell's idea, based on his investigations then made with Mr. Baldwin, is that the greatest service will be got from the aeroplanes flying at great heights. Mr. Baldwin advanced the idea, which Dr. Bell at once accepted, that the resistance to the forward rush of an airship diminished in exact ratio with the density of the air. He found that life could be sustained at a height of five miles, and that at that height the density of the air was one-third the normal density at sea level.

High Speed In High Altitudes.
    "Therefore at that height a machine capable, with sufficient propeller revolutions, of driving forty miles an hour at sea level — and much greater speeds had actually been attained — would go at a rate of 120 miles an hour. |
    Mr. Baldwin saw in his plan, said Dr. Bell, the objection that the suffering of the aviator for want of air would be too great at this altitude for any prolonged effort. But Dr. Bell at once met the objection by saying that obviously, even if the atmosphere were thinned to one-third its normal density, a speed of three times the normal rate would project the aviator against exactly the same number of particles of oxygen as if he went forty miles an hour on sea level. In other words, the onward rush of the machine, increasing in precise ratio with the diminishing density of the air, would automatically condense the air and preserve a normal atmosphere. At the same time the higher speed would give the lighter air precisely the supporting power of heavier air at sea level with the lower speed that would be the best attainable in that density.
    "Go up as high as you like," said Dr. Bell, "and your speed will go up with you. We used to think a balloon or dirigible the best for high flying. But now we know that is not true. A balloon in the rare atmosphere of the high skies would need to be expanded to triple its size to carry the weight with which it started. And once aloft, it could not descend without letting off gas. The airship, however, adjusts all this automatically by variations in its speed. It is precisely as if by seeking the rarer airs it reefed its sails for a gale and then scudded along."
    Dr. Bell said that the chief improvement needed in modern motors, aside from certainty of endurance, was an engine with adjustable gearing, so that as the air grew rarer the same amount of fuel would produce an increasing number of revolutions. This device was already in use on automobiles. The passengers would be enclosed in a car, into the forward end of which air would be introduced through a funnel and held there under compression by the forward rush. This air could he heated without the use of additional fuel by encircling the car with the exhaust pipe, so that the passengers at any altitude, which theoretically might be increased indefinitely with a corresponding indefinite increase in speed, would sit in a normal atmosphere at a normal temperature, and devote their energies to picking out their way to whatever goal they might have in view.
    "Starting at Halifax," said one passage in Dr. Bell's note book, "in the early morning by daylight, we should reach the Coast of Ireland in time for a late dinner. This is assuming that the distance is 2,000 miles."
    Dr. Bell's calculations were based on an airship capable of 40 miles an hour at normal elevations. He proposed for it to fly actually five miles high in one-third the atmosphere with a triple speed. That would make 120 miles an hour. But to that must be added 25 miles an hour, which is the normal drift across the ocean, west to east, of the air at an elevation of over 1,000 feet. This drift is at all seasons and is always in the same direction. That makes it certain that the successful flight when made will begin on this side of the Atlantic."