Whenever a total eclipse of the sun was visible in an accessible region parties were sent out to observe it.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope. . . . The example of the bird does not prove that man can fly. Imagine the proud possessor of the aeroplane darting through the air at a speed of several hundred feet per second. It is the speed alone that sustains him. How is he ever going to stop?

I was taught the alphabet by my aunts before I was four years old, and I was reading the Bible in class and beginning geography when I was six.

Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.

All attempts at artificial aviation are not only dangerous to human life, but foredoomed to failure from the engineering standpoint.

My father followed, during most of his life, the precarious occupation of a country school teacher.

The demonstration that no possible combination of known substances, known forms of machinery and known forms of force, can be united in a practical machine by which men shall fly along distances through the air, seems to the writer as complete as it is possible for the demonstration to be.