Towards the Efficiency of Sails, Windmills, Screw-Propellers, in Water and Air, and Aeroplanes

Abstract

THE discussion of this day week, on flying machines, in the British Association was not, for want of time, carried so far as to prove from the numerical results of observation put before the meeting by Mr. Maxim, that the resistance of the air against a thin stiff plane caused to move at sixty miles an hour through it, in a direction inclined to the plane at a slope of about one in eight, was found to be about fifty-three times as great as the estimate given by the old “theoretical” (!) formula, and something like five or ten times that calculated from a formula written on the black-board by Lord Rayleigh, as from a previous communication to the British Association at its Glasgow meeting in 1876.