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through commerce with the East Indies and by the employment of Flemings here. But, besides this, a few enterprising Englishmen sent trusted workmen to Asia Minor to learn the methods of making "Turkey carpets." Nowadays, when museums expound technical and artistic efforts, progressive and otherwise, material facts are becoming available in an almost unexpected way to illustrate allusions and records, and thus give reality to much that has been speculative. Unquestionably of English manufacture, or, more correctly, of manufacture in England, is the pile carpet shown on the screen. Details of its ornamentation may throw back to Oriental sources, but the coats of arms are distinctively British. In the center are the royal arms, with a date 1570 and E. R.-Elizabeth Regina. On the left are the arms of the borough of Ipswich and on the right the arms of a Suffolk family. Other equally interesting examples have lately become available for consultation, so that no doubt we shall soon learn a good deal more of English carpet ornament than we know at present. Carpet making at Wilton and Axminster dates from the end of the seventeenth century, and its history from that time forward can be pretty clearly traced. Many Frenchmen were employed there and elsewhere in England during the eighteenth century, and introduced much of the French taste in carpet ornamentation. The Society of Arts, as early as 1758, gave prizes for English-made carpets, "in imitation of those brought from the East, and called Turkey carpets;" and the Transactions of the Society of 25 years later record how the manufacture of these was then established in different parts of the kingdom, and "brought to a degree of elegance and beauty which the Turkey carpet never attained."

It is not difficult to make a pretty close guess of what large Georgian carpet designs were like. Some of them at least had a flavor of the French taste, and of that I have one interesting design, made at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Robert de Cotte, for a pile carpet woven at the Savonnerie. It is rather like a ceiling decoration and apropos to a style that the machine-made patent Axminster and other carpets have been affecting during the last few years, presumably to the content of some people, who do not care for the restrained treatment of ornamental forms and harmonious colors in Oriental carpets.

As to Italian carpets I have not collected much information. Shuttle weaving by peasants in the Abruzzi continues to the present day and is responsible for most of their bright-colored woolen aprons with stripes that are broché or woven with floating threads. This same character of work has been done for some centuries. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Perugia was notable for white linen tablecloths and towels, broché with blue threads in a considerable variety of interesting patterns. Farther south Pescocostanza appears to have

been noted in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for similar shuttle-woven woolen rugs, of one of which I have a slide.

The style of the broché ornament is virtually the same as that of the Perugia linens. In the specimen now before us we have a field broken by garlands into repeated compartments, in which are, respectively, fountains, lions, horses, or perhaps unicorns, lambs of God bearing the cross and a flag, double-tailed mermaids with mirrors in their hands, and double-headed eagles, of a seventeenth century type, though almost all of them are emblems with traditions behind them, that, in some cases, spring from Gnostic sources of more than a thousand years earlier. Emblematical ornament, however, is far too big a subject to discuss now. The border of the carpet is a woven imitation of Italian lace points or Vandykes of the late sixteenth century.

The last slide is from two pile rugs made at Merton from designs by the late William Morris. In both of them we trace his regard for Oriental symmetrical arrangement and flatness in treating ornamental devices.

In conclusion I must mention my indebtedness to important publications, amongst which are the late Dr. Bushell's handbook on Chinese Art, Mr. Martin's admirable work on Oriental Carpets, and the great Viennese publications also on Oriental Carpets. This latter work contains illustrations of a hundred carpets or rugs, each of which Dr. Alois Reigl has described in detail with unsparing care. I do not think that either of these two last-named authorities, or even Dr. Bode, of Berlin, and others, who have a profounder erudition than I can pretend to, have paid enough consideration to the enlivening effect which Chinese ornamental design must surely have had for the last 2,000 years at least upon that of other nations west of China, and especially in regard to its share in the invention of Mohammedan ornament. In offering a few hints upon that matter I hope that I have not made too great a call upon your attention. Mohammedan ornament, whether to the Sunnite or Shi-ite taste, plays a very important part in carpet ornamentation. The more it can be investigated and appreciated the less likely are we to manufacture carpets with quasi Oriental patterns that are at times really ludicrous in their simple-minded imitations of distorted devices.

It is extraordinary what modern machinery can do in producing carpets of any sort of design. Certainly the daintiest that I have seen recently were manufactured at Glasgow and are reproductions of some of the finest and most intricately patterned Persian rugs.

Messrs. Maple and Messrs. Warings have kindly lent the specimens of English machine-made rugs, as well as interesting portions of handmade carpets, not only from England, but from other European countries as well.

RECENT PROGRESS IN AVIATION.1

[With 19 plates.]

By OCTAVE CHANUTE,'

Honorary member of Western Society of Engineers.

[Remarks by President Allen introducing Mr. Chanute: It is a remarkable coincidence that just 12 years ago this evening-October 20, 1897-Mr. Chanute gave his first paper before this society on the subject of aviation, the paper being entitled "Gliding Experiments." A few years later, in 1901, and again in 1903, Mr. Wilbur Wright appeared before the society, at Mr. Chanute's invitation, and gave an account of the experiments then being made by himself and his brother Orville. The opportunity comes to very few men, I think, to appear before the same body 12 years after their predictions had been made, and be able to point to the fulfillment of those predictions, as can be done by Mr. Chanute to-night.

It is our privilege to listen to him now, at a time when aviation has become a matter of great public interest, and when he can point to the fulfillment of his own prophecies, and the launching of the aeroplane as a practical machine on the ideas that he enunciated in our rooms 12 years ago. Mr. Chanute is well known to us all and needs no introduction from me. We are proud to number him among our members as, perhaps, the foremost living authority on aviation to-day in this country or in any other country.]

I shall endeavor, with the aid of some lantern slides, to talk to you about what has lately been accomplished with flying machines. As your president has said, on the 20th of October, 1897, I had the honor of presenting to you an account of some gliding experiments that were carried on at Dune Park, near this city. Those experiments were made solely to study the question of equilibrium and to determine if it was reasonably safe to experiment. We had the good fortune to make about 2,000 flights (Mr. A. M. Herring, Mr. W.

1 Reprinted by permission from Journal of the Western Society of Engineers, Chicago, April, 1910. Presented before the society October 20, 1909. Journal copyright 1910 by the Western Society of Engineers.

2 Mr. Chanute died November 23, 1910,

97578°-
-8M 1910-10

145

Avery, and myself) without any accidents-not even a single sprained ankle. The only thing we had to deplore was the fact that my son, in making one flight, tore his trousers. An account of these experiments was published in the journal of this society for October, 1897, and subsequently an account was also published in the Aeronautical Annual, Boston, in 1897. That publication contained the statement that it was thought that these experiments were promising, and I gave an invitation to other experimenters to improve upon our practice. That invitation remained unaccepted until March, 1900, when Wilbur Wright wrote to me, making inquiries as to the construction of the machine, materials to be used, the best place to experiment, etc. He said that he had notions of his own that he wanted to try, and knew of no better way of spending his vacation. All that information was gladly furnished. Mr. Wright wrote me an account, subsequently, of his experiments in 1900, which gave such encouraging results that each year thereafter the brothers carried on further experiments in North Carolina and at Dayton, Ohio.

On the 18th of September, 1901, Wilbur Wright read a paper before this society, in which he gave an account of what he had done up to that time.

Again, on the 24th of June, 1903, Mr. Wright read a second paper before this society, giving an account of his progress since 1901. Late in the year 1903 the Wrights applied a motor to their gliding machine, which by that time they had under perfect control, and they made their first flights on the 17th of December, 1903. (I might mention that I was present on each of the years during part of the experiments.) At that time Wilbur Wright expressed his intention of giving to this society the first technical paper on the subject which he furnished to anyone. He said he had already promised to give a popular account in the Century Magazine, but that a technical paper, giving an account of the results and the laws which had been observed, would be reserved for this society.

In 1905 Mr. Wright told me it had dawned upon him that there was some money to be made by selling the invention to governments for war purposes, and that he would defer giving a technical paper to our society. He considered that his invention would be more valuable if, with the machine, he could give the secrets of construction and laws which have been observed. I do not know whether the paper has been written, but I hope you will get it some day.

Of the early flying experiments which had been made previous to that time I will mention but two.

Plate 1, figure 1, represents the Maxim machine of 1894. Mr. Maxim built an enormous apparatus, weighing 8,000 pounds and spreading 4,000 feet of surface, moved by a steam engine of 360 horsepower. That machine was run upon a track of 9 feet gauge a good many

Smithsonian Report, 1910.-Chanute.

PLATE 1.

1. MAXIM'S MULTIPLANE 1894-FRONT VIEW.

Weight, 8,000 pounds. Propeiled by 363-horsepower steam engine. Span, 126 feet;
area, 4,000 square feet; cost, $200,000.

2. MAXIM'S MULTIPLANE, 1894-SIDE VIEW.

When run on rails at Baldwyn's Park, England. July 31, 1894, at 36 miles an hour,
this machine lifted so much more than its weight that it broke a set of rails
provided to hold it down, and thus demolished itself.

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