Excerpt from Flying Machines: Practice and Design, Their Principles, Construction and Working
This has not hitherto been done in such a way as to enable a designer to proceed in a methodical manner.
Quite recently, a leading article in a leading journal devoted to flight, discussing aeroplane designs, and coming to the subject of setting about to design a machine, gives the following instructions, and no more: -
"The only way to commence is to start by guessing, and then follow on by modifying the values chosen until a reasonable agreement is obtained" -
a quotation which displays the chaotic state of the art at this date.
All new departures in mechanical invention are in this stage at first. Men succeed in making a practicable machine before the principles and numerical values are known. Well, it was the same with electric dynamos and motors 30 years ago. Machines were made, sold, and worked by designers working pretty much as directed in the above quotation.
But no machine devised by man is incapable of reduction to orderly principles and values, and progress is delayed until this work is done.
In setting out to design any machine, say a steamship, locomotive, or aeroplane, some data is given - some values within the bounds of reason and possibility, such as total weight, speed, and purpose for which it is to be used, are given or assumed.
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