EXPERIMENTING AGAIN
AFTER the airline was organized and comfortably operating, it was time for me again to do some flying of my own and such experimenting as opportunity might offer.
Just then the autogiro was the very newest thing in aviation, and so naturally enough I found myself drawn toward it.
Probably no other recent aeronautical development has created the interest it has, among engineers and laymen alike. Miles (I’m sure) of words concerning it have appeared in newspapers and magazines. In fact, so much space has been as signed its doings that I am at a loss to know how or where to start another biography. Perhaps if I begin at the beginning, I may find some bit of information not told a hundred times already.
Perhaps the public’s unusually great interest in it is conditioned by its promise of greater safety to the inexperienced flyer. Perhaps the very strangeness of its design is responsible for the great interest displayed in it wherever it makes an appearance.
Curiously, the history of the autogiro starts in a book. Before ever a model of one was made, a portly volume had been written about it. Under the title, The Theory of Autorotation, a young Spanish mathematician had described the habits
128