Word: steams
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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With reference to the most interesting article "Flight by Steam," p. 34 of your issue of April 24, I should like to get the address of the Besler Bros, in order to get some information on the steam-powered airplane they were able to take into...
While the Besler flight was regarded as a significant as well as an historic experiment, few observers were prepared to guess whether the steam-engine idea will get farther than the Diesel, which has yet to be accepted by aviation...
...youngsters at Hun School in Princeton, N. J. the Besler boys were usually mistaken for twins. (Now William is dark, slender; George is blond, stocky, has a mustache.) As Princeton undergraduates they played polo, learned to fly, owned planes. As graduates they became steam-engine conscious, as are all Beslers because of the family's substantial interest in Davenport Locomotive Works. They went to California and got control of Doble Steam Motor Corp., which had been in difficulties, began producing steam automobiles, steam trucks and busses. About three years ago the Beslers and their friend Clement Harts began experiments...
Significance. Aeronauts began 100 years ago to try to make steam engines fly, because no other motive power existed. The first successful dirigible, flown by Henri Giffard in 1852, was steam-propelled. Ten years before, W. H. Phillips had sent aloft a small model helicopter with a steam engine in it. Langley's first successful flying model, in 1896, was steam driven. Maxim worked on the idea. But no full size airplane flew. And before one did, Charles M. Manly had built a gasoline engine lighter per horsepower than any steam plant produced so far. When it was proven...
Reasons for a renaissance of interest in steam are the same as motivated the development of Diesel engines for airplanes: elimination of fire hazard by use of crude oil; elimination of ignition and hence of radio interference; simplification of mechanism; economy. Also the steam engine offers reduction of noise, of vibration, of complicated lubrication...