The B'nai B'rith magazine · 1927-07-01 · 10 (7.1927) · p. Seite 418

418 B'NAI B'RITH MAGAZINE into space from the crest of a hill, floated for a few minutes and then came to the ground. He set to work to make improvements upon his apparatus, adding another pair of planes to achieve a curve which might receive the benefit of favorable winds and tail planes at the rear for greater balance. He made flight after flight, often with an interested audience. He built a hill from which to "take off." He learned to shift and balance himself in order to take advantage of favorable winds. But on August 9, 1896 a strong wind caught his machine on the side and sent it crashing to the ground, ending the exploits of the "flying man." Not however before Otto Lilienthal had written and published an important work called der Vogelflug als Grundlage der Flugekunst, which was translated into English by A. W. Isenthal as "Bird Flight as the Basis of Aviation," and Die Flugeapparte, a scientific record of his work. When Orville and Wilbur Wright, who were bicycle manufacturers in Dayton, Ohio, began their own aeronautical experiments they built a machine on the principles laid down by Lilienthal—a glider—using man instead of motor power. Having successfully achieved their first gliding flight they began to experiment with motors. Here, too, they had a precursor in Lilienthal's experiments, for during the last years of his life the German flying man had been experimenting with motive power and had begun to employ small cylinders of liquid carbonic acid attached to his machine for motive force. Shortly after Otto Lilienthal's death, another Jew began to experiment with aerial navigation. He was Emile Berliner, still living and beloved in the United States, who came here from Germany and entered the precarious career of an inventor. While Emile Berliner's best known achievements are the invention in 1877 of the loose contact telephone transmitter of the microphone, and the loose contact telephone receiver, the gramaphone (known as the Victor talking machine) and other inventions in the field of sound transmission and reproduction, he began his less-known researches in the field of aviation early in the twentieth century. These researches led to the building in 1907, at his laboratories, of the gyroaeronautical motor, a light-weight revolving cylinder internal combustion motor, now widely used on aeroplanes. In collaboration with his son, Henry, in 1919 he designed the first successful heliocopter for use in direct lift aeroplanes. With Lilienthal and Berliner outstanding among those who have contributed to advance the science of aerial navigation, we come now to the matter of the Jew as a flyer. By all accounts the Jew shouldn't be a good airman, for we hear so much these days about the "nervous Jew," and one thing an aviator daren't be is "nervous." Yet the interesting statistics collected by Mr. Julian Leavitt for the American Jewish Committee's records of Jewish participation in the World War tell us that 4,558 Jews were in the signal and aviation forces of the United States during the war—that whereas seven per cent of the total numbers of the United States' forces were in this service, the aviation and signal corps claimed fifteen per cent of all the Jews enlisted in the army and navy. Among the commissioned officers of this service there were three hundred and twelve Jews, six of whom attained the rank of Major, and three hundred and fortythree Jewish "non-coms." In peacetime, a Jew was commanding officer of the first trans-continental airship flight. And, to round out the record, we come to Charles A. Levine, first passenger in a trans-oceanic flight. It is lamentable that a Jew always has to prove everything he claims for himself. Charles Levine might have insisted from today to doomsday that he was not lacking in courage, but he had to embark upon the most perilous journey ever undertaken by man in order to prove it. But in doing so, he set his name down among the immortals and provided another epic of our day. Charles Levine was a very poor boy who became a millionaire before the age of thirty. Born in North Adams, Mass., the son of a Russian immigrant, he found his first employment as a stable boy at the race tracks. When he grew too large for that, he turned to buying metal junk and thence entered the second hand building materials business. He worked for a time with the Moissant Aviation Company on Long Island and learned much about aeroplane machinery and acquired a zest for flying. He had become wealthy before the United States entered the war, when he was barely out of his teens, but he amassed a fortune selling second-hand munitions materials to the government and' buying surplus munitions after the war. In recent years he became known as a backer of various sports. He formed the Columbia Aircraft Company which manufactured the record-breaking "Columbia." Preparations for the Columbia's flight had been characterized by continuous bickering between its backer and every one else concerned, until the charge of "poor sportsmanship" began to be insinuated against Levine. He answered this accusation decisively, emphatically, by stepping into the plane attired in his business suit, just before the take-off. This spectacular feat, if it served no other purpose, helped to focus attention on the Jew's contribution to aviation. Daniel Guggenheim, president of the American Smelting and Refining Company, created in 1926 the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, and set aside $3,000,000 to make air travel as safe as land and sea travel. Presenting the $500,000 building to New York University, Mr. Guggenheim said: "I dedicate this building and its equipment to the youth of the country, confident in the knowledge that through their education and training and their efforts and accomplishments the science of aeronautics in this country will be advanced to that point which will place it in the forefront of the world's leaders in civil aviation." Prominent men from all branches of the science of aviation were on hand to praise the man who has done so much for the future of aviation. Chancellor Brown of New York University declared that Mr. Guggenheim was the "foster-father of commercial aviation" in this country. He called attention too, to the Guggenheim expedition sent out to search for the lost French aviators, Nungesser and Coli. Professor Alexander Klemin is in charge of the Guggenheim School for Aeronautics. At present it has an enrollment of forty-five students, but for next year the department has a greater enrollment than any other individual section of the engineering college. The endowment of this school and the foundation for furthering aeronautical progress has been called the greatest financial contribution ever made for peace-time progress in aviation. Grants have been made by the Foundation to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, Leland Stanford University and California Institute of Technology for the purpose of creating schools similar to that at New York University for the training of aeronautical engineers.