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In Their Own Words
On 9 March 1922, Griffith Brewer sent a letter to the editor of
Nature Magazine in response to an article in a previous issue
entitled, "The Langley Machine and the Hammondsport Trials," by Sir
Norman Lockyer. Part of that letter concerned the 1913 Langley
Tablet that was installed at the Smithsonian.
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 he...fundamental
principle enunciated by Langley in 1893 was that known as the
“Langley Law,” which was that the faster an aeroplane be flown the
less will be the power required to sustain it. The fallacy of this
law is well known to all aeronautical engineers to-day, but up to
1910 this was generally considered as Langley's chief contribution
to the science of aerodynamics. In that year when the Regents of the
Smithsonian Institution decided upon the placing of a bronze tablet
in the Institution commemorating Langley's work in aerodynamics,
they ordered the following legend to be inscribed upon it :
SAMUEL PIERPONT LANGLEY
1834-1906
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
1888-1906.
AERONAUTICS:
Langley Law: “These new experiments show
that if in such aerial motion there be given a plane of fixed
size and weight, inclined at such an angle, and moved forward at
such speed that it shall be sustained in horizontal flight, then
the more rapid the motion is, the less will be the power
required to support and advance it.” — Langley, “Experiments in
Aerodynamics,” 1891, p.3.
“I have brought to a close the portion of
the work which seemed to be specially mine—the demonstration of
the practicability of mechanical flight.” — Langley Aerodrome,
Smithsonian Report, 1900, p. 216.
FLIGHTS:
Steam model, May 6, and November 28, 1896.
Gasoline model, August 8, 1903.
Before the tablet was cast, the Wright Brothers
were consulted as to the advisability of using this inscription and
they, not wishing that anything discreditable to Langley should
appear on the tablet. Mr. Wilbur Wright wrote a letter to Secretary
Walcott. from which the following is quoted :
“I have often remarked to my brother that
Prof. Langley was ill-fated in that he had been
especially [p.307] criticized by his enemies for things which
were deserving of highest praise and especially praised by his
friends for things which were unfortunate lapses from scientific
accuracy. I should consider it both unwise and unfair to him to
specially rest his reputation in aerodynamics upon the so-called
Langley Law, or upon the computation which gave rise to it, as
they do not seem to represent his best work. The particular
computations which led him to enunciate this law are found on
pages 63-67, ‘Experiments in Aerodynamics.’ A careful reading
shows that he never actually tried the experiments of which he
professed to give the result. ... It is clear from the Doctor's
statement that he never demonstrated by direct experiment that
weight could be carried at the rate of 200 pounds per
horse-power at 20 meters per second, nor that the power consumed
decreased with increase of speed up to some remote limit not
attained in experiment. He merely assumed that he could have
done it by varying the experiments a trifle and based the
so-called Langley Law on this mistaken assumption.”
The Regents of the Smithsonian Institution
adopted this suggestion and the Langley Law was not inscribed on the
tablet.
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The Langley Tablet, as it was unveiled at the Smithsonian on 6 May
1913.
An enlargement of the inscription on the tablet.
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