LANGLEY, Samuel P. (1834-1906). On May 6, 1896, a strange machine
 flew one half mile (800 meters) over the Potomac River near Washing-
 ton, D.C.  The odd craft was about 16 feet (4.8 meters) long and
 weighed some 26 pounds (12 kilograms). It flew about a minute and a
 half. This was the first time a power-driven, heavier-than-air
 machine stayed in the air for more than just a few seconds.
     The builder of this airplane model was Samuel Pierpont Langley,
 secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.  After many laboratory
 experiments, he had finally shown that extended mechanical flight
 was possible.  Later he built a 56-foot (17-meter) machine for the
 War Department. Two attempts to launch it in 1903 failed. The Wright
 brothers, however, proved the worth of Langley's ideas in their suc-
 cessful man-carrying airplane.
     Langley's interest in aeronautics began in Roxbury, Mass., where
 he was born on Aug. 22, 1834. He watched gulls wheel and soar, using
 their wings only to meet new wind currents. His father's telescope
 gave him knowledge of astronomy. He attended Boston Latin School but
 did not go to college.
     After seven years with a Chicago engineering firm, Langley held
 positions with the astronomical observatories of Harvard University
 and the United States Naval Academy. In 1870 he became director of
 the Allegheny Observatory at Western University in Pittsburgh, Pa.
 He helped raise money for the observatory by selling the first stan-
 dard time service to the Pennsylvania Railroad. Time signals were
 flashed to all stations on the road for engineers to set their
 watches. In 1878 he invented the bolometer, a sensitive electric
 thermometer for measuring the distribution of heat in the energy
 rays of the sun.
     Langley was appointed secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
 in 1887.  He made the exhibits interesting for people of ordinary
 education and ordered the institution's books to be written in simple
 language. He established the Children's Room.  Langley put into it
 things that children like, stuffed birds with their nests and eggs,
 odd sea animals, bright shells, and coral formations. He collected
 animals for a zoo, and from this collection grew the National Zoo-
 logical Park. Langley died on Feb. 27, 1906, in Aiken, S.C.
 ---------------------------------------------------------
 Excerpted from Comptons Interactive Encyclopedia
 Copyright - 1993, 1994 Compton's NewMedia, Inc.
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