Langley first chose as his profession civil engineering and
architecture and the years between 1857 and 1864 were chiefly
spent in prosecuting these callings in St. Louis and Chicago.
Then he abandoned them; for the bent of his mind was definitely
towards scientific inquiry. In 1867 he was appointed director of
the Allegheny Observatory at Pittsburgh. Here he remained until
1887, when, having made for himself a world-wide reputation as an
astronomer, he became Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution at
Washington.
It was about this time that he began his experiments in
"aerodynamics." But the problem of flight had long been a subject
of interested speculation with him. Ten years later he wrote:
"Nature has made her flying-machine in the bird, which is nearly
a thousand times as heavy as the air its bulk displaces, and only
those who have tried to rival it know how inimitable her work is,
for the "way of a bird in the air" remains as wonderful to us as
it was to Solomon, and the sight of the bird has constantly held
this wonder before men's minds, and kept the flame of hope from
utter extinction, in spite of long disappointment. I well
remember how, as a child, when lying in a New England pasture, h
watched a hawk soaring far up in the blue, and sailing for a long
time without any motion of its wings, as though it needed no work
to sustain it, but was kept up there by some miracle.
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