AERONAUTICS: In Philadelphia

As was fitting, the costly Sesquicentennial ceremonies at Philadelphia, commemorative of the country's founding fathers, were planned with the inclusion of an aeronautic program—meetings of societies, plane races, demonstrations of commercial craft, etc. Last week this program got fully under way.

Engineers. The aeronautics section of the Society of Automotive Engineers went into session. One speaker was Professor Alexander Klemin, onetime aeronautics editor of TIME, lately head of the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aeronautics at New York University. He spoke of the "foolproof" plane that must some day be developed to make flying as general as automobiling; promised that the international competition, made "interesting" by $150,000 to $200,000, which the Guggenheim Foundation is to conduct over the next three years, would turn designer's minds from the speed craze* to safety. The principal factors to be developed: slower landing speeds, steeper landing angles.†

Engineer William B. Stout, Henry Ford's air chief (TIME, Aug. 9) predicted: "Airplanes will be made so safe and at such a reasonable cost during the next five years, that the average man who owns an automobile will be able to buy a plane. . . . The man on the ground has an idea that airplane riding will make him sick and be too thrilling. As a matter of fact there is not as much 'kick' in flying as there is in fast automobile riding."

Races. To the southwest corner of Philadelphia, at an establishment called Model Farms, flocked planes from far and near for the National Air Races.

The first event was a "flight frolic of clowns" to attract the populace. Then civilians flew an elimination heat for low-powered ships entered to win the Aero Club of Pennsylvania trophy, the first home being Basil Rowe of Keyport, N. J., in a Thomas Morse SE-4. Pilot C. S. "Casey" Jones, a celebrated, daring and slightly comic figure from Garden City, L. I., placed third in this event, then stepped into a wing-clipped Curtiss Oriole and won the 84-mile Independence Hall free-for-all, tipping around the pylons at an average speed of 136.11 m.p.m., ahead of the "mystery" racer of Harry F. Pitcairn, Philadelphia millionaire enthusiast.

Thirteenth Contract The longest contract airmail route yet (1,099 mi.) was about to start operating, between Seattle and Los Angeles. Trains take 63 hr. up or down this stretch of coast. Eight planes were in readiness to fly it, four each way daily, in 13¼ hr. Night flying was planned for the beginning of each trip, the planes setting out at 3:45 a. m., arriving at 5 p. m. with five stops* on the way: Portland, Medford, San Francisco, Fresno, Bakersfield. When begun, it was to make the 13th operating contract route that has been instituted in the U. S. since February—a network that now totals some 5,000 mi., over and above the U. S. Post Office Department's own transcontinental route.

S-35 Fonck-Fonck, Fonck-Fonck! For weeks the press has been full of the ace of allied aces, M. le Capitaine René Fonck, who came to the U. S. to fly from Long Island to Paris for a $25,000 prize offered by Hotelman Raymond Orteig of Manhattan, (TIME, Aug. 23).