GREAT AVIATION QUOTES
John Wilkins
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There are 2 quotes matching John Wilkins in the collection:
Yet I do seriously, and on good grounds, affirm it possible to make a flying Chariot. In which a man may sit, and give such a motion unto it, as shall convey him through the air. And this perhaps might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind, that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat.
’Tis likely enough that there may be means invented of journeying to the Moon; and how happy they shall be. that are first successful in this attempt.
John Wilkins
A Discourse Concerning a New World and Another Planet, Book 1, Chapter 14, 1640. Rendered into modern English by me. Here is the original olde English:
This will not perhaps seem so very difficult to anyone who has but diligently observed the flight of some other birds, particularly of the Kite, how he will swim up and down in the air, sometimes at great height, and presently again lower, guilding himself by his train, with his wings extended without any sensible motion on them; and all this when there is only some gently breath of air stirring, without the help of any strong forcible wind. Now I say, if that fowl (which is none of the lightest) can so very easily move itself up and down in the air, without so much as stiring the wings of it; certainly then, it is not improbable, but that when all the due proportions in such an engine are found out, and when men by long practice have arrived to any skill and experience, they will be able in this (as well as in many other things) to come very near unto the imitation of nature.
John Wilkins
Mathematical Magick, or, The wonders that may by performed by mechanical geometry, Book 2, Chapter 7, 1648. Rendered into modern English by me. Here is the original olde English:
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