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Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 – February 27, 1906) was an American aviation pioneer, astronomer and physicist who invented the bolometer. He was the third secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and a professor of astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh , where he was the director of the Allegheny Observatory .
The first bolometers made by Langley consisted of two steel, platinum, or palladium foil strips covered with lampblack. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] One strip was shielded from radiation and one exposed to it. The strips formed two branches of a Wheatstone bridge which was fitted with a sensitive galvanometer and connected to a battery.
Langley's first failure. Samuel Pierpont Langley was secretary to the Smithsonian Institution from 1887 until the year of his death in 1906. During this period, and in due course supported by the United States War Department, he conducted aeronautical experiments, culminating in his manned Aerodrome A.
The Langley Aerodrome is a pioneering but unsuccessful manned, tandem wing-configuration powered flying machine, designed at the close of the 19th century by Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Langley. The U.S. Army paid $50,000 for the project in 1898 after Langley's successful flights with small-scale unmanned models two years earlier.
First failure of Langley's manned Aerodrome on the Potomac River, 7 October 1903 After a distinguished career in astronomy and shortly before becoming Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution , Samuel Pierpont Langley started a serious investigation into aerodynamics at what is today the University of Pittsburgh .
1896: Samuel Pierpont Langley successfully flew unpiloted steam-powered models. [2] 1897: Carl Richard Nyberg's Flugan developed steam-powered aircraft over a period from 1897 to 1922, but they never achieved more than a few short hops. 1899: Gustave Whitehead built, and was purported to have flown, a steam-powered airplane in Pittsburgh ...
Manly helped Smithsonian Institution Secretary Samuel Pierpont Langley build The Great Aerodrome, which was intended to be a manned, powered, winged flying machine. Manly made major contributions to the development of the aircraft's revolutionary 52 hp gasoline-fueled radial engine, called the Manly–Balzer engine. Manly attempted to pilot the ...
These were translated in the United States, France and Russia. Many people from around the world came to visit him, including Samuel Pierpont Langley from the United States, Russian Nikolai Zhukovsky, Englishman Percy Pilcher and Austrian Wilhelm Kress. Zhukovsky wrote that Lilienthal's flying machine was the most important invention in the ...