He got the picture, all right, but the plate was blurred,
showing that the wings had moved faster than the lens could throw them
on the sensitive plate.
Not that Tom intended the wings of his monoplane to vibrate, but he
adopted that style as being the best adapted to allow of rapid flight
through the air; and the young inventor had determined that he would
clip many minutes from the best record yet made.
The body of his craft, between the forward wings and the rear ones,
where the rudders were located, was shaped like a cigar, with side wings
somewhat like the fin keels of the ocean liner to prevent a rolling
motion. In addition, Tom had an ingenious device to automatically adapt
his monoplane to sudden currents of air that might overturn it, and this
device was one of the points which he kept secret.
The motor, which was air-cooled, was located forward, and was just above
the heads of the operator and the passenger who sat beside him. The
single propeller, which was ten feet in diameter, gave a minimum thrust
of one thousand pounds at two thousand revolutions per minute.
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