The Otago No 1 team at the NZ Golf Championships at
Balmacewen, winner of the O'Rourke Challenge Vase. From
left: Messrs R. Smith, Basil Smith, Hamilton Smith and C.
C. Turnbull. - Otago Witness, 30.9.1908.
New York: Five years ago we laughed at Langley, of the
Smithsonian Institution, and his crude experiments with a
flying machine along the reaches of the Potomac River.
The general derision was so loud that the Government
officials yielded to it and ceased to supply Langley with
money for his experiments. Today we are airship mad.
Captain Baldwin is making Government experiments near
Washington, and the newspapers print columns of extravagant
praise and go into infinite detail.
Up at Hammondsport Captain Alexander Bell is making more
experiments with another wonderful "heavier than air"
machine, which he has named the June Bug.
Those mysterious brothers, the Wrights, are reported to have
accomplished all but the impossible with their
carefully-secreted device.
Down at our nearby Brighton Beach we go each night to see
Henri Farman, with his 150lb "heavier than air" apparatus
make nightly flights.
Farman's ascents are thrilling in the extreme.
His machine - you think of nothing else than a giant bird -
seems to be completely under the aviator's control.
It has been a matter of vast interest to all of us.
We are beginning to look seriously into this airship
business.
The splendid flight of Count Zeppelin's ship up the Rhine
Valley the other day excited a national interest here.
The tragic fate that overtook that splendid vessel so little
a time after excited national sympathy.
• One of the largest, if not actually the largest, audiences
that ever assembled in His Majesty's Theatre gathered last
evening to hear the concert given by a number of the
prize-winners in the Dunedin Competitions.
The auditorium was packed by 7.15.
By 7.30 hundreds of people were being turned away, and
anxious sightseers were standing two or three deep round the
back of the dress circle, boxes, chairs, and any other
available furniture being requisitioned for this purpose.
The attendances at the competitions has all along been
gratifying to the committee, but it is safer to say that last
night's audience exceeded its most sanguine expectations.
- ODT, 26.9.1908.
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