1909 Fly Magazine Article - 24 Uses For Flying Machines

[Lucky Dog]

A number of years back I acquired a copy of the November 1909 edition of Fly magazine. Since this is it's 100th birthday, I thought I'd share part of an interesting article within. Twenty-Four Uses For Flying Machines, by Octave Chanute. Interesting, humorous and a bit visionary.

Twenty Four Uses for Flying Machines
By: Octave Chanute
From the November, 1909 issue of “Fly”.

1. Military and naval scouting.
2. General sport.
3. Public exhibition in cities.
4. Mail deliveries in sparsely populated territories.
5. Guarding Rio Grande frontier.
6. Watching Indians on the warpath.
7. Watching herds of cattle on the plains.
8. Engineering, explorations, preliminary surveys.
9. Taking photographs from aloft.
10. Prospecting for precious metals.
11. Meeting coming steamers for news.
12. Sending reporters to points of interest.
13. Exploring Alaska, Mexico, mountains, etc.
14. Exploring Australia.
15. Watching seal hunters.
16. Exploring Africa.
17. Communicating between African posts.
18. Hunting tigers in India.
19. Hunting the Hippopotamus.
20. Reconnoitering for whales.
21. Watching for schools of fish.
22. Exploring the North Pole.
23. Hunting elephants for ivory.
24. Patrolling South American Republics.

There is a lot of interesting content. I especially like the placement of an ad for a sanitarium just below said article.

If you'd like to read the entire article or the magazine, here's a link to down load a pdf file. It's about 9 mb. http://www.bealmear.com/dawn_patrol/...09%20Small.pdf

[Wind In The Wires]

Note that he doesn't mention replacing trains as the most common method of long distance travel.

Number 6 may be the only thing airplanes haven't been used for.