Invention

At Roosevelt Field, N. Y. is a hangar which for two years was always locked, its windows frosted white to guard against peepers. Within strange craft were being built: a great twin-motored plane with two adjustable wings in tandem, with no ailerons and no tail assembly; and a motorless glider of similar design. The wings were designed something like a bird's, with the trailing edge of the front wing fluted, or "feathered." Scarcely less mysterious to the inhabitants of the field was the ship's inventor, Emry Davis, 74, retired manufacturer of inkstands and inks from which he was said to have earned a fortune. Thin, white-moustached, immaculate and somewhat irascible, Inventor Davis was totally uncommunicative about his venture. On one occasion, it is said, he ordered two Department of Commerce inspectors out of his hangar.

Early one morning last week Inventor Davis and his mechanic, one Carl Nelson, wheeled his glider out to the field, hitched it behind an automobile for towing. Both men boarded the craft, with Mr. Davis at the controls. They intended only a ground test, but as the automobile gained momentum the glider suddenly attained flying speed, rose abruptly, broke loose from its towing cable and executed a half loop. Inventor Davis fell out; his glider fell on top of him, killed him. Mechanic Nelson clung to the machine, escaped serious injury.

Inventor Davis began experiments in aeronautics before the Wrights made their first flight, and exhibited a model in the New York automobile show of 1901. His son Albert last week declared he would have engineers inspect his father's designs with a view toward developing them.

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