Sees Commercial Use of Flying Craft Soon

1916

Aviator Says Aeroplanes Will Be Used for Express and Mail Service Within Few Years.

"I expect to see aeroplanes in daily commercial use within two or three years. They will be used for high-class express and mail service and there will be no trouble of these machines crossing the ocean."

This was the statement made by Art Smith, 22 years old, champion "loop-the-loop" aviator, who is in a Chicago hospital for treatment of a leg which he injured in an accident in Japan.

Smith said he would not fly again himself, but that he planned to become interested in a $5,000,000 plant for the manufacture of aeroplanes in Japan.

"I think some of the aeroplanes in military use in Europe now can fly across the Atlantic," said Smith. One of the latest Curtiss machines in the British army has three motors and measures ninety feet from tip to tip of its wings. It is equipped with boats and can travel on water."

Smith has had a romantic and brilliant career as an aviator. He built his own aeroplane in Fort Wayne, Ind., when 16 years old. It was in this machine that he flew with his sweetheart to Hillsdale and was married. It was the first aeroplane elopement.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 9.