The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-08-10 00:00:00

AN ATLANTIC BALLOON VOYAGE.

The New York Times says that Mr. F. W. Schroeder,
formerly a lieutenant in the 'United States service, but
a German by birth, who has been an aeronautic enthu-
siast for the last thirty years, proposes to attempt a
trip in a balloon from New York to London. The air-
ship will not be a large affair, comparatively speaking.
The gas bag will be 91 feet long and 20 feet in dia-
meter, in the form of a cylinder pointed sharply at
each end, so as to offer the least possible obstruc-
tion to rapid motion. The strongest silk that can
be obtained will form the basis of the recepta-
culum, lined within with an impervious rubber
coating and besmeared externally with a coating
of linseed oil. Mr. Schroeder thinks such a bag,
once inflated with carbonic acid gas will remain inflated
for months. Over this will be thrown a roof of stout
canvas, which, in case of accident, is so arranged as to
gather air and break the descent. The gondola
beneath is tied all the way round to the edges of the
canvas by means of stays and guy ropes. It is 19
feet shorter than the balloon itself, nearly pointed at
each end, and four feet deep at the middle—a simple
boat composed of thin strips of white pine, strengthened
with a strong framework. At one end (the stern) is a
delicate rudder ; at the other, which is the bow, a screw
propeller, driven by an electric engine of one half horse
power at the rate of from 1,000 to 1,500 revolutions per
minute pulls the ship through the thin atmosphere at
from 45 to 65 miles an hour. The open space between
the car and the balloon is 20 feet high. A pair of
gigantic wings, convex above, concave beneath, occupy
a part of this space. A single flap of these powerful
engines of elevation will, Mr. Schroeder calculates,
lift the balloon 30 feet into the air. Their
strokes can be made as rapidly as once every
second, thus lifting the ship 1,000 feet in half a
minute. Once at this altitude, which is not nearly
so appalling as it appears when observed from beneath,
the propeller comes into action, and the long air
vessel moves at the rate of a lightning express. This
method of lifting has been adopted after due con-
sideration as one of the necessary factors of a system
of aerial navigation, in which there is an exact balance
between the buoyancy of the gas-bag when fully in-
flated and the weight of the gondola and its passengers.
Left to itself, consf quently, the ship would not ascend,
and when not in motion it must be maintained at
any given altitude by the slow flapping of the wings.
The propeller has two longitudinal blades, each 51t.
long, by 2ft. in width; the rudder is 6ft. long by
sft. in width —an iron network covered with
canvas. Brass hoops encircle the gondola at
intervals of 21 t. Mr. Schroeder thinks he will
be able to turn the sharpest corners, or beat
his way against the strongest air currents with pe.r-
fact ease, and quotes a similar hut less complete ship
constructed upon his model, now in operation
.with
aeronauts in France, which answers all the conditions
of high-air navigation, men making headway against
strong currents, and turning the sharpest angles with
wonderful exactness and celerity. "While talking
with this man of 500 balloon ascensions in his quiet
quarters at No. 325, East Fourteenth-street," remarks
the New York Times, "one naturally breathes in a whiff
of his own enthusiasm, and pictures the man of the
,twentieth century living at the Catskills, or in the
recesses of the Highlands, and starting for the City
at eight o'clock in the morning in his own little air-
ship, arriving at ten, an going home in the afternoon
in the same manner. Then comes a new literature—
that of bird's-eye views; and possibly the newspapers
will serve their subscribers by means of a staff cf
balloonists, each out-travelling the fastest railway
express by twenty to thirty miles an hour.