Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1873-06-25
Transatlantic Ballooning.

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come to naught, through the failure Of the
city authorities to appropriate the requisite
fundswhioh it is said they would have
done but for the late disastrous Gre Prof
Wise abaudons the scheme in letter which
seems more crcditable to his courage aud
enterprise than to any well settled scientific
knowledge. 1t is now nearly one hundred
years since man commenced to navigate the
air by balloons, and to this day it seems
that no method has been discovered of con.
Quoting these voyages with precisi and
safety. Balloons have assembled to pro.
digious heights aud have been carried in
horizontal direction hundreds Of miles, but
for all practical purposes Of travel the cx-
periments have been utterly barren Of
results
The fact seems to be that the art Of
navigating the air is yet almost entirely
uudeyeloped. We simply know how to
ascend and descend 90 and even the latter is
still precarious. Mr.. James Glaisher, f.
r. S., one Of the few scientists Of the present
day who has experimental most extensively
in pronautics, announces as the result Of
many voyages in balloons, that he has no
belief in their practical value save as
aerial observatories, whence many phe.
nomena can be noted with precision not
attainablc on the earth's surface lie
ascended on one occasion to an altitude Of
seven miles above the earths surface, and
might have gone much higher could he have
sustained life in so rarei6ed an atmosphere
But his attempts they were numer.
ous-at horizontal navigation invariably
proved failures lie never discovered a
stratum or current of air which carried his
balloon steadily in one direction, but was
at the mercy Of a thousand atmospheric
streams capriciously varying in course, until
he resorted to the appliances which enabled
him to ascend or descend at pleasure. As
to any means Of steering a balloon against
an adverse current Of air, neither he nor
any other man has begun to discover one
Mr.. Fammarion distinguished French
nronaut has recorded that the traces of
numerous voyages made by him above the
soil Of France are represented by lines
curving in one and the same general direc-
ton, so that balloon rising above the centre
Of France would be carried in circular d.
rection, generally from south through east
aud north to south again The bal
looms sent out from Paris during the
siege Of lS70-7l took, it is well known,
various eccentric courses. Some went out
to sea and were never heard from again,
some drifled far northward into Norway,
some swept eastward into the heart Of Ger
many, and some went southwark. I'm
doubtedy some arrived at or near their
destination but so many failed of doing so
that no practical advance was made toward
solving the problem.
In opposition to the opinions and cxper-
ments of scientific mronauts, Mr.. Wise ex.
presses unbounded confidence in his ability
to cross the Atlantic in balloon in sixty
or seventy hours, not by any fortunate con-
currence Of atmospheric currents, but as
the result Of undertaking physical laws.
He believes that an altitude of mile and
a half above the earth, a current oil air will
be encountered which moves with immense
velocity in an eastery direction, and that
the eronaut rising into this stratum, has
nothing to do but to 60 with it, and be land.
ed anywhere in the Old World he chooses
in the direction taken by his balloon. Thi:
is mere theory and theory at variance with
the observations of men who practice bal.
looming not as an amusement, but for The
scientific results to be obtained from it
1t may be that the bold theorist would CHI
upon the soil of Europe or Asia, and con.
flute the carefully made deductions of scien
tific men, but the probability is much strong
er that he would be carried indefinitely
about in space until he found grave il
the bosom of the Atlantic; or better, de-
scend somewhere in America If he seri
ously intends to test the existence Of the
great easterly current, we would advise him
to convey his balloon to San Francisco, and
thence take passage for New York Such
a journey might be successfully performed
and at a greatly diminished risk