Morning journal and courier., 1882-05-03

long Through the Air-Ahe 1-~ A"" Thrust That Sends DIr. Lulu Up Forty Feet-AeriaI Danctng-The Cannon a nd CataPGIt-Secrets of Suspension.
 From the New York Sum-
 When the flying trapeze act of the circuses began to grow familiar to the public eye, great endeavors of skill and daring were made to enhance it's seeming difficulty and danger But human power and agility could go just so far unaided, in defylng the laws of gravitation, and no further Then opened a new era that of the utilization of mechan- ical appliances for the achievement of start ling gymnastic novelties. Singularly enough, nearly all the most famous and astonishing of these mechanical devices have been the invention of one man, an American, named w. l.. Hunt, himself in former years a ia nous trapeze performer.
 In 1864 Mir Hunt, then, yet, known professionally as Signor G. A. Farlni, was giving season of gymnastic entertainments in the London Alhambra, in which he was aided by slender and pretty boy named Samual Wasgatt, billed under the name ot ''El nino Farini." In one of their perform ances Farini was accustomed to lay hls feet upon one trapeze and his neck upon another, holding his body perfectly rigid between them, with the boy standing upon hls belly, until, at given signal, the boy made an up ward leap, and aided by spring of Farlnl s body darted to a third trapeZe twelve feet above. One day the happy thought occurred to Farini, ''why not employ spring board ln- stead of my body ?" He tried it. It was an improvement Then his inventive faculties
 were directed to the discovery of ways and | means for the propulsion of performers to heights and distances wholly impossible TOT | flesh and blood alone.
 In Liverpool he made the model of his first machine for Jumping up" a performer to the height of forty feet, and ln Marsellles | built the machine itself and practised ''El ] nino Farini'' in its use. In Marseilles, too, l he did something else. He transformed
 Samuel Wasgatt into charming young girl, who was advertised in Paris, where the thing was first brought out, as Lulu" The l feat created popular sensation, although its 1 advent was in time of intense public ex- | citement over far more serious matters, the l German army being just about to invest the l city. In performing 1t. "Lulu" stood rigldly l upon a footplate let into the stage upon the | same slope as the stage and not distinguish | able from the rest of the floor. Suddenly | she was seen darting upward toward 6 springboard forty feet above the stage
 where she touched only, and made second l surprising leap to trapeze still further up 1 where she made a performance.
 1 At the moment of the beginning of hel 1 flight there was great crash, but no human
 eye was quick enough to see what made 1t l together that the ear recognized tEem only l as one. Yet, in the imperceptible interva 1 between those crashes, an iron spindle, sup
 porting the foot-plate, shot up five feet above
 the stage, giving the impulse for that fearfu
 leap and retreated again to its place. Indli
 rubber springs were the motive power to
 both movements. One set of them, whel
 liberated. fired the spindle upward, and at it
 extreme elevation 1t automatically freed
 another set which jerked it back into place
 On the first machine, when it was set, read.
 for the feat there were 120 rubber springs
 each with 8 tension of 45 pounds, total O | > 100 pounds. No wonder Lulu went ul
 like bullet from gun. No wonder eithe
 that "he"-to use the masculine prOnoul
 Lulu now claims-complained that it had
 tendency to telescope a person." Indeed, l did telescope him after a while, when he be
 gan to get heavier, to such an extent that h
 was very seriously injured, and had to dimin
 ish the strength of the machine and shorter
 the leap by ten feet. An ingenious arrange ment was introduced in connection with thi feat, in Paris, by which, at the moment O , Lulu's flight, net-previously held back b
 counter-weigh ghts-was instantaneously sprea by rubber springs, and iu place beneath he before she reached the springboard.
 Sig Farini and his associate went out O
 Paris on the last train that left that city be
 fore the siege. taking along with them th ''jump- -up' machine. Returning to Londo , in the dull season, they went to work prac Using Lulu in performing triple somersaul
 from horizontal bar, sixty feet up from tn
 floor, into a net The doing of the somel
 saults was easy enough, but the landing l
 the net was not There no certaint about it, and Lulu's neck was endangered b
 every tumble into the net stretched in th
 usual way. To meet this difficulty, Sig. Fla
 rini invented mode of stretching a net, b
 means of rubber springs at the corners whic gave it such elasticity that no matter fror what height the performer came down into il
 or in what way, landing in it was like droT
 ping into feather bed
 In 1876 Sig. Farini invented the cannon fo
 firing performer from its muzzle to a con siderable distance, with much noise an smoke, but without any danger to the pro