The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1882-07-15
Circus Machines.

When the flying trapeZe act of the cir
cuses began to grow familiar to the pub
lie eye, great endeavors of skill and dar-
ing were made to enhance its seeming
difficulty and danger. But human power
and agility could go just so far, unaided,
in defying the laws of gravitation, and
no further. Then opened a new era,
that of the utilization of mechanical APP
pliances for the achievement of startling
gymnastic novelties. Singularly enough
nearly all the most famous. and aston
ishing of these mechanical devices have
been the invention of one man, an Amer
lean, named w. L. Hunt, himself in
former years famous trapeze performer.
In 1864 Mr. Hunt, then, as yet, known
professionally as Signor G. A. Farini,
was giving season of gymnastic enter
tainments in the London Alhambra, in
which he was aided by a slender and
pretty boy named Samuel Wasgatt, billed
under the name of "El Nino Farini."
In one of their performances Farini was
accustomed to lay his feet upon one
trapeze and his neck upon another, hold
ing his body perfectly rigid between
them, with the boy standing upon his
belly, until, at given signal, the boy
made An upward leap, and, aided by
spring of Farinis body, darted to third
trapeze twelve feet above. One day the
happy thought occurred to Farini. "Why
not employ a springboard instead of my
body?" He triedit 1t was an improve
ment. Then his inventive faculties were
directed to the discovery of ways and
means for the propulsion of performers
to heights and distances wholly impossi-
BILE for flesh and blood alone.
In Liverpool he made the model of
his first machine for dumping up" a
performer to the height of forty feet, and
at Marseilles built the machine itself and
practiced "El Nino Farini'' in its use.
In Marseilles, too, he did something
else. He transformed Samuel Wasgatt
into a charming young girl, who was
advertised in Paris, where the thing was
| first brought out, as ''Lulu." The fact
created popular sensation, although its
advent was in time of intense public
excitement over far more serious mat
tiers, the German army being just about
to invest the city. In performing it.,
Lulu stood rigidly upon footplate
let into the stage, upon the same slope
as the stage, and not distinguishable
from the rest of the floor. Suddenly
she was seen darling upward toward
a spring board, forty feet above the
stage, where she touched only, and made
second surprising leap to trapeze still
further up, where she made perform.
ance.
At the moment of the beginning Of
her flight there was great crash, but
no human eye was quick enough to SEE
what made it; there were, indeed, two
crashes, but SO close together that the
ear recognized them only as one. Yet
in the imperceptible interval between
those crashes, an iron spindle support
ing the foot-plate, shot up five feet above
the stage, giving the impulse for thai
frightful leap, and retreated again to it
place. India-rubber springs were the mo
tive power for both movements. One Sc
of them, when liberated, fired the spin
die upward, and at its extreme eleya
ton it automatically freed another set
which jerked it back into place. Or
for the feat, there were 120 rubbe
springs, each with a tension OF forty-fiv'
pounds, a total of 5,400 pounds. N
wonder Lulu went up like bullet from
a gun. No wonder either that chez t.
use the masculine pronoun Lulu nov
claims-complained that sit had a ten
dency to telescope person" Indeed
it did telescope him after awhile, wher
he began to get heavier, to such an ex
tent that he was very seriously injured
and had to diminish the strength of tn,
machine and shorten the leap by tel
feet. An ingenious arrangement wa
introduced, in connection with this fea
in Paris, by which, at the moment o
Lulu's flight, a net-previously hell
back by counter-weights-was instan
taneously spread by rubber springs, ant
in place beneath her before she reache,
the springboard.
In 1876 Signor Farini invented tn
cannon for firing a performer from it
muzzle to a considerable distance, witt
much noise and smoke, but without an,
danger to the projectile. The frs
common was operated by India-rubbe
springs, but Farini's patents have GOV
cred two other modes of propulsion, on
by spiral springs and the other actual,
by the force of gun-powder, which in thu
spring cannons is simply used to keep VI
appearances. When the performer is t.
be literally ''fred OUT heavy barre
in the breech of the sham cannon i
loaded with about twice as much powde
as would constitute charge for shot
gun, and the gases produced by its com