The Arizona sentinel., 1886-02-13
FLYING THROUGH SPACE.
A Patent Office Officials Chat About Fly
 ing Machines and Balloons.

A Patent Office Officials Chat About Fly
 ing Machines and BalIO Oons.
 It has only been few years ago that a man with flying machine made an experiment from the roof of the Patent Office at Washington. He wanted to demonstrate to skepticaI examiner that his invention was practicable, and he made'it a condition that if the machine did not fly to Pennsylvania avenue that he would consider the experiment fail urc., After he had gathered up the frag- ments of his machine from the front steps of the building where it had fallen like a stone, he expressed surprise that the machine had acted in that way, and said that it was owing to defect which he would soon remedy. He went back to England to get workmen to assist, and the examiner is still waiting for him to return and make the second attempt. Another less sanguine inventor few years ago committed suicide in this city upon his application for patent being rejected.
 The files of the Patent Office furnish much valuable and curious information about these inventions, and if any one doubts that aerial navigation is not a live. practical question of the day, he had better go to the Patent Office and ask few questions. He will find, as MT. Oscar Woodward, who was formerly examiner in charge of this branch, says, that the applications for patents or i'm provementS in patents already granted for aerial navigation averaged two each month. The number of patents already granted is very great.
 ''We no longer issue patents for de- vices to enable men to fly through the air, said MT. Woodward, because the thing is impossible and the officer some years ago made rule not to issue pat ents for impractical inventions. The whole idea about mans being able to propel himself through the air is founded on misconception of the strength of man as compared with his size. A fly is stronger than man, and birds are much stronger. The various devices for sustain ing a mans weight in the air are, of course, practical, but when it comes to his manipulating any kind of wings or propellers against the currents of the air he is unable to do it because of lack of strength. The inventive genius of man is, in these days, not so much occupied with this feature of aerial navigation as it is in the air ships, which are proposed to traverse the ocean of the air much as the steam sh.pS plow across the bosom of the deep. The idea in these air ships IS the evo- luton of the balloon. It has taken a great many years to work out system of air navigation from the first made balloon of the French experimenter, MOntgolfier, in 1784, to the inventions of the present day.
 ''As every one Knows," continued MT. Woodward. 'the difficulty with the balloon is the impossibility of control ling it in the currents of the air There is no difficulty in sustaining the balloon in the air, but the trouble lies in managing it. Very much like balky horse, you may harness him to the carriage and drive him some distance, but at any mo- meri you may loose control of him. To ooirect this defect in the balloon thefe has been and there is to-day a great deal of time and money spent on inventions of various sorts. For in- stance, here is drawing of a patent al- ready issued which does away with mere mechanical devices, as indeed all the more recent inventions do, and substi- tutes hydraulics As you see. here is g