Phillipsburg herald. [volume] (Phillipsburg, Kan.) 1882-1905, 1888-07-20
Anew Airahiu.


French asronaut, Jovis, is going to try
a voyage across the Atlantic in his air
ship has given a mild boom to subject
of an analogous sort now before con
gress. Several months ago an Illinois
member Introduced a bi1ints the house
! granting Peeuniary aid to the invention
! of Mr.. De Bausset for navigating the
/ air. Since each projects have been
muItitudinous, it was hardly expected
that congress would go into thesubject
/ Of aronautics2 but the committee hay
/ ing charge of this bill has agreed to
report it with a favorable recommends
ton. and this fact takes it out of the
ordinary runof such enterprises. Thehs
is also a partial precedent for govern
menb interests in the Thayer balloon
for dropping dynamite upon an enemy's
ships, forts, or camps which has re-
eefVed Communications from ordnance
officers, although this, to be sure, is
not equivalent to obtaining an appro-
priatiOn from congress.
The pending bill proposes that the
contemplated airship shall be con
siructed at the Washington navy yard
at the expense of the government under
the supervision and control Of a board
of naval engineers. The projectors
say that Chief Engineer Melville, in a
letter to De Bausset, wrote that "the
principle and theory Of your aerOplane
are In the main correct" although he
added that he had not sufficiently
studied the details of construction to
81 IN orygo ha
prise. The characteristic feature of
this project is that of using for the
lifting appliance q long metallic cylin-
der from which the air has been eX-
hausted. Such a cylinder would have
to be thin to diminish weight, yet thick
enough and tough enough to resist the
pressure of the external air. Frame
work and braces within the cylinder
would have to be supplied to prevent
the danger of crushing. The promising
part of the scheme is that it deals with
calculable prod icts. That is to say,
with material Of ascertained strength,
the dimensions of q cylinder capable of
resisting the pressure of the atmosphere
when a certain proportion of the air
from within Is exhausted, are a matter
of mathematical demonstration. The
amount of machinery and weight of car
and passengers which such a cylinder,
with its air exhausted to a certain point,
is capable of holding up is also a mat
ter of exact calculation. Hence, if
competent men should, after taking all
the elements of the proposed airshiP
into account, find that it would have
the required floating power, that part
of the problem would be solved.
Yet this would not be the difficult
part. It is really only the substitution
of one lifting appliance for another,
the use of an exhausted receiver in
stead of gas balloon. Obtaining a
great sustaining power has never been
difficult. There Is a certain danger of
the giving way of the material of which
the gas balloon is made, and the con-
! sequent escape of the gas, and a me-
tallic cylinder may be more trustwOr-
thy. But the great difficulty is that
when any appliance of large area Is
used to hold up the car and machinery
it is inevitably at the mercy of strong
winds. OF course, any such machine
would be supplied with electrical stOr-
age batteries for the purpose of steering,
since the successful experiments with
electrical apparatus by Capt. Renard
and CAN'T. Krebs, in France, have shown
that satisfactory steering power can
be counted upon when there is no wind,
or only a light one. But that very
series of experiments also demonstrated
that whenever the wind was high it
carried the whole apparatus along with
it in spite of the electrical machinery.
JOvis himself does not expect to be
able to control the wind IN his contem-
plated ocean voyage. All he viii aim
at Is to wait for a strong westerly cur
rent, with promise of steadiness for
several successive days, and then start
for this side of the water, trusting that
1t viii blow long enough and steadily
IN one direction to take him to Iceland
or Norway
Whether this degree of possible sue
cess in aerial navigation viii justify
congress in making an appropriation for
the enterprise now before 1t is a matter
to be considered. Enlarging upon the
size OF the car that can be carried, the
number OF passengers, the quantity of
provisions, and so on, has nothing to
do with the main problem. It is like
the custom of dwelling upon the prod
igiOus explosive power of several hun
dred pounds of dynamite fastened by a
submarine boat to a hostile vessels
keel. The real difficulty is that of first
getting a vessel which viii be able to
go five or ten miles under water with
out once coming to the surface, and
when that is accomplished it is time
enough to talk of the size of the tor
pedo. So in planning airships it is i'm
mature to talk of the parlor car accom-
modations to be afforded until it Is
! once shown how the size of the floating
| appliance necessary to hold the car up
viii not make it the prey of any strong
wind. Yet for the military purposes
which the government would have in
view. only q moderate decree of dirigi-