Omaha daily bee., 1888-03-27

a man Of q thousand wonderful inven-
tions, and after reading about his pho
nograph and tasimeter and multipleX
telegraph and the rest of the long cata-
logue of marvellous ~contrivances, n
would think it would be easy for him 20
get up a flying machine. Darius Green
queries:
The birds kin fly
An why can't IL
Is the jay bird an Poodle
Smarter nor we, be,
Mr.. Edison just throws up his hands
and gives it up.
"In view of the important discoveries
in electricity, don't you think it's n
possible thing to navigate the ARP" he
was asked by a reporter,
Mr.. Edison looked ut the querist with
o twinkle in his big gray-blue eyes and
laughed as jolly as could be as he said:
Pm awfully afraid it isn't unless you
can get up an engine of about fifty horse
power out of aluminium, say, to weigh
about forty pounds.
He was surrounded by about a hun
dred of his friends and admirers, each
and every one of whom was anxious to
talk to him about ohms and volts and
amperes and all that sort of thing.
When he first entered the room where
all these magnates in electrical enter
prise were he sat himself humbly
down in q back seat as il he was nothing
but q common every day He mad
to be almost dragged to the front. Did
he swell around ina fur-lined overcoat,
| wear a silk hat and gloves with two
wide bands of stitching on the back,
and diamonds as big as hazel nuts on
his fingers?
Not he.
He wore plain, common black clothes,
a derby hat set back on his head, a
| black string necktie, and not a diamond
to his name. Not one. He is rather
| stout, with a genial, wide mouth, iron
gray hair, and a general expression of
good fellowship. He showed his kim
snipe with tender care, and he was acA
| tually seen in that department between
the rotunda of the Grand Pacific hotel
| and the LaSaIle street entrance, leaning
up against a marble counter.
The interview with Mr.. Edison was
necessarily very frequently interrupts
ed, but after half a dozen or so different
men had been presented and their
| names spoken in his ear-Mr. Edison is
a little deaf-the reporter got a chance
to ask another question: ''Have you
experimental on the subject OF aerosta-
tionI"
eyes, James Gordon Bennett got a
kind of a wild scheme into his head
about a flying machine and got me to
work at the thing for a while. l got
| scared, though, and gave it up after
trying for q time. I'll tell you how I
went to work on it. I took an electric
motor OF ten-horse power, which would
~revolve a perpendicular shaft with
| great rapidity. This | set on a scale
one of those scales, you know, where
---. H. =, -.al--1 -. a-l ,@z I~,, .,,Al
you weigh. You know what | mean.
Say, did you near that they had COM
plimentary tickets printed on these ma
chimes? They get there, just the same
as nickelS."
1t was worth a dollar to see Mr..
Edison laugh at his own original wittic-
ism.
"sWell I set the motor on one of these
scales and connected it by a flexible
wire cord with the source of power.
Then l rugged on the shaft first one
kind of propellers and another until L
had tried every kind | could think Of.
that 100 pounds four or five pounds.
The best effects | got were from a two
winged fan with long arms. But law!
you can't get any purchase in the air
like you can in water"
swell, but supposing there is enough
balloon attached to it to act as a kind of
reversed ballast-to keep the machine
top-side up and help lift a little-could
it not be lifted in the air and propelled?"
swell, there's this difficulty in maxi
ing a combination of these two solutions
of the problem of a~crostation. If you
have enough balloon to do any appre-
ciable lifting you have a big surface ex-
posed to the wind, and anything that is
lighter than the air tends to become the
plaything of the air. Imagine trying to
propel n balloon against the wind. Why
1t would tear to pieces. Do you want TO
know what M idea of n flying machine
is? Well, III tell you. It's a long,
.cigar-shaped kind of a balloon with IA car
beneath to which are attached two long
poles. The |aeronautj just poles himself
along; hind of dancing over the ground
on two stills. See? That's my idea of n
flying machine. But the thing never
will be practicable until an engine of
fifty horse power can be devised to
weigh about forty pounds, and with two
long vanes, say about about fifty feet
long, cutting through the air at u pro-
digious rate of speed"
The president of France has an income
from the government OF $4,000 year
that is to say, $l20, 900 as salary,
$50 900 for keeping up his official state
and $50 900 for travelling expenses. The
money is paid in monthly installments
of $4,000.
1t is noticed in Mexico that the lay
ing of railroad tracks produces rain. AS
fast as construction advances rain falls.
One theory is that the large quantity
of steel rails on fiat cars produces rain.
An eccentric individual named Will
liam Watts, who died a few days ago at
Burlington, Kan, had an ~idiosyncratic
hatred of a woman and a cook stove,
and would tolerate neither about his
house.