St. Paul daily globe., 1889-06-18
A Marvellous Machine That
Neutralized Natural In
fluences.

dCIllctC III tIlC way VI IdplO lOCOIlOtiOu
as new discoveries were made in elec-
tricity, aerostatics, mechanical cOmbina-
tions and kindred branches of inveSti-
CATION was pictured with such powers
of imagination as each speaker pos
sessed.
s'Well, gentlemen" said thin-faced.
middle-aged man, whose features and
accent pronounced him Yankee with
all the thrift, inQulsitiveness and dar-
ing of the tribe, ''yOu may talk all you
want to about rapid transit and imagine
all you can as possible or probable, but
I have had an actual experience which
is greater wonder than all your fic-
ton. have travelled at the rate OF
1000 miles an hour"
"YOu weren't at the centennial ball,
were you?" sarcastically remarked one
of the party, while another told the fast
traveller that fish stories were barred.
''Everything that is an admitted fabri-
cation goes, but facts of that nature
are suspicious" said man who owns a
block of stock in the Lake street ele-
vated road.
'sI'm going to tell you the story and
you can lay it on the table or not. as
you choose" persisted the thin-faced
man, and he gave the following account
of his experience:
''Some years ago was in business in
Columbus, o., and being about as we'll
to-dO as most of them, was considered
one of the solid men of the place. I
had the reputation-deservedly, tOO-Of
being always ready to invest money
where there was fair show of sue
cessful enterprise. and, as a conse-
Quence, was Overrun with crankS who
had all sorts of schemes they wished to
interest me in, and, incidentally, my
money. Iwas't little bit of ''suck-
er.. though, and seldom got fooled to
any extent.
Zone day man called to see me to
introduce, he said, the most wonderful
discovery of this or any other time. He
was German, of such an appearance
that could only guess at his age. 1t
might have been sixty or ninety, you
couldn't tell which. He was a gradu-
ate, he said, of Goettingen university.
and had made magnetism and electric
ity his life study. He claimed to have
discovered the principle of the tele-
phone years before Gray or Bell
thought of it, but he had not seen its
commercial value, and would not have
bothered with it if he had. He was full
of only one idea-rapid traveling-and
he had, he said, almost perfected "a ma
chine with which he could OUTRAGE the
sun. He wanted mOney-not much-tO
complete the work. and for this assist
ance he would givea share in the profits
of his Invention. He had inherited a
fortune and had spent it all in expert
ments, and his last com mbination of prin-
cipleS he was certain would be a sue
cess.
"The fellow impressed me favorably
as to himself, but thought his scheme
harer-brained. He seemed honest,
though. He didn't propose to sell me a
block of stock in new company or to
sell me patent capitalized on fabu-
lous basis. He wanted only few hum
dred dollars to pay for some parts of
his invention which an inexorable
machinist would deliver only
when he saw the cash. | agreed
to aid him on condition that
which he proposed to travel so fast. "A
thousand miles an hour said l, that is
as fast as the earth revolves; you will
leave it behind you
".Ah,' said he, s'you have got the idea
just reversed. l let the earth leave me
behind.'
II asked him to explain. and he
opened big roll of cOlored drawings
which he carried and started IN on his
explanation. I could not attempt to ex-
plain it as he did, but the principle is
this:
''The axes of the magnetic and of the
material world cross at right angles.
Magnetic attraction and what is known
as the attraction of gravitation are but
opposite poles of the same force, but
each pole gathers to itself different
forms of cOgnate forces. The motion
of gravitatiOn is from west to east; that
of the magnetic universe from south to
north. An illustration of the two is the
magnetic needle. While an ordinary
tion holds it enthralled. Condition it so
that the magnetic force may seize it and
the attraction of gravitatiOn is defied
and the needle always points toward
the magnetic pole. The machine my
inventor had constructed was the
needle of compass on large scale.
$50 delicately adjusted was the rela-
tivity of the many magnets of which it
was composed that he claimed that by
it into the air, by means of
balloon, and completing the magnet cir
cult, he could remain stationary while
the earth revolved under him. The
revolution of the earth on its axis does
not vary the position of the magnetic
pole" he explained. 1--WE will not go
with the earth on it's journey through
space. but we will let it pass us ON its
revolution around its magnetic pole, to
which it will remain true as the needle
to the star"
alt was worth the money as curl
Osity, thought, and l made the condi-
tion of giving it to him that the first
trial of the machine should be made
from Columbus and with me as a pas
senger. What / did looks foolhardy
from this distance of time, but then I
felt not the slightest fear.
''In about month he came back, and
with the greatest joy told me the
machine was finished and would arrive
in a day or so by freight. A number of
boxes were hauled up to my place one
day and the inventor asked permission
to put it together on the fiat roof of the
store. This l gave him, and he went to
work and had the boxes carried up
there. After a day or so he told
me to come up and see the
invention. 1t looked for all the
world like q typewriting ma
chine without the keyboard. The
round top, he told me, was made of six
teen horseshoe magnets, arranged in a
particular way, and the hundreds of
small pieces of metal connected other
magnets with them in 100 or more COM
binatiOns of the mysterious force. A
good-sized balloon was attached to the
and when this was inflated
with gas brought from down stairs
through hose, everything was ready
for US to step into the box which hung
from the network of metallic rods.
ut was summer time and'we agreed
that we would make q trial trip one
before sunrise. We were on |
The housetop at 4:S0 in the morning and