Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1891-08-27
WAR AND AERIAL SHIPS
POSSIBILITIES REGARDING FUTURE
FLYING MACHINES

| How Vast Navies and Expensive Land
Fortifcstions Might Be Rendered Use
Iess-Antiquity of the Idea of Flying.
Some Schemes of the Ancients.
Regarding the rate of propulsion of the
future flying machine, Professor J. Elf
teth Watkins, the distinguished mechani-
cal expert, declares that it simply depends
upon the size of the propeller used and
the rate at which the fans are revolved.
In his opinion the old theory that the at
mosphere was too tenuous medium for
a propeller to act upon has been demon
strated to be nonsense Sufficient resist
ance is offered by it to render possible an
enormous speed, so that it would not be
too much to surmise that properly con-
structed air ship might accomplish the
distance between Chicago and New York
within an hours time.
Necessarily, however, there would be a
limit to rapidity of flight, inasmuch as
propeller ceases to propel after certain
number of revolutions per second has
been reached 1t is open to any ones OBJ
servation that vessels propeller, oper-
ating in the water, often revolves much
faster when the craft is moving slowly
than when it is going fast.
Attention was called by Mr.. Hazen to
the tremendous revolution which the in
PRODUCTION of practical air ships would
work in the methods of offense and de-
fense in war Fortifcations, on which
it is suggested that Uncle Sam shall ex-
pend $4,000, 900 as soon as possible,
would be of little use against flying ma
chimes that could drop dynamite and
other explosives from aloft. Likewise
ships of war, however heavily armored,
would be at the mercy of hostile aerial
navigators.
COSTLY GUNS RENDERED USELESS.
In such case batteries of a descrip-
ton altogether new would have to be
devised for shooting vertically, and the
general defending position on terra
firma would be obliged to assail the
winged foe with volleys of bombs di-
rected upward, as one would shoot
ducks on the wing. Should such state
of affairs come to pass, it seems likely
ILdS Jllc VI IuC DCbWCCu
nations will have to be fought out in the
air between squadrons of flying men-of-
war. About that time one would imag-
inc, it would be considered that the
period had arrived, so long looked for
by military thinkers, when there could
be no more fighting because it would be
too vastly destructive
Having achieved the conquest of the
waters, it is natural that man should
likewise desire the mastery of the air,
and thus in all ages the human race has
been ambitious to fly. The earliest at
tempt in this direction recorded by ira
dition is the mythical account of DB-
dalus, who, having constructed the cele-
brated labyrinth for Minos, king of
Crete, was so unfortunate as to offend
that monarch, and being imprisoned,
escaped with the aid of wings made of
feathers cemented with wax.
Another ancient story of Archytas, of
Tarentum, who constructed a wooden |
pigeon that had power to fly, so nicely |
was it balanced by weight and put to
motion by inclosed air. If there is any
truth in the account, it seems probable |
that Archytas was a fakir and worked |
his bird with string, as is done On the |
stage. The ancients, generally speak
ing, made no attempts in the direction |
of aeronautics, believing that the power
of fight could only appertain to the
most powerful gods.
OLD SCHEMES FOR FLYING.
Four centuries ago an ingenious gen
tleman named Lauretus Taurus pub
lished statement, to the effect that |
swans eggs filled with quicksilver, when
exposed to the sun, would ascend in the |
air, but it is not recorded that the ex-
pertinent was ever subjected satisfac-
torily to scientific test. In 1870 Jesuit,
Francis Lana, proposed to make four
copper balls, each twenty-five feet in /
diameter and only four one-thousandths
of an inch in thickness, from which the
air was to be exhausted.
To these balls a basket was to be at
tached, with a mast and sail, and the
was that the contrivance
would carry /, 200 pounds. Unfortunate
ly it was discovered that the excessive
thinness of the copper spheres would
cause them to be broken when vacuum
was created inside of them by the press
ure of the atmosphere from without.
Nevertheless, this suggestion ap-
preached more nearly to practicable
idea in aerostatics than any other offered
up to the time of the invention of the
balloon in 1888 by the brothers Mont
golfer. So late as 1775 Joseph Galien,
a Dominican friar and professor in
philosophy, contended that it would be
possible to collect the rarefed air of
some lofty mountain top and inclose it
in a huge vessel mile in diameter,
which would carry ffty-four times as
much weight as did Noah's ark.
Funnily enough, nearly all the early
theorists on this subject imagined that
the atmosphere merely covered the
earth like shallow ocean, on which the
aerial vessels they had in mind were in
tended to float, like ships in the sea,
with their upper portions in the diffuse
ether that lay above.-Washington Star.