The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1891-12-10
CAR AND SHIP.
An Inventors Novel Apparatus
for Exploring Africa.
A Strange Craft which VIII With Equal
Facility Navigate the Land or
Water Principles of Its
CONSTRUCTION.


Watcr-Principies of Its
CONSTRUCTION.
Plans worthy of the authorship 81
Jules Verne have been undergoing 8
! process of slow evolution in the brain Of
G. M. Lemery, of East Oakland, 70,
nearly four years, says the San Fran
cisco Chronicle. He has completed
working drawings of queerly con
trived land-ship with which he
proposes to roam through the un.
discovered gold regions and the
unexplored plains and depths o1
AfricYt discovering long-lost deposits OF
riches, the source of Solomons gilded
glories, gathering tons Of precious
ivory, revealing the unknown in books
Of travel and adventure, and generally
winning wealth and fame if success
shall reward his hopes. His land-ship
is a big car of aluminium, strong and
light, which is to climb mountains, Jolt
over logs, travel through forests and over
plains, and like u duck plunge from the
banks of rivers and lakes right into the
water and speed uninterrupted to oppo-
site shores. This contrivance would be
at once the home, fort, shelter, means
of transportation and travelling store
house of the exploring party.
Mr.. Lcncry seems TO be neither an
enthusiast nor an adventurer. He has
no particular ambition to be great ex-
plorer. and the whole thing is to him a
business proposition. He is quiet
hammered man. thirty-one years old,
and is machinist and engineer by
trade. About four years ago he be-
came impressed with the idea that the
dark continent was the one remaining
new country where poor man could
get rich easily, and the idea has clung
to him ever since. He wanted to 90
there to prospect for mines, and in
planning how he could travel long dis
tances through an almost unknown
country the idea of steam engine to
travel on land early occurred to him.
AS strength and lightncss are requi-
sites, Mr.. Lcmery proposed to build the
land-ship almost entirely of aluminium,
which weighs 1cS pounds to the cubic
foot, while steel weighs about 475
pounds TO the cubic foot. The cylinders
to the engine would be of steel and
much of the fittings and furniture in
side of wood. The body of the land
ship as planned is 50 feet long, 13 feet
wide and feet high. It is to be made
OF aluminium plates one-fourth of an
inch thick for the lower half and one
sixteenth of an inch thick for the upper
half of the sides and the roof In the
rear end is q large space for wood,
which can be cut and loaded anywhere,
and the boiler stands abast the center.
At the forward end are two twenty
four-horse power cylinders working a
shaft which bears wheel outside the
car at each end. BY an endless chain
the motion of this wheel is trans
mitted to a larger one be.
tween the two main wheels, fourteen
feet In diameter, which are driven
by means OF chains passing over
the driving wheel between them. The
main wheels are built like a bicycle
wheel, the spolses being aluminium
rods onc-fourth of an inch in diameter.
The tires Of the main wheels are eight
cen inches in diameter. The large
have no axles connecting with
the car. The car rests on shaft which
passes through the driving wheels, and
the main wheels are connected by a
strong aluminium bar, which supports
The car and can revolve on the main
shaft. The wheels could thus go over
logs without elevating the car much,
and the ends of the bars bearing the |
'front.' main wheels can be hooked read |
ly, making three-wheeled car, easy |
% turn around The front end of the
'ar rests on single wheel, which turns
'eadily in any direction. At the front
md is drum, on which eight hundred
eet OF cable to pull the car if necessary
" to pull distractions out of the way
an be wound by a small engine for the
purpose. The bottom of the car is a
vater tank, while another water COM
'artment surrounds the outside of the
ar.
The interior is to provide living ac-
ommodations for twenty men. AS
teamer, the body of the car or land
hip resembles on its bottom a fiatboat
r Il scow schooner. A lever connects
PROPELLER shaft with the machinery, and
s the land-ship climbs down into the
Vater and begins to float the propeller
ends it onward over the CLASSY surface
some crystal lake, ripplcd only by
he awful hippopotami. If the water
rip be long the land wheels can be
aiken off and laid on the roof. When
1ood is to be cut, the propeller is
Tipped off it's shaft and little wood
aw chews up fuel in no time. The en-
ineer works the land-ship from his
in front. The whole car Is
tanned to weigh fifteen or twenty tons.
Japanese Cigarettes.
An industry of great promise in Japan
or purposes of export is the manufac-