Waterbury evening Democrat., 1891-11-25
CAR AND SHIP.
An Inventors Novel Apparatus
for Exploring Africa.
A Strange Craft Which VIII with Equal
Facility Navigate the Land
Water-PrincipIes of Its
Construction.

Plans worthy of the authorship OF
Jules Verne have been undergoing a |
process of slow evolution in the brain of |
c. NJ. Lemery, of East Oakland, for
nearly four years, says the San Fran
cisco Oh! lie. He has completed |
working drawings of a queerly con-
trived land-ship with which he |
proposes to roam through the I'M
discovered gold regions and the |
unexplored plains and depths of
Africa, discovering 1ong-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 big car of aluminium, strong and
light, which is to climb mountains, jolt
over logs, travel through forests and over
plains, and like 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.. Lemery 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 a 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 a poor man could
get rich easily, and the idea has chung
to him ever since. He wanted to go
there to prospect for mines, and in
planning how he could travel long dis
tances through an almost unknown
country the idea of q steam engine to
travel on land early occurred to him.
AS strength and lightness are requi-
sites, Mr. Lemery proposed to build the
land-ship almost entirely of aluminium,
which weighs 16S pounds to the cubic
foot, while steel weighs about AS
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 SO feet long, IS feet
wide and feet high. 1t 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 abaft the center.
| At the forward end are two twenty
fOur-hOrse power cylinders working
| 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 bicycle
wheel, the spol1es being aluminium
rods one-fourth of an inch in diameter.
The tires of the main wheels are eight
cen inches in diameter. The large
, wheels 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
lily, making a thrce-wheeled car, easy
to turn around. The front end of the
car rests on a single wheel, which turns
readily in any direction. At the front
end is a drum, on which eight hundred
feet of cable to pull the car if necessary
or to pull Instructions out of the way
can be wound by small engine for the
| purpose. The bottom of the car is a
water tank, while another water com
partment surrounds the outside of the
car.
The interior is to provide living &C
commodations for twenty men. AS a
steamer, the body of the car or land
ship resembles on its bottom a hatboat
or d scow schooner. A lever connects a
propeller shaft with the machinery, and
as the land-ship climbs down into the
water and begins to float the propeller
sends it onward over the CLASSY surface
of some crystal lake, rippled only by
the awful hippopotami. If the water
trip be long the land wheels can be
taken off and laid on the roof. When
wood is to be cut, the propeller is
slipped off it's shaft and a little wood
saw chews up fuel in no time. The en-
gineer works the land-ship from his
pilot-house in front. The whole car is
planned to weigh fifteen or twenty tons.
| Japanese Cigarettes.