The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1894-02-28
WAR AND AERIAL SHIPS,
POSSIBILITIES REGARDING FUTURE
FLYING MACHINES.

How Vast Navies and Expensive Ian
Forti6eations Might Be Rendered Use
less-Antiquity of the Idea of Flvins
Some Schemes of the Ancients.
Regarding the rate of propulsion of th
future flying machine, Professor J. Ell
teth Watkins, the distinguished mechani
cal expert, declares that it simply depend
upon the size of the propeller used an,
the rate at which the fans are reyolyed
In his opinion the old theory that the at
mosphere was too tenuous a medium 70
a propeller to act upon has been demon
strated to be nonsense. Sufficient resist
ance is offered by it to render possible al
enormous speed, SO that it would not b.
too much to surmise that d properly con
structed air ship might accomplish thu
distance between Chicago and New Yorl
within an hours time.
Necessarily, however, there would be q
limit to rapidity of flight, inasmuch as a
propeller ceases to propel after a certain
number of revolutions per second has
been reached. 1t is open to any ones OBJ
servation that a vessels propeller. oper-
atlng 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-
Tense in war. F~ortitications, on which
1t Is suggested that Uncle Sam shall ex-
pend $50, 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 a s. batteries of a descrip-
ton altogether new would have to be
devised for shooting vertically, and the
general defending a position on terra
tirma 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 a state
of affairs COM to pass, it seems likely
that the conflicts of the future between
will have to be fought out in the
air between %squadrons of flying men-of-
war. About that time one would mag
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
vastly destructive.
Having achieved the conquest of the
waters, it is natural that man should
likewise desire the mastery of the air.
md thus in all ages the human race has
oeen ambitious to fly. The earliest at
3empt in this direction recorded by ira
t1tlon Is the mythical account of DB-
1alus, who, having constructed the cele-
labyrinth for Minos, king of
jrete, was so unfortunate as to offend
monarch, and being imprisoned,
escaped with the aid of wings made of
cemented with wax.
Another ancient story of Archvtas, of
,arentum, who constructed a wooden
lgeon that had power to fly, so nicely
vas it balanced by weight and put to
aotlon by inclosed air. If there is any
ruth in the account, it seems probable
nat Archytas was a fakir and worked {
Is bird with a string, as is done on the
tage. The a~ncients, generally speak
lg, made no attempts in the direction
t a~eronautics, believing that the power c
flight could only appertain to the fl
lost powerful gods.
OLD SCHEMES FOR FLYING.
-Four centuries ago an ingenious gen.
eman named Lauretus Taurus pub
shed a statement to the effect that =
eggs filed with quicksilver, when !,
iposed to the sun, would ascend in the 4
r, but it is not recorded that the ex-
was ever subjected satisfac-
r1ly to scientific test. In 1870 a Jesuit, !,
rancls Lana, proposed to make four n
PIPER balls, each twenty-five feet in d
ameter and.oDly four one-thousandths t
an inch IN thickness, from which the
was to be exhausted.
10 these balls a basket was to be at
ched, with a mast and sail, and the
lculatlon was that the continuance
ould carry 1900 pounds. Unfortunate
1t was discovered that the excessive
lnness OF the copper spheres would
use them to be broken when a vacuum
Is created inside Of them by the press
OF the atmosphere from without. IL
nevertheless, this suggestion an ~
oached more nearly to a practicable aro'
"a in aerostatics than any other offered ms
to the time of the invention of the ne
loon in 1888 by the brothers Mont ne
her. So late as 1915 Joseph Cali n, an
Dominican friar and professor in isf
llosophy, contended hat it would be bu
to collect the rareied air Of eV'
ne lofty mountain top and inclose it "o
a huge vessel a mile in diameter. W
would carry ffty-four times as NJ
Oh weight as did Noah's ark. Ma
'unnlly enough, nearly all the early AM
on this subject imagined that En-
atmosphere merely covered the rec
til like a shallow ocean, on which the pro
lal vessels they had in mind were in /,
ded to float, like ships in the sea, n
n their upper portions in the diffuse
ar that lay above.-Washington Star. n.