The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-06
The Plying Machine.

| w HIle III gaflS III lSoJ saw SOlllS Nel,
 beautiful seamless tubes of steel, cop
 per, brass and also of German silver.
 was assured that they could be madc
 of almost any size and thickness, ant
 of almost any length, but the small ant
 thin tubes were exceedingly expensive
 These tubes caused me again to think
 of the subject of aerial navigation, anc
 while on a journey through the Aus
 trian Alps studied a great deal on the subject, and it appeared to me thai with these light tubes should be able ito make a steam generator light enough for the flying machine of which l had so long been thinking. From Austria went to Spain, and while there l had the misfortune to break a muscle in my leg, which confined me to my room for "a considerable time. l obtained pen, ink, and a lot of paper, and amused myself by making a great number of mathematical calculations in regard to weight and power of a steam generator and of engines, also in regard to the thrust of screws working in the air, and the lifting power of aeroplanes. l On my return to England I employed | all my leisure moments In making | drawings of a pair of compound en- zines three-hundred horse power, for my proposed flying machine, and, the drawings finished, I at once set about to have the engines made. I decided to make the whole engine of steel.
 The crank shafts were very light and hollow, and were highly tempered; the cylinders were of a high grade of steel; the passageways, etc., were made or seamless drawn tubes, and the whole was very neatly riveted and then brazed with silver solder. The cylinders were then rebored and their thickness reduc- ed to 3-32 inch. I made my connecting rods of steel tubes, using the insides as an oil reservoir These connecting rods were new in design, having universal joints at both ends. Two pairs of en- zines were built Gone pair for each of the two screws which I proposed to have on my flying machine), and every ounce of steel in them was of the very best quality When finished it was found that they weighed collectively six hundred pounds, and that they would develop over three hundred horse-pow- CT. These were by far the lightest en- zines for their power ever built in the world
 The next problem was the steam gen. orator. I again went to Paris to see about the tubes, but I found that the kind I required had only been made in small quantities. and were very high priced. However, I ordered lot of the very thin and strong copper tubes. The price agreed upon was equal to their weight in silver, namely, Si50 for the lot.
 These tubes were made and forwarded to England. But at that time happen ed to be in St. Petersburg, and in my absence they were placed in the stores of my gun company, and before I re- turned to England some of the dishon- est employees of that company stole the tubes, and sold them as old copper for about $5, and went on a debauch with the proceeds and the beautiful tubes which had cost so much money and taken so long to make were again reduc- ed to pig copper. Another set of tubes was obtained as soon as possible ana experiments commenced with the boil- CT. The first boiler did not prove satis- factory, and a third set of tubes of larger diameter was obtained, and an other boiler was built. When finished it had, with it's feed-water heater which really formed a part of the boil CT, a heating surface of 800 square feet It weighed with it's gas burner, easing, and smoke stack about 1000 pounds. Experiments were then made with a gas apparatus, as I believed that gas was the only fuel suitable for running a boiler constructed of such a large number of very thin tubes. This re- quired a great deal of experimenting, but in the end I succeeded in making and burning all the gas required, and I found that my boiler would make all the steam that my engines would use.
 I then constructed a species of plat form car mounted on four flanged wheels. The boiler was placed on the forward end of this car, and the en- zines attached to the req end on brack- cts I had already made a number of very large, light, and strong wooden screws of white pine, worked down very thin, and covered with strong linen. They wer found to be very efficient. Each screw was seventeen feet ten inch es in diameter, and had pitch of six teen feet In the meantime I had been providing a railroad track, nine-feet guage, leading from the shop where I had built my machine across a field, a distance of 1,S00 feet When every thing was in readiness I ran my ma chine out on the track and started my engines, and found that the screws could be run at very high velocity that they got a good grip on the air. and would propel my platform car across the field at a high velocity.
 Chinese Games.