The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-11-28
NERVE HACKING ACTS.
sOML Ot HE MANY HAIS OF
 BREAhING IOLK NkCh

suited in Deaths--N heel Invented by German-Pay Received by PerfOr-
 mers.
 ! Looping he loop and its progeny are the most effective deY4ces yet invented tor producing apparent 4s well us real danger, says .he Scientific American. Does any one still remember the Amer ican bicyciisC who used 70 ride at ter Ilfying speed down a steeply inclined sixty-foot ladder? One night an at- tack of vertigo caused his death, but his act was less dangerous than the performances OH inverted and aerial paths to whicn we have since become accustomed.
 In looping the loop, first performed by James Smithson, better known as DiaVolo, bicyclist starts from plat form sixty feet high and plunges down a track which extends obliquely
 for one hundred feet to the ground, and thence rises to form a complete spiral loop twenty or twenty-five feet in diameter. The speed acquired by ] the cyclist in descending the inclined plane carries him around the loop. When Diavolo, preceded by a great reputation, came to Paris he found one Noiset, known professionally as Me phisto, preparing to loop the loop at rival music hall.
 While several cyclists were preparing to loop the loop honestly, one man, un- willing to risk his life for the amuse- ment of spectators, devised loop with a concealed groove which guided his wheel and kept it from falling. His trick was accidentally exposed by a clown who got his foot caught in the groove, and the disgraced looper fell into obloquy and oblivion.
 The public soon tires of the strongest sensations. The stationary loop gave place to the rotating circle called the devils wheel, in which the cyclist spins like a squirrel Taking his place inside the wheel, which is about fifteen feet in diameter, he pedals in direc- tion opposite to that of the wheel, and thus remains at the bottom until the wheel has acquired considerable veloc- ity. Then he stops pedalling, applies his brake, and is carried backward and upward nearly to the top, whence he rushes down, and flies around and around the revolving wheel with start ling speed.
 At a performance in Vienna a cyclist stricken with apoplexy fell from the wheel and soon expired. But the dan ger of cerebral congestion is not the only one. The critical phase of the act is the last, when both the bicycle and the large wheel are being brought to rest by brakes. The bicycle lurches, and the slightest error in steering may send it through the open side of the wheel and precipitate the rider to the stage.
 In Germany a genius called "Eclair'' invented an internal wheel of another sort. It was about twenty-five feet in diameter and a smaller wheel rolled round inside of it, obtaining it's impetus from a plunge down an inclined plane which made a descent of fifty feet. TO this small wheel "Eclair" was !ashed lh spreadeagle fashion. He accustomed himself to this novel mode of locomo- tion by having himself strapped to a similar wheel, which was turned rapid lv about a fixed axis by means of a crank,
 More startling and perilous than any of these devices is the "circle of death. This is a large, flat, truncated cone, like the rim of pudding dish, sup ported by ropes in a position slightly inclined to the horizontal, so that only one side of the lower and smaller cage rests on the stage. Bicyclists-one or more-enter the central space and run up and around the steep side With their machines and bodies nearly hofl- zontal. Then to add to the apparent land real danger, the whole apparatus IS raised aIoft, The effect is thrilling, Tor the riders appear to be in constant dan ger of falling. In Berlin, as three cy- clfsts were gyrating in a single circle o1 death, one fell and carried second down with him. They had scarcely reached the stage when the third per- former fell also.
 T tThe globe of death," an interesting and comparatively safe act recently exhibited in a New York theatre, con- pines some of the features of looping the loop and the devils wheel. Two biclists, a man and woman, enter a stationary latticework globe some twenty feet in diameter and course around it at great speed in both ver- ticaI and horizontal circles.
 All of the acts hitherto described are performed with complete circles or loops. The next development was the removal of the topmost part of the yer tical loop, leaving an air space through which the bicyclist dies head down. ward. This feat is called looping the gap"
 Mile. Dutrieu, "the human arrow" " produces a more graceful effect by traversing a gap in a track which would not, if complete, form a loop. The first section of the track is a plane fifty feet long, inclined thirty degrees to the horizontal and terminating in a short upward curve. The second sec tion begins with a saddleback curve and ends in a plane inclined upward for the purpose of bringing the bicycle to rest. The twot sections are separated by gap of fifty feet, through which the cyclist flies like an arrow. It is worthy of note that women formed a large majority of the spectators of the human arrows first public flight.
 A feat performed by the cyclist Ma rok might be called looping without a I1oo,o HIbo +ro oly rasapohlas tho frs+