The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-04-21
HUGE POLAR AIRSHIP
wELLMAN's MACHINE IS NEAR TO
 PERFECTION.
Much Economy in Weight-Great Strength and Lifting Power Combined With the Maxi
 mum of Utility.

mum Of Utility.
 Walter wellman's New York Cores
 pondence to The Chicago Record
 Herald
 Tn speaking of the airship America of The Record Herald expedition we often use such adjectives as huge" gigantic. enormous" We believe the adjectives are justified by the facts. At any rate. we will give the facts and let the reader judge for himself.
 The ship of the air is composed of two distinct parts, though. of course. they are bound together, and each would be useless without the other. One is the gas reservoir or balloon; the other the car and mechanical part suspended underneath 1t. AS to the first, 1t is commonly called the bal loon. It is a balloon, in a sense. but we dislike to use the word, because 1t gives some people the idea that we are going to try to reach the north pole in Il balloon-a mere spherical, drift ing balloon. toy of the winds, such as the unfortunate Andree used. Need less to say, 1t Is not a balloon we are employing The balloon idea we do not believe Tn. and never did. Years ago-namely, in 1894, after an expe- dition to Spitzbergen-we had the idea of using a balloon. That was before Andree thought of 1t, We had a pro- ject prepared by a we'll known firm of aeronautic constructors in Paris. We examined that project with great care, and came to the conclusion it was too hazardous. that 1t offered too little promise of success, too much risk of failure and disaster We discarded it..
 To pop up into the air In an appara- tus that could do nothing but drift with the winds wheresoever they listed, even though 1t be to destruction, seem ed to us nothing but temptation to fate to do its worst. A year later An dree announced his intention to try the balloon. and curiously enough he made his base of operations at the very spot in Spitzbergen we had thought of us- ing, and where we are now with our headquarters. Every one knows what happened to Andree.
 But an airship is quite a different thing from a balloon. It Is something more than a toy of the winds It has propulsive force. It can fight the winds It can go against them If they are not too strong. It can steer to the right or the left. It is. within it's limi- tations, a true ship of the air. It ,s more like a steamship. while a bal loon is nothing but a raft-not even a
 
 the wind, and tack, and get some where
 Hence our dislike of calling the gas reservoir of the America a balloon. IL Is not a balloon. It Is the buoyant force of an airship, of an aerial cruis- CT.
 The gas reservoir of the America is a pretty large affair. In its present state. as enlarged for the campaign of 1907 1t is 1S3 feet in length. Place thirty such ships end to end and they would stretch out more than a mile. It's greatest diameter is 52.5 feet something like the height of a four story house. The surface of the enve- lope is about q 900 square feet. or more than half an acre. The weight of this envelope. together with it's interior ballooret. as the French call it, it's valves and the stout parts on its sides to which the car Is suspended by steel cables, is over two tons-4 100 pounds. The material Is in three thicknesses of strong cotton. each coated with an emulsion of pure rubber and all three stuck together into one piece of cloth The cotton is for tensile strength. which runs as high as 800 pounds per square foot. The rubber is to hold the gas. to prevent it's leaking out This Is the first airship to be built of three thick nesses of material, so far as know The best up to this time was r"two thick neses, and that was deemed good enough The advantage of three thick nesses. in addition to great tensile strength. is great gas tightness Should there be an imperfection in one spot in one layer 1t is highly improb- able there would he another imperfec- tion at the same place in tue second layer And. in the third layer, almost impossible.
 The volume of this reservoir is 265,- 800 cubic feet Reckoning the air within it at the temperature of g. de- grees Fahrenheit Cthe normal tempera- t,;re in the arctic regions in July and AuCustl and at the average barometric pressure of 760 millimeters, the weight or that air is 21 .430 pounds--more than ten and a half tons. If we put into the reservoir hydrogen gas of good quantity. almost but not quite pure, we find that the weight of the gas is L. S75 pounds Inasmuch s the weight of tho air displaced is 21,43o pounds the lifting force when inflated with hydrogen is 19.5oo -j"''s. In other words. SO inflated th' ship would lift nearly ten tons, including. of course. it's own weight. And as the reservoir itself and its immediate appurtenances weigh about two tons. we are able to attp .h to it a weight of more than seven and half tons, and leave it still enough huoyancy 10 rise in the air.
 The mechanical part suspended un- derneath is built on an equally large scale Last year the car was of combination of iron and wood wood en framing reinforced hv iron strips That car has been entirely discarded. In fact, We did not even take the trouble to bring tt back from Spitzber- gen We have built an entirely new car-this time wholly of steel tubing The old car was fifty-two feet long, The new one is 115 feet long. These