Los Angeles herald., 1909-10-17

| lMdYAM I'll Clety VIII meet Monday III ar
ay ss9SIl nual session at Worcester,
Isl N Mass. This society is made up
lKA %1dl of many of Americas foremost
ssszsaa people, and lacks but three
/ years of completing its lOOth
| anniversary The late Senator Hoar
was one of its leading spirits during his
! life and SO was the venerable Edward
| Everett Hale, who was a member
for more than sixty years and held the
record for length of membership. 1t
has a library of more than 200 vol
umes and one of the finest collections
of antiquara Americana in existence.
/ 1t has property valued at about a
quarter of a million dollars, and sew
eral substantial buildings for admins
trative and library purposes
When Bancroft came to write his his
tory of the United States one of his
principal sources of information was
| the library of this society. Other
writer's have been welcomed also TO
consult its original sources. Some of
the rarest and most interesting manu-
scripts relating to American history are
to be found there,
Among these interesting manuscripts
are the letters of Benjamin Franklin,
| in which he reported the first balloon
ascensions in France Had he been a
| modern-day newspaper reporter his de-
4 scriptions of the conquests of the air
/
could not have been more vivid or
picturesdue In fact, when one reads
| his descriptions of the first conquests
of the air he wonders whether the
world did not lose more when 1t gave
Franklin to the eighteenth century
than if he had been reserved Tor the
present generation.
Reciting the details of the ascension
of the first balloon, he tells how it was
| a globe twelve feet in diameter, made
of oiled silk with the parts sewed to-
gethcr while wet and the seams care
fully covered over with an air-tieht
dressing. 1t was filed, he says, with
inf1ammable air made by pouring oil
of vitriol on filings of iron, and it had
a lifting capacity of twenty-nine
/ pounds greater than its own weight.
Upon being released it made a bee line
upward to the clouds, and was no
larger than an orange when 1t passed
into the mists of the skies.
1t was not heard from for some time.
| When it came back to earth it had
| bursted, Franklin surmising that from
reaching such rarified air the internal
pressure exceeded the external and
caused the bursting of the bag. When
| it landed the natives saw it bounding
on the ground, and thinking it con-
tained some wild animal, fell upon it
with knives and sticks and stones. They
cut 1t to pieces, but it was carried back
to the city and repaired.
Franklin unbridles his imagination
after describing the event. and at
| tempts to foretell the future. He con-
cludes that the air is conquered, that
| hereafter captive balloons will be an
chored at every homestead, and that
by the use of pulleys and strong ropes
the people will pull their game and
other meats into the skies for safe
keeping and natural refrigeration,
and that no matter how hot the wealth.
er may be, natural ice can be had
at a moments notice simply by send
ing a pailful of water UP into the
heavens and allowing it to freeze. In
addition to this the Quaker philoso-
pher showed that he had the germ
of the amusement park creator. He
observed that nothing would be more
natural than that some promoter
only that was not the word he used
should capitalize the idea by estab-
fishing a scenic railway to the clouds,
where. for a guinea any one might get
a birds eye view Of the earth below
and the heavens above.
The next ascension carried a sheep,
a duck and a cock. This balloon was
| larger than the former and the gas
used was of cheaper variety. Frank
lin covers this story with equal
minuteness, except that he does not
describe the sensations of the sheep.
the duck, and the cock. But he does
record the fact that the sheep and the
duck stood the trip exceedingly well,
while the cock surrendered his life as
a martyr to science and aerial naviga-
tion. Franklin also describes the third
ascension, in which two passengers
We're carried. They made their bal
loon gas by burning straw, and when
they wanted to go higher they simply
fed more straw into the furnace. When
they wanted to come lower they found
it easy by using less straw.
With the navigation of the air now
making such wonderful strides, the
letters of Franklin describing in mi
mute detail the beginnings become one
of the most interesting series In exist
ence, and they will be much in demand
by the historians of the flying machine
epoch in world history. They rank
high among the interesting possessions
of the Antiquarian society.
Another paper in the possess of
the society which is of more than or
dinary interest, in the light of present
conditions, is one of the first COM
mercial announcements of the tele-
phone. 1t states that the telephone is
recent invention and recites that "it
transmits, with equal facility, names,
figures, foReign words or plain Eng
lish; that no skill Is required to operate
it except to speak distinctly and to