Year: 1878

A Talk With Inventor Ritchel About His New


Balloon---Can Not Go Against the Wind.


''I have overcome said Mr.. RitcheI,
the inventor of the new flying machine,
to Herald reporter yesterday afternoon,
the fatal objection which has always
been made to the practicability of aerial
navigation--that is, have made ma
chine that can be steered. I claim no
more. 1 have never pretended that a
balloon can be made TO go aSainst the
wind, and | am sure il never could. 1t is
as ridiculous as perpetual motion ma
chine, and the latter will be invented
just as soon as the former"


1t wSs on just this point that the
reporter desired Mr.. Ritchel to express
his opinion, fer an impression seemed
generally to prevail that balloon has
been invented which can be made to
navigate the air as successfully as q
steamship sails the ocean. But the IL
ventor, who is spending few days in
the city on business relating to his new
invention, is anxious to disclaim any
such pretension. What his machine can
be made to do is to rise or descend at the
will of the navigator, to sail with and
faster than a swift wind, to hold its own
against a wind moving at the rate
of from four to six miles an nour, and to
move slowly against three mile breeze.
Mr.. Ritchel is professional inventor,
and has taken out nearly a hundred
patents in this country as well as in
France, England and Canada. His
inventions have run mainly in the direc-
tion of labor-saving machinery, and from
! one patent he claims to have cleared
$4,000. "My principal invention" he
! said yesterday, was a machine for bor-
ing holes in brushes and cane-seat chairs,
and another for inlsying wood, which is
the only machine for that purpose in
existence, but my pet idea is the flying
machine"


WHAT THE MACHINE CAN DO.


&" When did the idea occur TO you ?''


g Well. / think il Was some time in
| the year 1871. Ny attention was turned
in that direction, and I've been thinking
it over ever since. About nine months
ago began working on the machine in
Bridgeport, Conn. The first public
exhibition was at the centennial exhibi-
tion buildings, on the 10th of May 1
exhibited the flyer there for tho weeks,
and then another week in the city of





exhibition was at Hartford on the 18th
of June. There were about ten thousand
people there, and the weather was
perfect. The machine went inlany direc-
ton desired, and even came back against
slight wind. In Boston, ON the 4th of
July, the wind was blowing across the
common at the rate of twenty-five or
thirty miles an hour, and didn't want
to send the balloon up at all; but there
were hundred thousand people there
and didn't like to disappeint them. So
I said to Mark Tuttle, the navigator,
"Now, Mark, get her up as quick as
flash or you'll blow against the houses"
He went up like streak, and only miss
ed the trees by twenty feet. The wind
took him like fash out of town, and he
finally landed at Dover. The crowd
stood there waiting for him to ocome back
against the wind and go up again, and
we couldn't explain that that was imPog-
sible. There,were 200 refreshment booths
along the sidewalks and around, and the
owners told every one the balloon weuld
be back in half an hour. So the crowd
stood there from two o'clock till five
waiting for the machine to come back
The man got back about five on the train,
and was afraid TO take the balloon up to
the common for fear mob might destroy
it."


'How do you propose ever to utilize
the invention?"


ITS CONSTRUCTION.


81 In hundred ways. AS soon rs L
have perfected it, and people come to
understand it thoroughly, it will come
into use. Even now, I've had ever SO
many applications for machines F.; but
man couldn't use one ifhe had it. This
one is small, and intended only for
exhibitions under cover. The weight of