L SCIEMCE SER 
 
THE 
 
 Practical Science Series 
 
 The following Vols, are now ready or in the Press : — 
 
 BALLOONS, AIRSHIPS, AND FLYING MACHINES. 
 By Gertrude Bacon. 
 
 MOTORS AND MOTORING. By Professor Harry 
 Spooner. 
 
 RADIUM. By Dr. Hampson. 
 
 METEOROLOGY; or, Weather Explained. By J. 
 Gordon MTherson, M.A., LL.D. 
 
 Others in Preparation 
 
'? 1 2 1984 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 
 AT CHAPEL HILL 
 
 ENDOWED BY THE 
 DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC 
 LIBRARY SOCIETIES 
 
 gCHOOL 
 
 J H629.13 
 Bacon 
 c. 2 
 
 
The Authoress, her Father, and Mr. Spencer 
 making an ascent. 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
BALLOONS ^co. 
 AIRSHIPS AND FLYING 
 
 MACHINES l.0^ 
 
 BY 
 
 GERTRUDE BACON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 
 
 LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 
 
 1905' 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING ... 9 
 
 II. THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON . 23 
 
 III. FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 38 
 
 IV. THE BALLOON AS A SCIENTIFIC INSTRU- 
 
 MENT 6 ? 
 
 V. THE BALLOON IN WARFARE ... 69 
 
 VI. THE AIRSHIP 84 
 
 VII. THE FLYING MACHINE ..... 105 
 
 VIII. CONCLUSION 119 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 
 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/balloonsairshipsOObaco 
 
BALLOONS, AIRSHIPS, AND 
 FLYING MACHINES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 
 
 One November night in the year 1782, so the 
 story runs, two brothers sat over their winter 
 fire in the little French town of Annonay, 
 watching the grey smoke-wreaths from the 
 hearth curl up the wide chimney. Their names 
 were Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, they 
 were papermakers by trade, and were noted 
 as possessing thoughtful minds and a deep 
 interest in all scientific knowledge and new 
 discovery. Before that night — a memor- 
 able night, as it was to prove — hundreds of 
 millions of people had watched the rising 
 smoke-wreaths of their fires without drawing 
 any special inspiration from the fact ; but 
 on this particular occasion, as Stephen, the 
 younger of the brothers, sat and gazed at the 
 familiar sight, the question flashed across his 
 mind, " What is the hidden power that makes 
 those curling smoke-wreaths rise upwards, and 
 
10 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 could I not employ it to make other things 
 rise also ? " 
 
 Then and there the brothers resolved on an 
 
 Medallion showing Bkothees Montgolfier. 
 
 experiment. They made themselves a small 
 fire of some light fuel in a little. tin tray or 
 chafing-dish, and over the smoke of it they 
 held a large paper-bag. And to their delight 
 they saw the bag fill out and make a feeble 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 11 
 
 attempt to rise. They were surely on the 
 eve of some great invention ; and yet, try as 
 they would, their experiment would not quite 
 succeed, because the smoke in the bag always 
 became too cool before there was enough in it 
 to raise it from the table. But presently, 
 while they were thus engaged, a neighbour of 
 theirs, a widow lady, alarmed by seeing smoke 
 issuing from their window, entered the room, 
 and after watching their fruitless efforts for 
 some while, suggested that they should fasten 
 the tray on to the bottom of the bag. This 
 was done, with the happy result that the bag 
 immediately rose up to the ceiling ; and in 
 this humble fashion the first of all balloons 
 sailed aloft. 
 
 That night of 1782, therefore, marks the first 
 great step ever made towards the conquest of 
 the sky. But to better understand the history 
 of " Aeronautics " — a word that means " the 
 sailing of the air " — we must go back far be- 
 yond the days of the Montgolfier brothers. 
 For in all times and in all ages men have 
 wanted to fly. David wished for the wings 
 of a dove to fly away and be at rest, and since 
 his time, and before it, how many have not 
 longed to take flight and sail away in the 
 boundless, glorious realms above, to explore 
 the fleecy clouds, and to float free in the blue 
 vault of heaven. 
 
 And since birds achieve this feat by means 
 of wings, man's first idea was to provide him- 
 
12 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 self with wings also. But here he was at once 
 doomed to disappointment. It is very certain 
 that by his own natural strength alone a man 
 will never propel himself through the air with 
 wings like a bird, because he is made quite 
 differently. A bird's body is very light com- 
 pared with its size. The largest birds in 
 existence weigh under thirty pounds. A 
 man's body, on the contrary, is very heavy 
 and solid. The muscles that work a bird's 
 wing are wonderfully powerful and strong, far 
 stronger in proportion than the muscles of a 
 man's arm. To sustain his great weight in 
 the air, a man of eleven stone would require a 
 pair of wings nearly twenty feet in span. 
 But the possession of such mighty wings 
 alone is not enough. He must also possess 
 bodily strength to keep them in sufficient 
 motion to prevent him from falling, and for 
 this he would require at least the strength of 
 a horse. 
 
 Such strength a man has never possessed, or 
 can ever hope to ; but even as it is, by long 
 practice and great effort, men have succeeded 
 at different times, not exactly in flying, but 
 in helping themselves along considerably by 
 means of wings. A man is said to have flown 
 in this way in Rome in the days of Nero. A 
 monk in the Middle Ages, named Elmerus, 
 it is stated, flew about a furlong from the top 
 of a tower in Spain, another from St. Mark's 
 steeple in Venice, and another from Nurem- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 13 
 
 burg. But the most successful attempt ever 
 made in this direction was accomplished about 
 200 years ago by a French locksmith of the 
 name of Besnier. He had made for himself a 
 pair of light wooden oars, shaped like the 
 double paddle of a canoe, with cup-like blades 
 at either end. These he placed over his 
 shoulders, and attached also to his feet, and 
 
 Besnier and his Oars. 
 
 then casting himself off from some high place, 
 and violently working his arms and legs so as 
 to buffet the air downwards with his paddles, 
 he was able to raise himself by short stages 
 from one height to another, or skim lightly 
 over a field or river. It is said that subse- 
 quently Besnier sold his oars to a mountebank, 
 who performed most successfully with them 
 at fairs and festivals. 
 
 But it was soon clear that the art of human 
 
14 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 flight was not to be achieved by such means ; 
 and when men found that they were unable to 
 soar upwards by their own bodily strength 
 alone, they set about devising some apparatus 
 or machine which should carry them aloft. 
 Many ancient philosophers bent their minds 
 to the inventing of a machine for this purpose. 
 One suggested that strong flying birds, such 
 as eagles or vultures, might be harnessed to 
 a car, and trained to carry it into the sky. 
 Another gravely proposed the employment of 
 " a little imp " — for in those days the existence 
 of imps and demons was most firmly believed 
 in. A third even went so far as to give an 
 actual recipe for flying, declaring that " if the 
 eggs of the larger description of swans, or 
 leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled 
 with nitre, the purest sulphur, quicksilver, 
 or kindred materials which rarefy by their 
 caloric energy, and if they externally resemble 
 pigeons, they will easily be mistaken for flying 
 animals." (!) 
 
 The first man who appeared to have any 
 inkling of the real way of solving the problem 
 of a " flying chariot," and who in dim fashion 
 seems to have foreshadowed the invention of 
 the balloon, was that wonderful genius, Roger 
 Bacon, the Learned Friar of Ilchester, the 
 inventor or re-inventor of gunpowder, who 
 lived in the thirteenth century. He had an 
 idea — an idea which was far ahead of his 
 times, and only proved to be true hundreds 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 15 
 
 of years after — that the earth's atmosphere 
 was an actual substance or "true fluid," and 
 as such he supposed it to have an upper 
 surface as the sea has, and on this upper sur- 
 face he thought an airship might float, even 
 as a boat floats on the top of the water. 
 And to make his airship rise upwards to 
 reach this upper sea, he said one must employ 
 " a large hollow globe of copper or other 
 similar metal wrought extremely thin, to have 
 it as light as possible, and filled with ethereal 
 air or liquid fire." 
 
 It is doubtful whether Bacon had very clear 
 ideas of what he meant by "ethereal air." 
 But, whether by accident or insight, he had in 
 these words hit upon the true principle of the 
 balloon — a principle only put into practice five 
 centuries later. He saw that a body would 
 rise upwards through the air if it were filled 
 with something fighter than air, even as a 
 body will rise upwards through the water if it 
 is made of, or filled with, something lighter 
 than water. We know that if we throw an 
 empty bottle tightly corked into the sea it 
 does not sink, but rises upwards, because it is 
 filled with air, which is lighter than water. 
 In the same way exactly a light bag or balloon 
 which is filled with some gas which is lighter 
 than air will not stay on the surface of the 
 ground, but will rise upwards into the sky to 
 a height which depends upon its weight and 
 buoyancy. 
 
16 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Later philosophers than Bacon came to the 
 same conclusion, though they do not seem to 
 have seen matters more clearly. As recently 
 as 1755 a certain learned French priest actually 
 suggested that since the air on the top of high 
 mountains is known to be lighter than that at 
 an ordinary level, men might ascend to these 
 great heights and bring down the light air " in 
 constructions of canvas or cotton." By means 
 of this air he then proposed to fly a great 
 machine, which he describes, and which seems 
 to have been as large and cumbersome as 
 Noah's Ark. Needless to say, the worthy 
 Father's proposal has never yet been put into 
 practice. 
 
 But it is time now that we return to the 
 two brothers Montgolfier and their paper-bag 
 of smoke. Their experiments proved at once 
 that in smoke they had found something 
 which was lighter than air, and which would, 
 therefore, carry a light weight upwards. But 
 of what this something was they had, at the 
 time, but a confused idea. They imagined 
 that the burning fuel they had used had given 
 off some special light gas, with the exact nature 
 of which they were unacquainted. The very 
 word gas, be it here said, was in those days 
 almost unknown, and of different gases, their 
 nature and properties, most people had but 
 the very vaguest notions. 
 
 And so for some time the Montgolfiers 
 and their followers supposed that the presence 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 17 
 
 of this mysterious gas was necessary to the 
 success of their experiments, and they were 
 very careful about always using special kinds 
 of fuel, which they supposed gave off this gas, 
 to inflate their bags. Later experiments 
 proved, however, what every one now knows, 
 that the paper -bag rose, not because of the 
 gases given off by the fire, but by reason of 
 the hot air with which it became filled. Nearly 
 all substances, no matter how solid, expand 
 more or less under the influence of heat, and 
 air expands very greatly indeed. By thus 
 expanding heated air becomes lighter than 
 the surrounding air, and, because it is lighter, 
 rises upwards in the atmosphere, and continues 
 to rise until it has once more regained the 
 average temperature. 
 
 Encouraged by the success of their first 
 humble experiment, the Montgolfiers next 
 tried their paper-bag in the open air, when 
 to their delight it sailed upwards to a height 
 of 70 feet. The next step was to make a 
 much larger craft of 600 cubic feet capacity 
 and spherical in shape, which they called a 
 " Balloon," because it was in appearance like 
 a large, round, short-necked vessel used in 
 chemistry which was technically known by 
 that name. This great bag, after being in- 
 flated, became so powerful that it broke loose 
 from its moorings, and floated proudly up- 
 wards 600 feet and more, and came down 
 in an adjoining field. After a few more suc- 
 
 B 
 
Montgolfiek's Balloon. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 19 
 
 cessful trials the brothers thought that the 
 time had come to make known their .new 
 invention. Accordingly they constructed a 
 great balloon of 35 feet in diameter, and 
 issued invitations to the public to come and 
 see the inflation. This was successfully made 
 over a fire of chopped straw and wool, and 
 the giant rose up into the sky amid the 
 deafening applause of a huge multitude, and 
 after attaining a height of 7000 feet, fell to 
 the ground a mile and a half away. 
 
 The news of this marvellous event spread 
 like wild-fire throughout the kingdom, and 
 soon not only all France, but all Europe also, 
 was ringing with the tidings. The French 
 Royal Academy of Sciences immediately 
 invited Stephen Montgolfier to Paris, and 
 provided him with money to repeat his 
 experiment. He accordingly constructed a 
 yet larger machine, which stood no less than 
 72 feet high, had it most magnificently 
 painted and decorated and hung with flags, 
 and sent it up at Versailles in the presence 
 of the King and all his court. 
 
 This particular balloon is noteworthy as 
 having been the first of all balloons to carry 
 living passengers into the air. They were 
 three in number, a sheep, a cock, and a duck. 
 Breathlessly the assembled multitude watched 
 these innocent victims placed in the basket 
 and soar calmly and majestically above their 
 heads ; and eagerly they followed the balloon 
 
20 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 to where it fell half a mile away to learn 
 their fate. Would they have been suffocated 
 in those upper regions of the air which no 
 human being had yet explored, or would they 
 be dashed to pieces in the descent? But 
 they found the trio quite uninjured ; the 
 unimaginative sheep grazing quietly, and the 
 duck cheerfully quacking. Forthwith the cry 
 then arose that it was time for a man to 
 hazard the ascent, and King Louis, who, like 
 every one else, was vastly excited over the 
 wonder, suggested that two criminals then 
 lying under sentence of death should be sent 
 aloft. 
 
 But now a brave French gentleman — M. 
 Pilatre de Rozier, a name ever to be remem- 
 bered in the history of the conquest of the air 
 — uprose in indignation. " Shall vile criminals 
 have the first glory of rising into the sky ! " 
 he cried, and then and there he proudly 
 claimed for himself the honour of being first 
 among mortals in the history of the world 
 to sail the air. His courageous resolve was 
 wildly applauded, and forthwith preparations 
 were commenced for the new venture. A 
 yet larger balloon was made, in height as 
 tall as a church tower, with a mouth 15 feet 
 across. Around the mouth was fastened a 
 gallery of wicker-work, three feet wide, to hold 
 the passengers, and below all was slung with 
 chains an iron brazier of burning fuel. 
 
 By way of precaution, when all was com- 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 21 
 
 plete De Rozier made a few short captive 
 excursions, the balloon being fastened to 
 earth by a rope. But all proving satisfactory, 
 he decided to hazard a " right away " trip on 
 the 21st of November 1783, when he was also 
 to be accompanied by an equally courageous 
 fellow-countryman, the Marquis d'Arlandes. 
 It would be difficult to conceive a more daring 
 and perilous enterprise than these two brave 
 Frenchmen set themselves. They were to 
 venture, by an untried way, into unknown 
 realms where no mortal had been before ; 
 they were to entrust their lives to a frail 
 craft whose capabilities had never yet been 
 tested, and at a giddy height they were to 
 soar aloft with an open fire, which at any 
 moment might set light to the inflammable 
 balloon and hurl them to destruction. 
 
 Wild indeed was the applause of the crowd 
 as the mighty craft, after due inflation, rose 
 majestically into the sky, carrying with it its 
 two brave voyagers — 
 
 the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea ; 
 
 and with what anxiety was its course followed 
 as, rising rapidly to a height of 3000 feet, it 
 drifted away on an upper current which bore 
 it right over the city of Paris. The travellers 
 themselves experienced various excitements 
 during their adventurous trip. They had 
 constantly to stir the fire and feed it with 
 
22 
 
 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 fresh fuel ; they had also with wet sponges 
 continually to extinguish the flames when 
 the light fabric from time to time ignited. 
 At one period they feared descending into 
 the river or on the house-tops, at another 
 a sharp shock gave them the impression that 
 
 An Early Hydrogen Balloon. 
 
 their balloon had burst. But they came 
 safely in the end through all perils and 
 alarms, descending quietly, after a voyage 
 of twenty-five minutes' duration, five miles 
 from their starting-place. 
 
 Thus was invented and perfected in the 
 course of less than a year the first of all craft 
 
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 23 
 
 which carried man into the sky — the Hot- 
 Air or Montgolfier Balloon. To this day large 
 hot-air balloons inflated by the same methods 
 employed a hundred years ago occasionally 
 take passengers aloft. Indeed, there now 
 seems a likelihood that the use of the Mont- 
 golfier balloon will be largely revived for 
 military purposes, since, with modern im- 
 provements, it would appear to be more 
 quickly and easily inflated than a gas balloon 
 in time of warfare. With miniature hot-air 
 balloons we are all familiar, for every school- 
 boy has made them for himself of coloured 
 papers, and watched them float away on the 
 breeze with as much admiration and delight 
 as the two brothers of Annonay watched their 
 bag first float upwards to the ceiling. 
 
 But almost before the invention of the hot- 
 air balloon had been completed, and before 
 Pilatre de Rozier had made his ascent, a rival 
 craft had appeared upon the scene, to which 
 we must more specially refer in the next 
 chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 
 
 During the time of which we are speaking 
 there was living in London a famous chemist 
 named Henry Cavendish. He was the son of 
 
24 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 a nobleman, and a very rich man; but he 
 shut himself up entirely from the world, and 
 devoted his whole time and energies to the 
 study of science. So afraid was he of being 
 interrupted in his work that he lived the life 
 of a hermit, commanding his servants to keep 
 out of his sight on pain of dismissal, and 
 ordering his dinner daily by means of a 
 note placed on the hall table. In the year 
 1760 — twenty-two years before the Mont- 
 golfier brothers began their experiments — this 
 eccentric man had discovered what was then 
 known as "inflammable air," but what we 
 now call hydrogen gas. 
 
 Cavendish's experiments proved that hydro- 
 gen is the lightest of all known substances, 
 being about fourteen times lighter than at- 
 mospheric air ; and soon after he had made 
 known his researches, it occurred to a certain 
 Dr. Black of Edinburgh that if a sufficiently 
 thin and light bladder were filled with this 
 " inflammable air " it would rise upwards. 
 Dr. Black even went so far as to order a 
 special bladder to be prepared for the pur- 
 pose; but by the time it was ready he was 
 busy with other work, and the experiment 
 was never made ; otherwise it is extremely 
 probable that the honour of inventing the 
 balloon would have been won for this country, 
 and not for France. 
 
 A little later Tiberius Cavallo, an Italian 
 chemist living in England, came yet nearer 
 
THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 25 
 
 to the great invention, for he filled a number 
 of soap-bubbles with the newly discovered 
 gas, and saw them float high into the air. 
 He did not, however, think at the time that 
 his experiments would lead to any practical 
 result, and so the matter dropped entirely, 
 until the world was suddenly electrified by 
 the tidings of the wonderful hot-air balloon 
 invented by the brothers Montgolfier at 
 Annonay. 
 
 The news of this discovery recalled to the 
 minds of many the almost forgotten experi- 
 ments of the past, and it was forthwith sug- 
 gested that balloons might be inflated with 
 hydrogen gas more successfully than with 
 hot air. It was resolved immediately to put 
 this theory to the test. A large subscription 
 to defray expenses was raised in Paris with- 
 out difficulty, for men's minds were keen 
 on the new-found art of sailing the sky ; 
 and M. Charles, Professor of Experimental 
 Philosophy, and two brothers, the Messrs. 
 Roberts, well-known mechanicians, were 
 appointed to construct a suitable balloon 
 and inflate it by the new method. 
 
 But they were immediately confronted with 
 a difficulty. Hydrogen being the lightest 
 and most subtle of gases, they were at a loss 
 to know of what material to make their 
 balloon, to prevent the gas escaping. After 
 several failures they eventually constructed 
 a bag of a special kind of silk, and coated 
 
26 
 
 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 it all over with a varnish made of indiarubber 
 dissolved in turpentine. As they found great 
 difficulty in manufacturing large quantities of 
 hydrogen, they were forced to make their bag 
 a comparatively small one, about thirteen feet 
 in diameter. On the 25th of August 1783 
 
 Attack on the Fikst Chaklier Balloon. 
 
 the bag was successfully filled, and the ascent 
 was made in Paris in the presence of an 
 enormous crowd. The little balloon rose 
 upwards with immense rapidity, until it was 
 lost to sight in the clouds. Ascending yet 
 higher, it presently burst, and came to the 
 earth in a village, fifteen miles away, after 
 a voyage of three-quarters of an hour. 
 
THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 27 
 
 In the field where the balloon fell a party 
 of peasants were at work ; at its approach 
 they fled in abject terror. From a safe dis- 
 tance they watched the strange new monster 
 settle to earth and lie prone, and then they 
 cautiously drew nearer to inspect it. The 
 silk still heaved with the escaping gas, and 
 the countrymen were fully convinced that 
 an actual living creature of mysterious nature 
 lay before them. One man seized his gun 
 and fired full at it, and then supposing it 
 to be mortally wounded, they all rushed in 
 with flails and pitchforks to complete its 
 destruction, finally tying it to the tail of a 
 horse, who galloped with it all over the 
 country, tearing it to shreds. It was small 
 wonder that after such an occurrence the 
 French Government issued a proclamation to 
 the people, telling them that these aeronau- 
 tical experiments were to be repeated, and 
 warning them not to be alarmed if they saw 
 a balloon in the air, since it was a perfectly 
 harmless machine filled with gas, and incapable 
 of injuring any one. 
 
 This event took place about three months 
 after the first public ascent of the hot-air 
 balloon. The new craft was immediately 
 called a " Charlier," after its inventor, and 
 to distinguish it from the " Montgolfier." 
 There followed various exhibitions of the 
 rival airships, and after the voyage of Pilatre 
 de Rozier and the Marquis D'Arlandes, 
 
28 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Messrs. Charles and Roberts resolved also 
 to hazard an ascent in a balloon inflated with 
 hydrogen. 
 
 A new machine was therefore constructed, 
 which differed in many important details from 
 all others which had previously been made. 
 It was twenty-seven feet in diameter, of 
 varnished silk, and over it was spread a net 
 of cordage. Instead of a gallery to carry 
 the passengers, as in the "Montgolfier," a car 
 shaped like a boat was suspended from the 
 net with ropes and hung a few feet below 
 the balloon. A valve to let out the gas was 
 also provided, and the voyagers carried in 
 their car ballast and a barometer to indicate 
 their height. It will thus be seen that this 
 new balloon was in all practical details the 
 same as the balloon of the present day. 
 
 The ascent took place on the 17th of De- 
 cember in Paris. Stephen Montgolfier was 
 present, and launched a small hot-air balloon, 
 which amused the onlookers and indicated 
 the direction of the wind. Then MM. 
 Charles and Roberts stepped into the car, 
 and the balloon being liberated, they were 
 immediately carried up to a height of 6000 
 feet, where a glorious panorama of Paris and 
 the adjacent country was spread out before 
 their delighted vision. After staying aloft 
 about a couple of hours they descended to 
 earth again, and Roberts got out of the car. 
 Charles decided to continue the voyage awhile 
 
THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 29 
 
 by himself, and, lightened of his companion's 
 weight, the balloon this time rose to 10,500 
 feet. The sun had by this time set upon the 
 earth, but at this height Charles saw it rise 
 once more and set a second time. The ther- 
 mometer fell far below freezing-point, and 
 he was benumbed with cold and felt violent 
 pains in his ears. When at his greatest ele- 
 vation he was obliged to pull the valve to 
 prevent the balloon from bursting, and even- 
 tually descended without mischance about 
 seven miles from where Roberts had left 
 him. 
 
 It would be well now to describe a little 
 more fully the way in which the "Mont- 
 golfier " and " Charlier " balloons were in- 
 flated. Each of the rival methods had its 
 advantages and also its disadvantages. In 
 the case of the hot-air balloon a shallow pit 
 was dug, in which a quick-burning fire of 
 chopped wool and straw was lighted, and 
 the bag simply suspended over it. The 
 inflation was thus rapid, and its cost com- 
 paratively small ; the great drawback being 
 that as the bag was of very light material, 
 it ran considerable risk of being ignited by 
 the fire ; and all the while it was filling it 
 was the uncomfortable duty of an unfortunate 
 attendant to stand actually inside, roasted 
 with the heat and choked with the smoke, 
 armed with a paddle with which to beat out 
 the flames whenever the bag caught alight. 
 
30 
 
 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 This danger of fire was done away with 
 in the method of filling with hydrogen gas. 
 The balloon, suspended from aloft as before, 
 was connected by hose-pipes with a number 
 of casks containing iron or zinc filings upon 
 which dilute sulphuric acid was poured. The 
 
 Filling a Hot Air Balloon. 
 
 effect of mixing these substances together is 
 to set up a brisk chemical action, in the course 
 of which hydrogen gas is given off. In this 
 case the hydrogen thus liberated came through 
 the pipes and filled the balloon. The great dis- 
 advantages of this method of filling — which, 
 it may here be mentioned, is occasionally 
 employed at the present day — are the long 
 time it occupies, the great labour entailed, 
 and the enormous expense. 
 
o 
 a 
 
 o 
 M 
 O 
 
 P 
 
 W 
 
32 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 It is said that when Roberts and Charles 
 returned from their adventurous voyage they 
 were immediately arrested and thrown into 
 prison by order of the King, who considered 
 it his duty to put a stop to his subjects risk- 
 ing their lives in such dangerous enterprises. 
 Public opinion was too strong for him, how- 
 ever, and the two heroes were quickly released, 
 and Charles was rewarded by a pension of 
 £200 a year for life. This newly discovered 
 art of sailing the heavens had indeed fired 
 popular imagination to an extraordinary de- 
 gree. Probably no invention has ever aroused 
 greater enthusiasm. Not only all France 
 but all the civilised world went wild with 
 excitement for the time. Most extravagant 
 statements were made and written. A new 
 kingdom, it was declared, had been given to 
 mankind to conquer ; voyages might be made 
 to the moon and stars, and now it would even 
 be possible to take Heaven itself by storm ! 
 
 Ascent after ascent took place with the 
 "Montgolfier" and the " Charlier," both in 
 France and in other countries ; nor was it 
 long before the balloon made its appearance 
 in England. In August of the next summer 
 (1784) a Mr Tytler of Edinburgh made some 
 short voyages in a hot-air balloon of his own 
 manufacture, and in the following month a 
 much more adventurous attempt was suc- 
 cessfully carried out in London by a young 
 Italian of the name of Vincent Lunardi. 
 
THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 
 
 33 
 
 Lunardi was at this time secretary to the 
 Neapolitan Ambassador. He was keenly 
 interested in the subject of ballooning, and 
 presently became fired with a desire to repeat 
 in England those aerial experiments which 
 were creating such a sensation on the Con- 
 tinent. He was 
 only a poor man, 
 and great diffi- 
 culties stood in 
 the way of ac- 
 complishing his 
 object. He had 
 to excite public 
 interest in his 
 venture, to col- 
 lect subscriptions 
 to defray the cost 
 of his balloon, 
 which was to be 
 a " Charlier," and 
 to find a suitable 
 site in London 
 for the inflation 
 
 and ascent. He met with disappointments 
 and disasters enough to discourage a less 
 enthusiastic man, but at length, after many 
 troubles, on the 15th of September his balloon 
 was ready and in process of filling in the 
 grounds of the Honourable Artillery Com- 
 pany, in the city, where 150,000 people had 
 assembled to witness the new wonder. 
 
 Vincent Lunaedi. 
 
34 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Still Lunardi's trials were not at an end. 
 The balloon was advertised to ascend at a 
 certain hour ; but the supply of gas was in- 
 sufficient, so that when the time came it was 
 only partially filled, and a long delay ensued. 
 The vast crowd — more than half inclined to 
 believe the whole thing an imposture — began 
 to grow very impatient and unruly, and it was 
 only the presence of the Prince of Wales, 
 afterwards George the Fourth, which kept 
 them in restraint for another hour while the 
 filling continued. 
 
 Even then the balloon was not full ; but 
 Lunardi felt he could wait no longer. He 
 left behind him the companion who was to 
 have accompanied him, substituted a smaller 
 and lighter car, jumped inside and severed the 
 ropes. Instantly the balloon rose high over 
 the delighted city, as the crowd, led by the 
 Prince himself, rent the air with their cheers. 
 Wild was the excitement in every quarter. 
 At Westminster King George the Third was 
 in conference with Mr. Pitt and his other chief 
 Ministers of State, but when it was known 
 that Lunardi was in the sky the King ex- 
 claimed, " Gentlemen, we may resume our 
 deliberations at pleasure, but we may never 
 see poor Lunardi again ! " and with one accord 
 they adjourned to watch his progress through 
 telescopes. Tradesmen rushed out of their 
 shops, business men from their offices, even 
 judge and jury from their courts. 
 
Lunabdi's Balloon, 
 
36 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Lunardi continued his voyage over the town 
 into the country beyond. His balloon appar- 
 ently attained a considerable height, for he 
 found that the condensed moisture round the 
 neck had frozen, and the gas, which to begin 
 with had only two-thirds filled the balloon, 
 presently expanded so much that he was 
 obliged to untie the mouth to relieve the 
 strain. He had taken up with him as com- 
 panions a dog and a cat. The cat was very 
 ill at ease in the cold of the upper regions, 
 and he resolved to put her out ; so, coming 
 down to the ground, he handed her to a country 
 woman standing in a field. Throwing out 
 ballast, he then rose again and continued his 
 voyage for some distance, eventually descend- 
 ing in a meadow near Ware. Some labourers 
 were at work on the spot, but they at first 
 refused to come near him, and a young woman 
 was the first whom he could induce to help 
 him out of his car. A stone with a long 
 inscription, set up in a meadow in the parish 
 of Standon, near Ware, marks to this day the 
 place where the first of all English balloons 
 touched ground. 
 
 The following year witnessed a yet bolder 
 enterprise. Blanchard, a French aeronaut, 
 and Dr. Jeffries, an American, determined 
 on an attempt to cross the Channel. On a 
 winter's day, early in 1785, they had their 
 balloon inflated with hydrogen at Dover and 
 boldly cast off to sea. The cold air appeared to 
 
THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 37 
 
 chill the gas more than they had foreseen, and 
 long before they were across the Channel their 
 balloon began settling down upon the water. 
 They threw out all their ballast, then a number 
 of books they were carrying, then their anchor, 
 extra ropes, and other gear. Still it seemed 
 very doubtful whether they would reach the 
 French coast, and as a last resort they began 
 even to throw away their clothes to lighten 
 the balloon. Fortunately at this moment the 
 balloon shot up into the air again, and event- 
 ually brought them down in safety near the 
 forest of Guiennes. 
 
 So far, although several hundred ascents 
 had been made, and in spite of the many and 
 great dangers of the new-found art and the 
 inexperience of the early voyagers, no fatal 
 accident had marred the delight of sailing the 
 skies. Disasters, however, were soon to come. 
 It is sad to relate that the earliest to fall a 
 victim was the brave Pilatre de Rozier him- 
 self, the first of all men to go aloft in a balloon. 
 Fired with a desire to emulate Blanchard and 
 Jeffries, he decided that he himself would 
 cross the Channel, this time from France to 
 England ; and to avoid, as he imagined, the 
 cooling of the gas, which had so nearly proved 
 disastrous on the previous occasion, he hit on 
 the extraordinary idea of combining the prin- 
 ciples of both the " Montgolfier " and " Char- 
 lier" balloons, and suspending a fire balloon 
 beneath another filled with hydrogen gas. It 
 
38 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 seems a remarkable thing to us now that no 
 one in those days saw the awful danger of 
 such a combination. The inevitable happened. 
 When the balloon was high in the air the 
 furnace of the hot-air machine set fire to 
 the highly inflammable hydrogen, a fearful 
 explosion followed, and De Rozier and his 
 companion were dashed to pieces. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 
 
 Unfortunately the death of Pilatre de 
 Rozier was but the first of a series of fatal 
 accidents which marred the early years of 
 the history of ballooning. Shortly afterwards 
 another French aeronaut, going up in too 
 shallow a car, fell overboard when at a great 
 height and was killed. A little later Count 
 Zambeccari, an Italian, ascended in a hot-air 
 balloon, which, on coming near the earth, 
 became entangled in a tree. The furnace it 
 carried set fire to the silk. To escape from 
 the flames, the Count leapt to the ground 
 and was killed on the spot. A few years 
 after, Madame Blanchard, wife of the man 
 who first crossed the English Channel, made 
 a night ascent from Paris with a number of 
 fireworks hung from the car. These, in some 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 39 
 
 way, ignited the balloon, which fell to the 
 ground, killing the unfortunate lady in its fall. 
 
 On the other hand, many miraculous escapes 
 are on record. One of the earliest balloonists 
 spent the night alone aloft in the midst of a 
 terrific thunder-storm, with the lightning flash- 
 ing all around him, and yet descended in safety 
 when morning broke. M. Garnerin, a famous 
 French aeronaut of this date, also was lost in 
 a storm. His balloon became unmanageable, 
 and borne to earth was dashed against a 
 mountain side, the occupant losing conscious- 
 ness, until the balloon, which had ascended 
 again, brought him safely down once more 
 many miles away. 
 
 A marvellous escape took place in 1808, 
 when two Italians ascended in a gas balloon 
 from Padua and attained a great height, 
 estimated as approaching 30,000 feet. Here 
 the balloon burst, and came precipitately to 
 the ground ; and yet, despite the terrific fall, 
 the aeronauts escaped with their lives. The 
 explanation of this seeming impossibility was, 
 no doubt, the tendency which a balloon, 
 emptied of its gas, possesses to form a natural 
 parachute. During a rapid fall the lower 
 part of the silk will, if loose, collapse into 
 the upper portion to form a kind of open 
 umbrella, and thus very effectually break the 
 descent. Many balloonists have owed their 
 safety in similar accidents to this fortunate 
 fact. 
 
40 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 The bursting of balloons when at high 
 altitudes has already been referred to as 
 happening on several previous occasions. It 
 is a danger which is always present when a 
 balloon is aloft, unless due precautions are 
 taken, and the neglect of these precautions 
 has probably led to more ballooning accidents 
 than any other cause. The explanation is 
 simply the varying pressure exerted upon the 
 bag of gas by the weight of the atmosphere. 
 When an inflated balloon is resting upon the 
 ground, the vast ocean of air above it is 
 pressing upon it with a weight of approxi- 
 mately fifteen pounds to the square inch, and 
 it is this pressure which prevents the enclosed 
 gas from expanding beyond a certain limit. 
 The balloon then rises high into the air, where 
 the weight of atmosphere pressing upon it is 
 much diminished. The higher it rises the 
 less the pressure becomes, and the gas it 
 holds soon expands so much that, unless a 
 vent is provided for it, the balloon will burst. 
 At the present day the neck of a balloon is 
 always left wide open when the balloon is in 
 the air, to allow of the escape of the gas 
 during the ascent. 
 
 A perilous adventure befell Mr. Sadler, an 
 English aeronaut, in 1812. whilst attempting 
 to cross the Irish Channel. He started from 
 Dublin with a wind which he hoped would 
 carry him to Liverpool, but had gone only 
 a short distance when he discovered a rent, 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 41 
 
 which seemed to be increasing, in the silk 
 of his balloon. Climbing the rigging with 
 difficulty, he contrived to tie up the hole with 
 his neckcloth. He was by this time over the 
 sea, and having passed near the Isle of Man, 
 found himself, as evening was approaching, 
 close to the coast of North Wales. Here he 
 endeavoured to seek a landing, but just at 
 the critical moment the wind shifted, as it 
 frequently does in this treacherous Channel, 
 and he was quickly blown out to sea again. 
 There he remained for another hour vainly 
 endeavouring to make the land, and then, 
 despairing of the attempt and seeing five 
 ships beneath him, he came boldly down on 
 the water, trusting they would come to his 
 assistance. 
 
 But he came down too far away from them, 
 and one and all continued their course and 
 took no notice. He was obliged, therefore, to 
 throw out ballast and to rise into the air 
 once more. The sun was now set upon the 
 level of the water, but as the brave aeronaut 
 rose he beheld it once more above the horizon, 
 and was cheered by its beams. Presently he 
 saw beneath him three more vessels, which 
 signalled their willingness to help him, and 
 he immediately came down on the sea again 
 as close to them as he could. But the wind, 
 now rising fast, caught the half empty silk 
 of the balloon as it touched the waves, and 
 bore it along over the surface of the water- 
 
42 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 at a terrific pace ; and although the vessels 
 came after in full pursuit, they were unable 
 to overtake it. 
 
 Mr. Sadler then dropped his grappling-iron 
 to act as a drag, and this not proving sufficient, 
 took off his clothes and tied them to the iron 
 as a further expedient. Still the vessels failed 
 to overhaul him as he sped over the waves, 
 and he was at length forced to let out a 
 quantity of the gas still remaining, and so 
 cripple the balloon. But this was a dangerous 
 move, for the car now instantly sank ; and the 
 unfortunate man had to clutch the hoop and 
 then the netting, to keep himself above water. 
 Chilled and exhausted, and frequently plunged 
 beneath the waves, he was soon at the point 
 of death ; for the nearest ship, though now 
 close at hand, fearful of becoming entangled in 
 the netting, still held off. Fainting as he was, 
 Mr. Sadler yet managed to summon strength 
 to call to the sailors to run their bowsprit 
 through the balloon to stop its course, and 
 this being done, he was hauled on board more 
 dead than alive. 
 
 Five years passed, and no more attempts 
 were made to cross the treacherous Irish Sea, 
 until Mr. Sadler's own son, Mr. Windham 
 Sadler, determined himself to make the at- 
 tempt which had so nearly cost his father his 
 life. Choosing the same starting-ground for 
 his venture, he left Dublin on the longest day 
 of 1817, and, fortune favouring him, reached 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 43 
 
 the Welsh coast not far from Holyhead, after 
 a voyage of 70 miles, lasting five hours. This 
 was the last attempt to cross the Irish Channel, 
 until November 1902, when the Rev. J. M. 
 Bacon and Mr. Percival Spencer, starting 
 from Douglas, in the Isle of Man, landed in 
 a rocky glen 15 miles beyond Dumfries, 
 after a journey of 80 miles, accomplished in 
 three hours. Brave Mr. Windham Sadler 
 unhappily lost his life in a terrible balloon 
 accident in 1824. 
 
 But a more celebrated balloonist, perhaps 
 the most famous of all, had by this time come 
 to the fore — Charles Green, fitly called " The 
 Father of English Aeronautics." It was he 
 who first introduced a new method of balloon- 
 filling, which quickly revolutionised the whole 
 art and practice. This was nothing more or 
 less than the employment of ordinary house- 
 hold or coal gas for inflation, in place of the 
 costly and dangerous hydrogen. 
 
 While balloons were inflated only with pure 
 hydrogen — for the uncertain and dangerous 
 method of filling with hot air was soon almost 
 entirely abandoned — no great strides could be 
 made in the art of sailing the skies. The 
 filling of a large balloon eighty years ago cost 
 no less than £250, and few people could be 
 found willing to provide so much money for 
 such a purpose. Coal gas, however, was by 
 then to be found in every town of any conse- 
 quence ; and it was Green's suggestion that 
 
44 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 though this gas might be greatly inferior to 
 pure hydrogen in buoyancy or "lifting power," 
 it yet contained a sufficient quantity of hydro- 
 gen in it for all ordinary aeronautical purposes. 
 
 The coronation of King George the Fourth 
 was the occasion chosen by Green to put his 
 new scheme to the test and fill a balloon with 
 coal gas. The experiment was entirely suc- 
 cessful, and henceforward balloon ascents be- 
 came much commoner throughout the world, 
 for Green's discovery reduced the cost of filling 
 tenfold, and the trouble and anxiety a hundred- 
 fold. Green himself became one of the most 
 famous men of his day, and lived to make a 
 thousand ascents, some of them of the most 
 daring and exciting description. 
 
 The most celebrated event in all his career, 
 however, was the voyage of the Great Nassau 
 Balloon, in November 1836. This voyage 
 created a tremendous sensation at the time, 
 and has always been considered one of the 
 most adventurous enterprises in the whole his- 
 tory of aeronautics. How it came about was 
 as follows : — 
 
 The managers of the Vauxhall Gardens, 
 London, had made, with Mr. Green's assist- 
 ance, a very large and fine balloon of crimson 
 silk, which stood eighty feet high and held 
 90,000 cubic feet of gas, and which would 
 carry, if needed, more than twenty persons. 
 After it was made the proprietors proposed 
 exhibiting it in Paris, and there was some 
 
The Great Nassau Balloon. 
 
46 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 question of how this valuable and fragile 
 property had best be conveyed so far. Mr. 
 Hollond, a young gentleman of considerable 
 wealth, and a great lover of adventure, at 
 once came forward, and proposed to take the 
 balloon to the Continent by sky. His offer was 
 accepted, and to make the ascent more note- 
 worthy, it was decided to start from London 
 and cross the sea by night, making as long a 
 voyage as possible, although it was already 
 winter time, and such a venture had never 
 before been made. 
 
 Preparations were at once commenced. The 
 passengers were limited to three — Mr. Green, 
 who was to manage the balloon, Mr. Hollond, 
 and his friend Mr. Monck Mason. A ton of 
 ballast was to be carried, provisions for a whole 
 fortnight were laid in, and, since none could 
 tell to within a thousand miles or more where 
 they might be drifted, passports to every king- 
 dom in Europe were obtained. 
 
 They left London late one November day, 
 and, rising under a north-west wind, skirted 
 the north of Kent. Passing presently over 
 Canterbury, they wrote a courteous message 
 to the mayor, and dropped it in a parachute. 
 Some time later, when the short autumn twi- 
 light was beginning to wane, they saw beneath 
 them the gleam of white waves, and knew 
 they had reached the boundary of the hitherto 
 much-dreaded sea. Immediately afterwards 
 they entered a heavy sea fog, which hid all 
 
48 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 things from their sight, and darkness and dead 
 silence reigned around. 
 
 This lasted for fifty minutes, when they 
 emerged from the cloud and found the bright 
 lights of Calais beneath them. It was then 
 quite dark, and they sped on through the 
 night over unknown towns and villages whose 
 lights gleamed fainter and fewer as the time 
 went on. Then once again they entered the 
 fog-bank, and for long hours no sign or sound 
 of earth reached them more. 
 
 As the night wore on they suddenly had 
 a startling and alarming experience. Their 
 balloon, which had been flying near the earth, 
 was presently lightened by the discharge of 
 ballast, and rose to a height of 12,000 feet into 
 the air. Immediately afterwards, when all 
 around was wrapped in the deepest silence 
 and the blackest darkness, there came the 
 sound of a sharp explosion from over their 
 heads, followed by a rustling of the silk, and 
 immediately the car received a violent jerk. 
 The same thing was repeated again and yet 
 again, and it is small wonder that the awful 
 conviction then seized the party that there, in 
 the darkness, in the dead of night, at that 
 fearful height, their balloon had burst, and 
 they were falling headlong to the ground. 
 Great indeed must have been their relief 
 when they found this was not the case, and 
 discovered the real reason of their alarm. 
 
 It is the tendency of a balloon when flying 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 49 
 
 near the ground to assume an elongated or 
 pear shape ; and while their balloon was in 
 this position the netting, which was wet with 
 dew, had frozen hard and tight around it. 
 Immediately they rose to great heights the 
 gas had expanded, and the balloon had be- 
 come globular in shape, with a result that the 
 stiffened ropes sprang to their new position 
 with the crack and jerk which had so startled 
 the party. When day broke next morning 
 they found themselves over long tracts of 
 desolate forest land, and fearing they were 
 approaching the wild, inhospitable steppes of 
 Russia, they descended with all speed, and 
 discovered they were in the Duchy of Nassau, 
 in Germany, near Weilburg, where they were 
 received with the wildest enthusiasm and 
 delight. From start to finish they had ac- 
 complished a voyage of 500 miles in eighteen 
 hours. 
 
 After this event Green made many other 
 voyages in the great Nassau balloon, and met 
 with many exciting adventures. On one occa- 
 sion, ascending in a violent gale of wind, he 
 and a passenger covered twenty miles in a 
 quarter of an hour, and, on descending near 
 Rainham, in Essex, were blown along across 
 the fields at a furious pace, until the anchor 
 caught, and brought them up with such a 
 wrench that it broke the ring and jerked the 
 car completely upside down. Green and his 
 friend only escaped from being thrown out by 
 
 D 
 
50 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 holding on to the ropes, and they were after- 
 wards dragged wildly through fences and 
 hedges until the balloon collapsed and came 
 to a stand, though not before they had both 
 been severely hurt. 
 
 On another voyage the famous balloon met 
 with serious injury, for having been some time 
 above the clouds, during an ascent, Green 
 found himself carried out to sea, and was 
 obliged to come down in the water two miles 
 north of Sheerness. As in the accident which 
 befell Mr. Sadler in his attempt to cross the 
 Irish Channel, the wind caught the silk and 
 bore it along across the water too rapidly for 
 a pursuing vessel to overtake it. Green then 
 lowered his anchor, which by happy chance 
 soon became entangled in a sunken wreck, 
 and so brought the balloon up. A boat im- 
 mediately put out to his assistance, and he 
 and a companion were speedily rescued ; but 
 the balloon was so restive in the wind that 
 it was dangerous to approach it. Green him- 
 self then suggested that a volley of musketry 
 should be fired into the silk to expel the gas, 
 and this was accordingly done and the balloon 
 secured, though it afterwards took Green a 
 fortnight's hard labour to repair the damage 
 done to the fabric. 
 
 But the saddest event connected with the 
 Nassau balloon was the fatal accident which 
 befell Mr. Cocking in 1837, the year after the 
 great Nassau voyage. Before relating this, 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 51 
 
 however, it will be necessary to refer briefly 
 to the history of a most important accessory 
 of the balloon, hitherto unmentioned — the 
 parachute. 
 
 The name parachute comes from two French 
 words, parer, to parry and chute, a fall, and it 
 signifies a contrivance, made more or less in 
 the form of an enormous umbrella, to break 
 the fall from a balloon or other great height, 
 The principle of the parachute was understood 
 even before the invention of the balloon. In 
 Eastern countries, in particular, where the 
 umbrella or parasol has been in familiar use 
 from earliest ages, parachutes were frequently 
 employed by acrobats to enable them to jump 
 safely from great elevations. In France also, 
 at the end of the eighteenth century, a captive 
 officer attempted to escape from a lofty prison 
 by similar means. 
 
 The aeronaut Blanchard was the first to 
 construct a parachute for use from a balloon, 
 his idea being that it might prove of service 
 in the event of an accident while aloft. In 
 1785 he let down from a great height a para- 
 chute to which was attached a dog in a basket, 
 which reached the ground gently and safely. 
 After this M. Garnerin, the famous balloon- 
 ist already referred to, hazarded a parachute 
 descent in person, and his attempt being 
 eminently satisfactory, parachute descents be- 
 came fairly common. 
 
 In August 1814 Mr. Cocking, an English 
 
52 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 gentleman of scientific tastes, read a paper on 
 parachutes, suggesting an amendment in their 
 shape and construction, before the Society of 
 Arts, for which he was awarded a medal. His 
 theory was never put into practice, however, 
 till twenty-three years later, when, fired no 
 doubt by the interest aroused by the famous 
 Nassau voyage, he resolved to put his inven- 
 tion to the test. 
 
 He accordingly constructed his parachute, 
 which was of enormous size, of unwieldy 
 weight, and in shape rather resembling an 
 umbrella turned inside out. Despite the 
 warning of friends that the untried machine 
 was unwisely built, he insisted on making a 
 descent with it, and succeeded in persuading 
 Mr. Green to take him and his craft aloft 
 attached to the Nassau balloon. 
 
 On the 27th of July 1837 they started from 
 the Vauxhall Gardens, Mr. Green in the car 
 accompanied by Mr. Edward Spencer (grand- 
 father of the present well-known firm of 
 aeronauts), his friend and frequent companion ; 
 Mr. Cocking seated in his machine slung 
 below. A height of 5000 feet was attained, 
 and then Mr. Cocking, after bidding a hearty 
 farewell to the others, pulled the rope which 
 liberated his parachute from the balloon. 
 Relieved from the enormous weight, the latter 
 rushed upwards into the sky with terrific 
 velocity, the gas pouring in volumes from the 
 valves and almost suffocating the occupants of 
 
Cooking's Pakachute. 
 
54 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 the car. Their position, indeed, for the time 
 was one of the greatest danger, and they were 
 thankful to reach the earth unharmed, which 
 they eventually did. But their fate was 
 happier far than that of the luckless Cocking, 
 whose parachute, after swaying fearfully from 
 side to side, at length utterly collapsed, and 
 falling headlong, was, with its inventor, dashed 
 to pieces. 
 
 While Charles Green was making his 
 famous ascents in England, an equally cele- 
 brated aeronaut, John Wise, was pursuing the 
 same art in America. During a long and 
 successful career, unhappily terminated by an 
 accident, Wise made many experiments in the 
 construction of balloons, their shape, size, 
 varnish, material, and so forth. His results, 
 which he carefully put together, have been of 
 the greatest value to balloon manufacturers 
 until the present time. In the course of his 
 many voyages he met with various exciting 
 adventures. On one occasion while aloft he 
 saw before him a huge black cloud of particu- 
 larly forbidding aspect. Entering this, he 
 found himself in the heart of a terrific storm- 
 His balloon was caught in a whirlwind, and 
 set so violently spinning and swinging that he 
 was sea-sick with the motion, while, at the 
 same time, he felt himself half-suffocated and 
 scarce able to breathe. Within the cloud the 
 cold was intense ; the ropes of the balloon 
 became glazed with ice and snow till they 
 
FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES Oj THE PAST 55 
 
 resembled glass rofts; flair feflsmound, and the 
 gloom was so great that from the car the silk 
 above became invisible. " A noise resembling 
 the rushing of a thousand mill-dams, inter- 
 mingled with a dismal moaning sound of wind, 
 surrounded me in this terrible flight.' 1 Wise 
 adds, " Bright sunshine was just above the 
 clouds ; " but though he endeavoured to reach 
 it by throwing out ballast, the balloon had no 
 sooner begun to rise upwards than it was 
 caught afresh by the storm and whirled down 
 again. Neither was he able, by letting out 
 gas, to escape this furious vortex from be- 
 neath; and for twenty minutes he was swept 
 to and fro, and up and down in the cloud, 
 before he could get clear of it, or regain any 
 control over his balloon. 
 
 On another occasion Wise made an exceed- 
 ingly daring and bold experiment. Convinced 
 of the power which, as has before been said, 
 an empty balloon has of turning itself into a 
 natural parachute, he determined to put the 
 matter to the test, and deliberately to burst 
 his balloon when at a great height. For this 
 purpose he made a special balloon of very thin 
 material, and fastened up the neck so that 
 there was no vent for the gas. He then 
 ascended fearlessly to a height of 13,000 feet, 
 where, through the expansion of the hydrogen 
 with which it was filled, his balloon exploded. 
 The gas escaped instantly, so that in ten 
 seconds not a trace remained. The empty 
 
56 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 balloon at first descended with fearful rapidity, 
 with a strange moaning sound as the air 
 rushed through the network. Then the silk 
 assuming parachute shape, the fall became less 
 rapid, and finally the car, coming down in 
 zigzags, turned upside down when close to 
 the ground, and tossed Wise out into a field 
 unhurt. 
 
 It was John Wise's great desire at one time 
 to sail a balloon right across the Atlantic from 
 America to Europe. Long study of the upper 
 winds had convinced him that a regular current 
 of air is always blowing steadily high aloft 
 from west to east, and he believed that if an 
 aeronaut could only keep his balloon in this 
 upper current he might be carried across the 
 ocean quicker, and with more ease and safety, 
 than in the fastest steamship. Wise went so 
 far as to work out all the details for this plan, 
 the size of the balloon required, the ballast, 
 provisions, and number of passengers ; and 
 only the want of sufficient money prevented 
 him from actually making the attempt. Curi- 
 ously enough, about the same time, Charles 
 Green, in England, was, quite independently, 
 working at the same idea, which he also be- 
 lieved, with proper equipment, to be quite 
 feasible. 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 57 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE BALLOON AS A SCIENTIFIC 
 INSTRUMENT 
 
 So far, in our history of aeronautics, we have 
 referred to ballooning only as a sport or pas- 
 time for the amusement of spectators, and for 
 the gratifying of a love of adventure. It is 
 now time to speak of the practical uses of the 
 balloon, and how it has been employed as a 
 most valuable scientific instrument to teach 
 us facts about the upper atmosphere, its 
 nature and extent, the clouds, the winds and 
 their ways, the travel of sounds, and many 
 other things of which we should otherwise be 
 ignorant. 
 
 Before the invention of the balloon men 
 were quite unaware of the nature of the air 
 even a short distance above their heads. In 
 those days high mountain climbing had not 
 come into fashion, and when Pilatre de Rozier 
 made the first ascent, it was considered very 
 doubtful whether he might be able to exist in 
 the strange atmosphere aloft. Charles and 
 Roberts were the first to make scientific 
 observations from a balloon, for they took up 
 a thermometer and barometer, and made 
 certain rough records, as also did other early 
 aeronauts. The most interesting purely scien- 
 
58 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 tific ascents of early days, however, were made 
 in the autumn of 1804, from Paris, by Gay 
 Lussac, a famous French philosopher. He 
 took up with him all manner of instruments, 
 among them a compass (to see if the needle 
 behaved the same as on earth), an apparatus to 
 test the electricity of the air, thermometers, 
 barometers, and hygrometers, carefully ex- 
 hausted flasks in which to bring down samples 
 of the upper air, birds, and even insects and 
 frogs, to see how great heights affected them. 
 In his second voyage his balloon attained the 
 enormous altitude of 23,000 feet, or more than 
 four miles and a quarter, and nearly 2000 feet 
 higher than the highest peaks of the Andes. 
 At this tremendous height the temperature 
 fell to far below freezing-point, and the aero- 
 naut became extremely cold, though warmly 
 clad ; he also felt headache, a difficulty in 
 breathing, and his throat became so parched 
 that he could hardly swallow. Nevertheless, 
 undismayed by the awfulness of his position, 
 he continued making his observations, and 
 eventually reached the ground in safety, and 
 none the worse for his experience. 
 
 Gay Lussac's experiments at least proved 
 that though the air becomes less and less dense 
 as we ascend into it, it remains of the same 
 nature and constitution. His second voyage 
 also showed that the limit to which man 
 could ascend aloft into the sky and yet live 
 had not yet been reached. Almost sixty 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 59 
 
 3^ears later other scientific ascents threw fresh 
 light on this point, and also continued the 
 other investigations that Gay Lussac had 
 commenced. 
 
 Towards the close of Charles Green's famous 
 career, scientific men in England woke up to 
 the fact that the use of a balloon as an im- 
 portant means for obtaining observations on 
 meteorology and other matters had of late 
 been very much neglected. The British Asso- 
 ciation took the matter up, and provided 
 the money for four scientific ascents, which 
 were made by Mr. Welsh of Kew Observa- 
 tory, a trained observer. Green was the 
 aeronaut chosen to accompany him, and the 
 balloon used was none other than the great 
 Nassau balloon, of whose many and wonder- 
 ful adventures we have already spoken. Green 
 was then nearly seventy years of age, but his 
 skill as an aeronaut was as great as ever, and 
 Welsh was able to obtain many valuable 
 records. During the last voyage a height was 
 attained almost as great as that reached by 
 Gay Lussac, and both men found much diffi- 
 culty in breathing. While at this elevation 
 they suddenly noticed they were rapidly ap- 
 proaching the sea, and so were forced to make 
 a very hasty descent, in which many of the 
 instruments were broken. 
 
 The veteran Green lived to a ripe old age, 
 dying in 1870, aged eighty-five. When a very 
 old man he still delighted in taking visitors to 
 
60 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 an outhouse where he kept the old Nassau 
 balloon, now worn out and useless, and, hand- 
 ling it affectionately, would talk of its famous 
 adventures and his own thousand ascents, dur- 
 ing which he had never once met with serious 
 accident or failure. After his death the old 
 balloon passed into the hands of another 
 equally famous man, who, after Green's re- 
 tirement, took his place as the most celebrated 
 English aeronaut of the day. 
 
 This was Henry Coxwell. He was the son 
 of a naval officer, and was brought up to the 
 profession of a dentist. But when a boy of 
 only nine years old he watched, through his 
 father's telescope, a balloon ascent by Green, 
 which so fired his imagination that hence- 
 forward balloons filled all his thoughts. As 
 he grew older the fascination increased upon 
 him. He would go long distances to see 
 ascents or catch glimpses of balloons in the 
 air, and he was fortunate enough to be present 
 at the first launching of the great Nassau 
 balloon. He did not get the chance of a 
 voyage aloft, however, till he was twenty- 
 five ; but after this nothing could restrain his 
 ardour, and, throwing his profession to the 
 winds, he made ascent after ascent on all pos- 
 sible occasions. 
 
 In one of his early voyages he met with what 
 he describes as one of the most perilous de- 
 scents in the whole history of ballooning. The 
 occasion was an evening ascent made from the 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 61 
 
 Vauxhall Gardens one autumn night of 1848. 
 The aeronaut was a Mr. Gypson, and besides 
 Mr. Coxwell there were two other passengers, 
 one of whom was the well-known mountaineer 
 and lecturer, Albert Smith. A number of 
 fireworks which were to be displayed when 
 
 Coxwell. 
 
 GrLAlSHEK. 
 
 aloft were slung on a framework forty feet 
 below the car. 
 
 The balloon rose high above London, and 
 the party were amazed and delighted with the 
 strange and lovely view of the great city by 
 night, all sight of the houses being lost in the 
 darkness, and the thousands of gas lamps, out- 
 lining the invisible streets and bridges, twink- 
 
62 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 ling like stars in a blue-black sky. Cox well 
 was sitting, not in the car, but in the ring of 
 the balloon, and presently, when they were 
 about 7000 feet above the town, he noticed that 
 the silk, the mouth of which appears to have 
 been fastened, was growing dangerously dis- 
 tended with the expanding gas. By his advice 
 the valve was immediately pulled, but it was 
 already too late ; the balloon burst, the gas 
 escaped with a noise like the escape of steam 
 from an engine, the silk collapsed, and the 
 balloon began to descend with appalling 
 speed, the immense mass of loose silk surging 
 and rustling frightfully overhead. Everything 
 was immediately thrown out of the car to 
 break the fall ; but the wind still seemed to 
 be rushing past at a fearful rate, and, to add 
 to the horror of the aeronauts, they now came 
 down through the remains of the discharged 
 fireworks floating in the air. Little bits of 
 burning cases and still smouldering touch- 
 paper blew about them, and were caught in 
 the rigging. These kindled into sparks, and 
 there seemed every chance of the whole balloon 
 catching alight. They were still a whole mile 
 from the ground, and this distance they appear 
 to have covered in less than two minutes. 
 The house-tops seemed advancing up towards 
 them with awful speed as they neared earth. 
 In the end they were tossed out of the car 
 along the ground, and it appeared a perfect 
 marvel to them all that they escaped with only 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 63 
 
 a severe shaking. This adventure did not in 
 the least abate Coxwell's ardour for ballooning, 
 and exactly a week later he and Gypson suc- 
 cessfully made the same ascent from the same 
 place, and in the same balloon — and loaded 
 with twice the number of fireworks ! 
 
 But Coxwell's most celebrated voyage of all 
 took place some years later, on the occasion 
 of a scientific voyage made in company with 
 Mr. James Glaisher. In 1862 the British As- 
 sociation determined to continue the balloon 
 observations which Mr. Welsh had so success- 
 fully commenced, but this time on a larger 
 scale. The observer was to be Mr. Glaisher 
 of Greenwich Observatory, and Mr. Coxwell, 
 who by this time had become a recognised 
 aeronaut, undertook the management of the 
 balloon. The first ascents were made in July 
 and August. Mr. Glaisher took up a most 
 elaborate and costly outfit of instruments, 
 which, however, were badly damaged at the 
 outset during a very rapid descent, made per- 
 force to avoid falling in the " Wash." On 
 each occasion a height of over four miles was 
 attained ; but on the third voyage, which was 
 in September, it was decided to try and reach 
 yet greater altitudes. 
 
 The balloon with its two passengers left Wol- 
 verhampton at 1 p.m. — the temperature on the 
 ground being 59°. At about a mile high a 
 dense cloud was entered, and the thermometer 
 fell to 36°. In nineteen minutes a height of 
 
64 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 two miles was reached, and the air was at 
 freezing-point. Six minutes later they were 
 three miles aloft, with the thermometer still 
 falling ; and by the time four miles high was 
 attained the mercury registered only 8°. 
 
 In forty-seven minutes from the start five 
 miles had been passed ; and now the tempera- 
 ture was 2° below zero. Mr. Coxwell, who 
 was up in the ring of the balloon and exerting 
 himself over the management of it, found he 
 was beginning to breathe with great difficulty. 
 Mr. Glaisher, sitting quietly in the car watch- 
 ing his instruments, felt no inconvenience. 
 More ballast was thrown out, and the balloon 
 continued to rise apace ; and soon Mr. Glaisher 
 found his eyes growing strangely dim. He 
 could not see to read his thermometer, or 
 distinguish the hands of his watch. He noticed 
 the mercury of the barometer, however, and 
 saw that a height of 29,000 feet had been 
 reached, and the balloon was still rising. 
 What followed next had best be told in 
 Mr. Glaisher's own words : — 
 
 " Shortly after I laid my arm upon the table, 
 possessed of its full vigour, but on being 
 desirous of using it, I found it useless. Trying 
 to move the other arm, I found it powerless 
 also. Then I tried to shake myself and suc- 
 ceeded, but I seemed to have no limbs. In 
 looking at the barometer my head fell over 
 my left shoulder. I struggled and shook my 
 body again, but could not move my arms. 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 65 
 
 Getting my head upright for an instant only, 
 it fell on my right shoulder ; then I fell back- 
 wards, my body resting against the side of the 
 car, and my head on the edge. I dimly saw- 
 Mr. Coxwell and endeavoured to speak, but 
 could not. In an instant intense darkness 
 overcame me ; but I was still conscious, with 
 as active a brain as at the present moment 
 while writing this. I thought I had been 
 seized with asphyxia, and believed I should 
 experience nothing more, as death would come 
 unless we speedily descended. Other thoughts 
 were entering my mind, when I suddenly be- 
 came unconscious as on going to sleep." Mr. 
 Glaisher adds : " I cannot tell anything of the 
 sense of hearing, as no sound reaches the ear 
 to break the perfect stillness and silence of the 
 regions between six and seven miles above 
 the earth." 
 
 Meanwhile, as stated, Mr. Coxwell was up 
 in the ring, trying to secure the valve-line, 
 which had become twisted. To do this he 
 had taken off a pair of thick gloves he had 
 been wearing, and in the tremendous cold of 
 that awful region the moment his bare hands 
 rested on the metal of the ring they became 
 frost-bitten and useless. Looking down, he 
 saw Mr. Glaisher in a fainting condition, and 
 called out to him, but received no answer. 
 Thoroughly alarmed by this time, he tried to 
 come down to his companion's assistance ; but 
 now his hands also had become lifeless, and 
 
 E 
 
66 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 he felt unconsciousness rapidly stealing over 
 him. 
 
 Quickly realising that death to both of 
 them would speedily follow if the balloon 
 continued to ascend, Mr. Coxwell now en- 
 deavoured to pull the valve-line ; but he 
 found it impossible to do so with his disabled 
 hands. Fortunately he was a man of great 
 bodily strength, as well as of iron nerve, and 
 by a great effort he succeeded in catching 
 the valve-line in his teeth. Then, putting his 
 whole weight upon it, he managed to pull 
 open the valve, and hold it until the balloon 
 took a decided turn downwards. This saved 
 them. As lower regions were reached, where 
 the air was denser, Mr. Glaisher began to 
 recover, and by the time they came to the 
 ground neither of these two brave men 
 were any the worse for their extraordinary 
 experience. 
 
 Neither Mr. Glaisher or Mr. Coxwell were 
 able to note the exact elevation when they 
 were at their greatest height ; but from 
 several circumstances they were convinced 
 that it must have been 36,000 or 37,000 feet, 
 or fully seven miles high. Later aeronauts 
 have been inclined to doubt if this surmise 
 can be quite correct ; but whether it is so 
 or not is of no great moment, for this great 
 balloon ascent will always stand unrivalled 
 in the history of ballooning. Since that day 
 nearly as great, or perhaps even greater, 
 
THE BALLOON A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 67 
 
 heights have been reached in balloons ; but 
 nowadays those who attempt to ascend to 
 great elevations always provide themselves, 
 before they start, with cylinders of com- 
 pressed oxygen gas. Then when the atmos- 
 phere aloft becomes so thin and rare as to 
 make breathing difficult, they begin to fill 
 their lungs with the life-giving gas from the 
 cylinders, and at once recover. 
 
 After this perilous voyage Glaisher and 
 Coxwell made several other scientific balloon 
 ascents. They met with various experiences. 
 On one occasion, during a lofty ascent, they 
 lost sight of the earth above the clouds for 
 a while, but, the mist suddenly breaking, they 
 found themselves on the point of drifting out 
 to sea. Not a moment was to be lost, and 
 both men hung on to the valve-line until 
 it cut their hands. The result was a tre- 
 mendously rapid descent. The balloon fell 
 four and a quarter miles in less than a quarter 
 of an hour, covering the last two miles in 
 only four minutes. They reached earth close 
 to the shore, and were fortunate to escape 
 with only a few bruises, though all the instru- 
 ments were once more broken in the shock. 
 
 Mr. Glaisher was able to make many 
 interesting notes of the condition of the 
 winds and clouds at high levels. He ob- 
 served how frequently different currents of 
 air are blowing aloft in different directions 
 at the same time. These differing winds 
 
68 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 affect the shape of the clouds among which 
 they blow. High above the ground he 
 frequently met with a warm wind blowing 
 constantly from the south-west; and he be- 
 lieved that it is largely due to this mild air- 
 stream passing always overhead that England 
 enjoys such much less rigorous winters than 
 other countries that lie as far north of the 
 equator. This mildness of our climate has 
 long been attributed to the Gulf Stream, 
 that warm current of the sea which sweeps 
 up from the tropics past our shores. But it 
 may well be that there is besides an " Aerial 
 Gulf Stream," as Mr. Glaisher calls it, blowing 
 constantly above our heads, which also serves 
 to warm the air, and make our winter climate 
 mild and moist. 
 
 One fact these experiments seemed to 
 establish was, that when rain is falling from 
 an overcast sky, there is always a higher layer 
 of clouds overhanging the lower stratum. 
 Nothing surprised Mr. Glaisher more than 
 the extreme rapidity with which the whole 
 sky, up to a vast height, could fill up entirely 
 with clouds at the approach of a storm. 
 Another point noted was that, when a wind 
 is blowing, the upper portion of the current 
 always travels faster than that next the 
 ground. This is due, of course, to the 
 obstacles the wind meets as it sweeps over 
 the earth, and which check its onward 
 progress. 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 69 
 
 These, and very many other facts of the 
 greatest interest to the meteorologist, were 
 the outcome of Mr. Glaisher's experiments. 
 Later voyages of a similar kind have added 
 greatly to our knowledge of the condition 
 of the air, and it seems certain that in the 
 future the balloon will be much more used 
 by scientific men, and by its means they will 
 be able to predict the weather more accurately 
 and further ahead than at present, and learn 
 many other things of which we are now in 
 ignorance. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 
 
 But there is another practical use for the 
 balloon to which we must now refer, and 
 that a most important one — its employment 
 in war-time. It was not long after the in- 
 vention of this ship of the skies that soldiers 
 began to realise what a valuable aid it might 
 be to them in times of battle, enabling them 
 to see inside a camp, fort, or beleaguered 
 city, or watch the enemy's movements from 
 afar off. The opportunity for first putting 
 the matter to the test very soon arose. 
 Within a very few years of the earliest bal- 
 loon experiments in France there commenced 
 
70 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 in that very country the dreadful French 
 Revolution, and soon the nation found itself 
 at war with all the world, and forced to hold 
 its own, alone, against the armies of Europe. 
 This danger quickened the minds of all to 
 the importance of making use of every pos- 
 sible means of defence in their power. It 
 was suggested that the newly discovered 
 balloon might be turned to account, and 
 immediately a school for military ballooning 
 was established near Paris. Fifty young 
 military students were trained in the new 
 art, and suitable balloons were provided. 
 The value of their work was soon apparent. 
 In June 1794 was fought the battle of 
 Fleurus, between the French and Austrians. 
 Before the fight a balloon party had carefully 
 observed the position of the Austrian forces, 
 and, through the information they gave, the 
 French were able to gain a speedy and de- 
 cisive victory. In this way, and at this early 
 stage, the value of the war balloon was at 
 once established. 
 
 Curiously enough, Napoleon would make 
 no use of balloons in his campaigns, and even 
 did away with the balloon school at Paris. 
 The reason given for his prejudice is a curious 
 one. At the time of his coronation a large, 
 unmanned balloon, gaily decorated, and carry- 
 ing thousands of lights, was sent up from 
 Paris during the evening's illuminations. It 
 was a very beautiful object, and behaved 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 71 
 
 splendidly, sailing away into the night, amidst 
 great popular rejoicing, until it was lost to 
 sight in the darkness. But at daybreak next 
 morning it was seen approaching the city of 
 Rome, where it presently arrived, actually 
 hovering over St. Peter's and the Vatican. 
 Then, as if its mission were fulfilled, it settled 
 to earth, and finally fell in Lake Bracciano. 
 But as it fell it rent itself, and left a portion 
 of the crown with which it was ornamented 
 on the tomb of the Roman Emperor Nero. 
 Napoleon, who was always a superstitious 
 man, saw in this extraordinary voyage some 
 dreadful forecast of his own fate. He was 
 much disturbed, and forebade the matter 
 ever to be mentioned in his presence ; nor 
 would he henceforward have any more to 
 do with balloons. 
 
 Military balloons were used by the French 
 again, however, during their war in Africa in 
 1830. The Austrians also used them in 1849, 
 and it is said the Russians had them at the 
 siege of Sebastopol in the Crimean War. A 
 Montgolfier balloon was made use of by the 
 French in 1862 at the battle of Solferino ; 
 and the Americans also employed balloons 
 during the Civil War a year later. The 
 American war balloons were comparatively 
 small ones, inflated with hydrogen. The 
 hydrogen was manufactured in the way al- 
 ready described, by pouring dilute sulphuric 
 acid upon scrap-iron. For making the gas 
 
72 
 
 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 upon the field two large tanks of wood called 
 "generators" were used. In these the water 
 and scrap-iron were placed and the acid poured 
 upon them, the gas produced being carried 
 to the balloon through pipes, passing first 
 
 
 ^:^>^r>* 
 
 American War Balloon. 
 
 through vessels filled with lime-water to cool 
 and purify it. When on the march four 
 waggons were sufficient to carry the whole 
 apparatus. The inflation, which took some 
 time, was made as close to the scene of 
 action as was considered safe, and when 
 the balloon was once full a party of men 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 73 
 
 could easily tow it about to where it was 
 needed. 
 
 But the time when the balloon was most 
 largely and most usefully used in time of 
 war was during the Siege of Paris. In the 
 month of September 1870, during the Franco- 
 Prussian War, Paris was closely invested by 
 the Prussian forces, and for eighteen long 
 weeks lay besieged and cut off from all the 
 rest of the world. No communication with 
 the city was possible either by road, river, 
 rail, or telegraph, nor could the inhabitants 
 convey tidings of their plight save by one 
 means alone. Only the passage of the air 
 was open to them. 
 
 Quite at the beginning of the siege it oc- 
 curred to the Parisians that they might use 
 balloons to escape from the beleaguered town, 
 and pass over the heads of the enemy to safety 
 beyond; and inquiry was at once made to 
 discover what aeronautical resources were at 
 their command. 
 
 It was soon found that with only one or 
 two exceptions the balloons actually in exist- 
 ence within the walls were unserviceable or 
 unsuitable for the work on hand, being mostly 
 old ones which had been laid aside as worth- 
 less. One lucky discovery was, however, made. 
 Two professional aeronauts, of well-proved 
 experience and skill, were in Paris at the time. 
 These were MM. Godard and Yon, both of 
 whom had been in London only a short time 
 
74 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 before in connection with a huge captive bal- 
 loon which was then being exhibited there. 
 They at once received orders to establish two 
 balloon factories, and begin making a large 
 number of balloons as quickly as possible. 
 For their workshops they were given the use 
 of two great railway stations, then standing 
 idle and deserted. No better places for the 
 purpose could be imagined, for under the 
 great glass roofs there was plenty of space, 
 and the work went on apace. 
 
 As the balloons were intended to make only 
 one journey each, plain white or coloured 
 calico (of which there was plenty in the 
 city), covered with quick-drying varnish, was 
 considered good enough for their material. 
 Hundreds of men and women were employed 
 at the two factories ; and altogether some 
 sixty balloons were turned out during the 
 siege. Their management was entrusted to 
 sailors, who, of all men, seemed most fitted 
 for the work. The only previous training 
 that could be given them was to sling them 
 up to the roof of the railway stations in a 
 balloon car, and there make them go through 
 the actions of throwing out ballast, dropping 
 the anchor, and pulling the valve-line. This 
 was, of course, very like learning to swim on 
 dry land ; nevertheless, these amateurs made, 
 on the whole, very fair aeronauts. 
 
 But before the first of the new balloons was 
 ready experiments were already being made 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 75 
 
 with the few old balloons then in Paris. Two 
 were moored captive at different ends of the 
 town to act as observation stations from 
 whence the enemy's movements could be 
 watched. Captive ascents were made in them 
 every few hours. Meanwhile M. Duruof, a 
 professional aeronaut, made his escape from 
 the city in an old and unskyworthy balloon 
 called " Le Neptune," descending safely out- 
 side the enemy's lines, while another equally 
 successful voyage was made with two small 
 balloons fastened together. 
 
 And then, as soon as the possibility of 
 leaving Paris by this means was fully proved, 
 an important new development arose. So 
 far, as was shown, tidings of the besieged city 
 could be conveyed to the outside world ; but 
 how was news from without to reach those 
 imprisoned within? The problem was pre- 
 sently solved in a most ingenious way. 
 
 There was in Paris, when the siege com- 
 menced, a society or club of pigeon-fanciers 
 who were specially interested in the breeding 
 and training of " carrier " or "homing" pigeons. 
 The leaders of this club now came forward 
 and suggested to the authorities that, with 
 the aid of the balloons, their birds might be 
 turned to practical account as letter-carriers. 
 The idea was at once taken up, and hence- 
 forward every balloon that sailed out of Paris 
 contained not only letters and despatches, but 
 also a number of properly trained pigeons, 
 
70 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 which, when liberated, would find their way 
 back to their homes within the walls of the 
 besieged city. 
 
 When the pigeons had been safely brought 
 out of Paris, and fallen into friendly hands be- 
 yond the Prussian forces, there were attached 
 to the tail feathers of each of them goose 
 quills, about two inches long, fastened on by a 
 silken thread or thin wire. Inside these were 
 tiny scraps of photographic film, not much 
 larger than postage stamps, upon which a large 
 number of messages had been photographed 
 by microscopic photography. So skilfully was 
 this done that each scrap of film could contain 
 2500 messages of twenty words each. A bird 
 might easily carry a dozen of these films, for 
 the weight was always less than one gramme, 
 or 15£ grains. One bird, in fact, arrived in 
 Paris on the 3rd of February carrying eighteen 
 films, containing altogether 40,000 messages. 
 To avoid accidents, several copies of the same 
 film were made, and attached to different birds. 
 When any of the pigeons arrived in Paris their 
 despatches were enlarged and thrown on a 
 screen by a magic-lantern, then copied and 
 sent to those for whom they were intended. 
 
 This system of balloon and pigeon post 
 went on during the whole siege. Between 
 sixty and seventy balloons left the city, carry- 
 ing altogether nearly 200 people, and two 
 and a half million letters, weighing in all 
 about ten tons. The greater number of 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 77 
 
 these arrived in safety, while the return jour- 
 neys, accomplished by the birds, were scarcely 
 less successful. The weather was very un- 
 favourable during most of the time, and cold 
 and fogs prevented many pigeons from making 
 their way back to Paris. Of 360 birds brought 
 safely out of the city by balloon only about 
 60 returned, but these had carried between 
 them some 100,000 messages. 
 
 Of the balloons themselves two, each with its 
 luckless aeronaut, were blown out to sea and 
 never heard of more. Two sailed into Ger- 
 many and were captured by the enemy, three 
 more came down too soon and fell into the 
 hands of the besieging army near Paris, and 
 one did not even get as far as the Prussian 
 lines. Others experienced accidents and 
 rough landings in which their passengers were 
 more or less injured. Moreover, each balloon 
 which sailed by day from the city became 
 at once a mark for the enemy's fire ; so much 
 so that before long it became necessary to 
 make all the ascents by night, under cover 
 of darkness. 
 
 They were brave men indeed who dared 
 face the perils of a night voyage in an un- 
 tried balloon, manned by an unskilled pilot, 
 and exposed to the fire of the enemy, into 
 whose hands they ran the greatest risk of 
 falling. It is small wonder there was much 
 excitement in Paris when it became known 
 that the first of the new balloons made during 
 
78 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 the siege was to take away no less a personage 
 than M. Gambetta, the great statesman, who 
 was at the time, and for long after, the leading 
 man in France. He made his escape by 
 balloon on the 7th of October, accompanied 
 by his secretary and an aeronaut, and man- 
 aged to reach a safe haven, though not before 
 they had been vigorously fired at by shot 
 and shell, and M. Gambetta himself had 
 actually been grazed on the hand by a 
 bullet. 
 
 Another distinguished man who hazarded the 
 same perilous feat, though for a very different 
 reason, was M. Janssen, a famous astronomer. 
 On the 22nd of December of that year there 
 was to take place an important total eclipse 
 of the sun, which would be visible in Spain 
 and Algeria. It had long been M. Janssen's 
 intention to observe this eclipse, and for this 
 purpose he had prepared a special telescope 
 and apparatus ; but when the time drew near 
 he found himself and his instruments shut up 
 in besieged Paris, with no possible means of 
 escape except the dangerous and desperate 
 hazard of a voyage by sky. 
 
 But so great was the astronomer's en- 
 thusiasm for his work, that he resolved to 
 brave even this risk. Taking the essential 
 parts of his telescope with him, and, as aero- 
 naut, an active young sailor, he set sail in 
 the darkness of a winter's morning, long 
 before dawn, passed safely over the enemy's 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 79 
 
 lines, and continued the voyage till nearly 
 mid-day, when they sighted the sea, and 
 came down near the mouth of the river 
 Loire, having travelled 300 miles in little 
 more than five hours. Neither Janssen or 
 his telescope were injured in the descent, 
 though the wind was high at the time ; and 
 both reached Algeria in time for the eclipse. 
 It must have been a most bitter disappoint- 
 ment to the ardent astronomer, after all his 
 exertions, that when the great day arrived 
 the sun was hidden by clouds, and he was 
 unable to observe the sight for which he had 
 risked so much. 
 
 Since the Franco-Prussian war, military 
 ballooning has been largely developed, and 
 now all great armies possess their properly 
 equipped and trained balloon corps. The 
 balloons in use in the British Army at the 
 present day are made, not of silk, but of gold- 
 beater's skin, a very thin, but extremely tough 
 membrane prepared from the insides of oxen. 
 This is, of course, much stronger and more 
 durable than ordinary balloon fabric, but much 
 more expensive. The balloons are compara- 
 tively small ones, of 10,000 feet capacity, and 
 are inflated with hydrogen. The hydrogen is 
 now no longer made upon the field, but is 
 manufactured in special factories, and carried 
 compressed in large steel cylinders. By this 
 means the time occupied in filling the balloon 
 is much reduced, but the weight of the 
 
80 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 cylinders is very great. As will be remem- 
 bered, balloons were made of considerable use 
 during the late Boer War. At the siege of 
 Ladysmith they were thought of much value 
 in directing the fire of the British Artillery, 
 and again at Spion Kop and Magersfontein 
 are said to have done good service. 
 
 So far we have shown of what use balloons 
 may be in times of peace and war. Every 
 year sees fresh improvements and develop- 
 ments in balloons for military purposes and in 
 those employed for making meteorological and 
 other similar observations ; and there is no 
 doubt that great advances may shortly be 
 expected in both these directions. But there 
 is yet another and totally different science to 
 which the balloon may lend its aid, and help 
 greatly to add to our knowledge ; and this is 
 the science of geography, or the study of the 
 earth's surface. 
 
 One of the earliest ideas suggested by Mont- 
 golfier's invention was that the balloon might 
 be turned to practical account in the exploring 
 of unknown and inaccessible tracts of the world. 
 It was suggested that in a balloon men might 
 sail over and survey country that they were 
 not able to reach in any other way. Deserts 
 could be crossed in this fashion, forests and 
 mountain ranges, and even the desolate ice- 
 tracts of the North and South Poles. 
 
 All this is, in truth, perfectly possible, and 
 another day may be accomplished ; but at 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 81 
 
 present great difficulties and dangers stand in 
 the way of exploring by balloon, and up to 
 the present time, with one great exception, 
 no special attempt has been made. It has 
 already been mentioned that both Wise and 
 Green wished to cross the Atlantic by sky, 
 and indeed at the present moment plans are 
 actually being made on the Continent for a 
 similar voyage. This, however, can scarcely 
 be called exploring. Other suggestions 
 which may presently be put to the test 
 are the crossing of the Sahara, and also of 
 another great desert in Central Arabia, into 
 which no white man has ever succeeded in 
 penetrating. Recent expeditions both to the 
 North and South Poles have also taken with 
 them balloons to be used captive for the 
 observation of the state of the ice ahead, 
 and for obtaining wide views around. 
 
 The one great attempt at exploring by 
 balloon which has so far been made has, un- 
 fortunately, met with hopeless and terrible 
 disaster — this was the ill-fated voyage to the 
 North Pole of Andree and his companions. 
 The idea of reaching the Pole by balloon 
 was first proposed many years ago, and both 
 French and English aeronauts at different 
 times have made suggestions as to the best 
 way in which it might be accomplished. 
 Nothing, however, was attempted until about 
 the year 1894, when M. S. A. Andree, a well- 
 known Swedish balloonist, who had already 
 
82 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 met with exciting experiences in the air, made 
 up his mind actually to risk the venture. 
 
 His plan was to take a suitable balloon, and 
 the apparatus for inflating it, to a place as far 
 north as a ship could safely go, then to fill 
 the balloon and wait for a favourable wind 
 which should carry him right over the Pole and 
 beyond until inhabited country was reached. 
 By the summer of 1896 all his preparations 
 were complete. His balloon was an enormous 
 one, capable of holding 162,000 cubic feet of 
 gas, and was fitted Avith a rudder sail and a 
 long trail-rope, by means of which Andree 
 hoped to be able to some extent to steer his 
 course across the ice. Two companions were 
 to accompany him on his voyage, and on June 
 7th the party embarked with all their appa- 
 ratus, and were conveyed to Spitzbergen. 
 
 They landed at Dane's Island, where their 
 first work was to build themselves a shed. 
 They then got their gas-making apparatus 
 into order, and filled the balloon, and by the 
 27th of July were all ready for a start. But 
 the wind was contrary, and day after day they 
 waited in vain for a change, until at last the 
 captain of the ship which had brought them 
 warned them they would be frozen in for the 
 winter unless they returned without delay. 
 Very reluctantly, therefore, they abandoned 
 their venture for that year, and went home, 
 leaving behind them the shed and gas-gener- 
 ator for another occasion. 
 
THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 83 
 
 The winter passed, and by the end of next 
 May they were back again at Dane's Island. 
 Their shed and apparatus had suffered damage 
 during their absence, and had to be repaired, 
 and their preparations were not complete until 
 the end of June. But again the wind was 
 contrary, and for three weeks more they waited 
 impatiently. All this while the balloon re- 
 mained inflated, and by the long delay must 
 have lost a considerable amount of its buoy- 
 ancy. At last the wind changed, and though 
 it was not exactly in the direction they wished, 
 being a little west of south, instead of due 
 south, Andree felt he could wait no longer, 
 and at half-past two in the afternoon of July 
 11th set sail, with his two friends, on his daring 
 voyage. 
 
 What followed is soon told. Eleven days 
 later one of the carrier pigeons taken by 
 Andree in his balloon was picked up by a 
 fishing-boat off Spitzbergen. Fastened to it 
 was the following message: — "July 13th,' 
 12.30 p.m. 82° 2' north lat., 15° 5' east long. 
 Good journey eastward. All goes well on 
 board. — Andree." 
 
 This was the latest news ever heard of the 
 ill-fated voyagers. Later on two of Andree's 
 buoys, thrown out from the balloon, were 
 found ; but the messages these contained were 
 dated on the evening of July 11th, only a few 
 hours after the start. If the date of the first 
 found message can be relied on, it would seem 
 
84 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 that after forty-eight hours Andree's balloon 
 was still sailing well, and he had already 
 accomplished the longest voyage aloft ever 
 made. 
 
 Of his subsequent fate, and that of his com- 
 panions, nothing is known. Search expedi- 
 tions have failed to find any trace of them or 
 of the balloon, and the many rumours received 
 have been proved to be false. There can be 
 no possible reason to doubt that these brave 
 men perished in their daring attempt, and that 
 their bones lie in the Arctic Sea or in the waste 
 of ice and snow that surrounds the Pole. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE AIRSHIP 
 
 So far in our story we have traced the origin 
 and progress of the balloon, showing how from 
 small beginnings it has grown to be an im- 
 portant invention, of great use to the scientific 
 observer, the soldier, and the explorer, and the 
 means of teaching us much fresh knowledge. 
 
 But in spite of the high hopes of early 
 aeronauts, and the extravagant prophecies 
 made when the first balloons ascended into 
 the sky, it has long been evident that the 
 balloon alone has not solved the problem of 
 human flight or accomplished the conquest 
 
THE AIRSHIP 85 
 
 of the air. An ordinary balloon is, in fact, 
 nothing more than a mere lifting machine, 
 no more capable of sailing the sky, in the 
 proper sense of the word, than a cork floating 
 in the water is capable of sailing the sea. It 
 has no movement of its own, but drifts simply 
 at the mercy of the wind, and quite beyond 
 control. By the discharge of ballast, or by 
 the letting out of gas, the aeronaut can indeed 
 cause it to rise or sink at pleasure, and some- 
 times when two currents of air are blowing 
 aloft in different directions at the same time 
 he may, by passing from one to the other, 
 " tack " his balloon to some extent across the 
 sky. Otherwise he has no power of guiding 
 or directing it in the least degree, and should 
 he lose sight of the earth above the clouds, 
 has even no method of telling in which 
 direction he is travelling. 
 
 Early inventors thought they would be able 
 to steer balloons by means of sails, like a boat, 
 but they soon found that this was impossible. 
 The effect of hoisting a sail at the side of 
 a balloon was merely to swing the balloon 
 round until the sail was in front, while mean- 
 time it continued its course unaltered. The 
 use of a rudder and other means were also 
 tried, but without success ; nor can such 
 methods ever hope to succeed so long as a 
 balloon floats in the air at the same pace as 
 the wind that carries it forward. A balloon 
 travelling with the wind may be compared 
 
86 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 to a boat drifting idly with the tide. As 
 long as she drifts she refuses to answer her 
 rudder, which swings idly. But presently the 
 boatman hoists a sail, and the wind carries the 
 boat onwards faster than the tide, and then 
 immediately the rudder comes into action. 
 Or should there be no wind, he may accom- 
 plish the same thing by dragging an anchor 
 or other weight in the water, and so slowing 
 his boat down until it moves slower than 
 the current ; he will then again find that his 
 boat will answer her helm. 
 
 To steer his course in a balloon, therefore, 
 the aeronaut must so arrange that he is 
 travelling faster or slower than the wind in 
 which he finds himself. To travel faster, he 
 must employ some sort of engine or motor 
 to drive his craft onwards. To travel slower, 
 he must trail something along the ground 
 beneath to act as a drag. 
 
 Part of the equipment of every balloon is 
 a long trail-rope, which, when the balloon 
 is aloft, hangs some 300 feet below the car. 
 The object of this rope is to break the force 
 of the fall when the balloon comes down to 
 the earth at the end of the voyage. In the 
 greater number of cases a balloon, in its final 
 swoop to the ground, falls the last few hundred 
 feet with considerable, and often uncomfort- 
 able, speed. But when provided with a trail- 
 rope, as it descends more and more of the 
 heavy rope will lie along the ground, and so 
 
THE AIRSHIP 87 
 
 lighten the weight of the balloon, and lessen 
 the shock of falling. 
 
 If then a trail-rope were used of such length 
 that it would sweep along the ground while 
 the balloon was flying in the air, the effect 
 would be to put a drag or brake on the 
 balloon, and so render it capable of being 
 steered to some extent with a sail ; and this 
 is what has actually been done in all attempts 
 of the kind. But since a long rope dragging 
 rapidly across the country is a very dangerous 
 object, capable of doing great damage, and 
 also liable to catch in trees and other obstacles, 
 such experiments can only be tried with safety 
 over the sea, or, as in the case of Andree's 
 voyage, over desert or uninhabited country. 
 
 The best way of steering a balloon, there- 
 fore, is to provide it with some mechanical 
 power which shall urge it onwards at a greater 
 speed than the wind ; and when this is done, 
 it has ceased to be a balloon in the popular 
 sense of the word, and has become an " air- 
 ship." 
 
 There is a great deal of confusion between 
 the terms "airship," and "flying machine," 
 and the two words are often considered as 
 meaning the same thing. But while, strictly 
 speaking, neither word in itself has any very 
 definite meaning, it is gradually becoming 
 more general to apply them to two widely 
 different objects. According to this plan, 
 although both names stand for an aerial vessel 
 
88 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 capable of travelling in the sky by its own 
 motion, an airship is a machine supported 
 in the air by reason of its buoyancy, while 
 a flying machine is kept aloft only by virtue 
 of its onward movement. 
 
 In other words, part of the construction of 
 an airship consists of a bag or balloon, filled 
 with gas or hot air, which causes the whole 
 to rise and maintain its position in the air. 
 This balloon part is quite independent of the 
 machinery which drives the airship forward, 
 and indeed if the engine ceases working, the 
 vessel becomes nothing more than an ordinary 
 balloon in its nature, and will behave like 
 one. An airship, therefore, is in principle 
 an apparatus lighter than air. 
 
 A flying machine, on the contrary, is 
 heavier than air, and maintains its position 
 aloft merely by the power it obtains from its 
 engines, assisted by its special construction. 
 The inventors of flying machines take as 
 their analogy the flight of birds. Birds are 
 creatures heavier than air, which yet manage 
 to rise and fly by reason of the strength and 
 construction of their wings. In the same 
 way the heavy flying machine essays to fly 
 by the power of its machinery. And, as a 
 bird aloft, if its wings became disabled, would 
 instantly drop towards earth, so a flying 
 machine would immediately commence to 
 fall if its engine stopped or ceased to move 
 with sufficient power. The airship and the 
 
THE AIKSHIP 89 
 
 flying machine, therefore, may be regarded 
 as rival aerial vessels, and their inventors and 
 advocates, sometimes known as " light er-than- 
 air-ites" and " heavier-than-air-ites," though 
 both working for the same end, are endeavour- 
 ing to accomplish their aim by widely different 
 methods. 
 
 Up to the present day the airship — to which 
 we will first turn our attention — has been 
 much more largely and successfully experi- 
 mented with than the flying machine. It is, 
 however, the opinion of many, including the 
 great authority Sir Hiram Maxim, that in the 
 future the flying machine will become the 
 more important invention of the two. " In 
 all Nature," says Sir Hiram, " we do not find 
 a single balloon. All Nature's flying machines 
 are heavier than air." And from this he argues 
 that, as Nature is ever our best guide and ex- 
 ample, a flying machine heavier than air will 
 be in the end most likely to succeed. 
 
 One of the earliest airships which achieved 
 any success was invented by a Frenchman, 
 M. Giffard, about the year 1852. He made 
 his balloon of an elongated or cigar shape, a 
 form adopted by airship inventors as offering 
 less resistance to the air than the ordinary 
 globular or pear shape. To this balloon, 
 which was 104 feet long and 39 feet in 
 diameter, he attached a steam-engine of 
 three-horse power, weighing 462 lbs. and 
 working a screw-propeller, which, by its 
 
90 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 rapid revolutions, urged the balloon onwards 
 through the air, even as the screw of a steam- 
 ship urges the vessel through the water. 
 With this apparatus he succeeded on one 
 occasion, for a very short while, in obtaining a 
 speed of six and a half miles an hour. Twenty 
 years later another Frenchman, M. Dupuy de 
 Lome, constructed another airship ; but fearing 
 to place an engine so near the gas of his bal- 
 loon, he used the strength of eight men to work 
 his screw. This was a very wasteful mode of 
 supplying energy, for the weight of the men 
 was very great in proportion to their strength, 
 and this machine, during its trial, did not 
 attain as great a speed as GifFard's. Twelve 
 years after a third Frenchman, M. Tissandier, 
 took up the same experiments. His elongated 
 balloon was smaller than the two previous, 
 and his engine was an electric motor of one 
 and a half horse-power. On one occasion 
 a speed of nearly eight miles an hour was 
 attained. 
 
 By this time the French Government had 
 become interested in the work, and provided 
 money to continue investigations. The result 
 of this was that in 1885 two officers of the 
 French army, Captains Renard and Krebs, 
 brought out by far the most successful airship 
 yet constructed. It was 165 feet long, 27 feet 
 in diameter, and was driven by an electric 
 motor of nine horse-power. That this machine 
 proved itself perfectly capable of being guided 
 
THE AIRSHIP 91 
 
 in the air is amply shown by the fact that 
 it returned to its shed five times out of the 
 seven on which it was publicly taken out. 
 It also attained a speed of fourteen miles an 
 hour, and indeed it would seem that Renard 
 and Krebs, although their names are now 
 almost forgotten, accomplished nearly as great 
 things twenty years ago as the popular air- 
 ship inventors of the present day. 
 
 One of the greatest difficulties with which 
 early inventors had to contend was the enor- 
 mous weight of their engines. The machinery 
 they were obliged to use to drive their airships 
 through the air weighed more than their bal- 
 loons, unless made of unwieldy size, had power 
 to lift. The same difficulty indeed exists at 
 the present time, though to a much less degree. 
 Of late years, and especially since the intro- 
 duction of the motor-car, great progress has 
 been made in the construction of light but 
 powerful engines, or motors, and the employ- 
 ment of petrol vapour instead of coal or oil 
 has very greatly lessened the weight of the 
 fuel which has to be carried. 
 
 In consequence Of this improvement many 
 airships have recently been made which have 
 met with varying success, and many more are 
 at the present moment in process of construc- 
 tion. Among the host of inventors, whose 
 names it would here be impossible even to men- 
 tion, three stand out from the rest in special 
 prominence — Zeppelin, Santos Dumont, and 
 
92 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Stanley Spencer — all three the inventors of 
 airships which have, by actual experience, 
 proved their power of steering a course across 
 the sky. 
 
 Of these rival airships, by far the largest 
 and most elaborate was that built by the first 
 named, Count Zeppelin, a distinguished vet- 
 eran soldier of the German army. For many 
 years he had spent his time and fortune in 
 making experiments in aerial navigation, and 
 at length in 1900, having formed a company 
 and collected a large sum of money for the 
 purpose, he produced an enormous airship, 
 which, from its size, has been compared to a 
 man-of-war. In shape Count Zeppelin's in- 
 vention resembled a gigantic cigar, 420 feet in 
 length, pointed at both ends. The frame- 
 work was made of the specially light metal 
 aluminium, covered over with silk, and though 
 from outside it looked all in one piece, within 
 it was divided into seventeen compartments, 
 each holding a separate balloon made of oiled 
 silk and absolutely gas-tight. The object of 
 this was to prevent the tendency the gas has 
 to collect all at one end as the ship forces its 
 way through the air. These balloons were 
 filled with pure hydrogen, the cost of the infla- 
 tion alone being £500. Beneath was slung a 
 long gangway, 346 feet in length, with two 
 cars, also made of aluminium, attached to it, 
 In these cars were placed two motor-engines 
 of sixteen horse-power each, driven by benzine,. 
 
THE AIRSHIP 
 
 93 
 
 and working a pair of screw-propellers attached 
 to the balloon. A steering apparatus was 
 placed at each end, and the whole machine, 
 with five passengers, weighed about eleven 
 tons. 
 
 To lessen the effects of a possible fall, the 
 
 Zeppelin's Aieship over Lake Constance. 
 
 experiments were carried out over water, and 
 the great airship was housed in a shed built on 
 Lake Constance. The cost of this shed alone 
 was enormous, for it was elaborately con- 
 structed on pontoons, and anchored in such 
 a way that it could be turned round to allow 
 the airship to be liberated from it in the best 
 
94 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 direction to suit the wind. The trial trip was 
 made one evening in June 1900, when a very 
 light wind was blowing. The great machine 
 rose into the air, carrying Zeppelin and four 
 companions to a height of 800 feet. The 
 steering apparatus then being put into action, 
 it circled round and faced the wind, remained 
 stationary for a short while, and then sank 
 gracefully and gently upon the water. A few 
 days later another and more successful trial 
 was made. The wind at the time was blow- 
 ing at sixteen miles an hour, but in spite of 
 this the airship slowly steered its course against 
 the wind for three and a half miles, when, one 
 of the rudders breaking, it was obliged to come 
 down. On one or two other occasions also it 
 made successful voyages, proving itself to be 
 perfectly manageable and capable of being 
 steered on an absolutely calm day. The expense 
 of the experiments was, however, tremendous ; 
 money fell short, and the great machine, the 
 result of many years' labour and thought, has 
 since been abandoned and broken up. 
 
 A far happier fate has so far attended the 
 efforts of the brave young Brazilian, Albert 
 Santos Dumont. The wealthy son of a suc- 
 cessful coffee-planter, he had always from his 
 boyhood been keenly interested in aeronautics, 
 and, coming to Paris, he constructed in 1898 
 an airship of a somewhat novel kind. His 
 balloon was cigar-shaped, 83 feet long, and 
 holding 6500 feet of pure hydrogen. At- 
 
THE AIRSHIP 
 
 95 
 
 tached to the balloon, and working a propeller, 
 was a small motor like those used for motor 
 cycles, and astride of this Santos Dumont 
 
 Santos Dumont's Airship. 
 
 rode, bicycle fashion, steering his course with 
 a rudder. In this ingenious machine he 
 ascended from the Botanical Gardens in Paris 
 and circled several times round the large 
 captive balloon then moored there, after which 
 
96 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 he made a number of bold sweeps in the air, 
 until an accident occurred to his engine and 
 he came precipitately to the ground. Though 
 shaken he was by no means discouraged, and 
 declared his intention of continuing his ex- 
 periments until he should have invented an 
 airship which, in his own words, should 
 be " not a mere plaything, but a practical 
 invention, capable of being applied in a 
 thoroughly useful fashion." 
 
 Accordingly he constructed one machine 
 after another, gaining fresh knowledge by 
 each new experience, and profiting by the acci- 
 dents and failures which continually beset him 
 in his dangerous and daring work. Before 
 long also he received an additional incentive 
 to his labours. Early in the year of 1900 it 
 was announced by the Paris Aero Club, a 
 society of Frenchmen interested in aero- 
 nautical matters, that one of its members, 
 M. Deutsch, had offered a prize of 100,000 
 francs — about £4000 — to the man who, start- 
 ing from the Aero Club grounds at Long- 
 champs in a balloon or flying machine, should 
 steer his course right round the Eiffel Tower 
 and back to the starting-place — a distance of 
 three and a half miles — within half an hour. 
 If the prize were not won within a certain 
 time, his" offer was to be withdrawn, and 
 meanwhile he promised a certain sum of 
 money every year for the encouragement of 
 aeronautical experiments. 
 
THE AIRSHIP 97 
 
 The offer of this reward set many inventors 
 to work upon the construction of various 
 aerial vessels of all kinds, but from the begin- 
 ning Santos Dumont was well to the fore. 
 By the middle of 1901 he had completed what 
 was his sixth airship — a cigar-shaped balloon, 
 100 feet long, its propeller worked by a motor- 
 car engine of fifteen horse-power — and with it, 
 on July 15th, he made a splendid attempt for 
 the prize. Starting from the Club grounds, 
 he reached the Eiffel Tower in thirteen 
 minutes, and, circling round it, started back 
 on his homeward journey. But this time his 
 voyage was against the wind, which was really 
 too strong for the success of his experiment ; 
 part of his engine broke down, and the balance 
 of the vessel became upset ; and although he 
 managed to fight his way back to the starting- 
 point, he arrived eleven minutes behind time, 
 and so failed to fulfil M. Deutsch's conditions. 
 
 Again, on the 9th of August, having in the 
 meantime made further trials with his machine, 
 he embarked on another attempt to carry off 
 the prize. He chose the early hours of the 
 morning, starting shortly after six from the 
 Club grounds, where only a few friends, among 
 them the keenly interested M. Deutsch, were 
 present. The day was apparently perfect, and 
 when, after the lapse of five minutes only, he 
 had reached the Tower and swung gracefully 
 round it, every one was convinced that this 
 time the prize was certain to be won. But 
 
98 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 the homeward journey was all against the 
 wind, which was blowing more powerfully 
 aloft than on the ground, and suddenly the 
 onlookers were horrified to see the fore part of 
 the balloon double right back. By so doing 
 the silken envelope became torn and the gas 
 began escaping. Rapidly the balloon appeared 
 to wither up and shrink together. The engine 
 was seen still to be working, though no pro- 
 gress was now being made. Then the whole 
 apparatus collapsed utterly, and fell with sick- 
 ening speed upon the house-tops. 
 
 Deutsch and his companions watched the fall 
 horror-struck, and jumping into their motor- 
 cars hurried to the spot, convinced that a fatal 
 accident must have occurred. But they found 
 that, although the airship was smashed to 
 pieces, its plucky inventor had almost miracu- 
 lously escaped unhurt. The wrecked machine 
 had fallen upon the roof of a house in such a 
 way that the keel had caught upon a corner, 
 and the car, which was fastened to it, hung at 
 a perilous angle down the side of a wall. For- 
 tunately Dumont was secured to his car by a 
 leather belt, and he managed to hold on, 
 though in considerable danger lest the keel 
 should break and let him fall, until rescued by 
 a fireman with a rope. His machine was 
 hopelessly ruined ; but when asked what he 
 intended to do next he merely answered : 
 " Begin again. Only a little patience is neces- 
 sary." 
 
THE AIRSHIP 99 
 
 A new machine, "Santos Dumont VII.," 
 was ready in less than a month, and tested on 
 the 6th of September. It behaved beautifully, 
 and all went well until the trail-rope caught 
 in a tree. In liberating it the framework be- 
 came bent, and the airship was being towed 
 back to its shed when a sudden gust of wind 
 tore it away from those who held it. It im- 
 mediately rose into the air, and on Dumont 
 opening the valve the whole collapsed and fell 
 to earth with a great shock. Again the lucky 
 inventor escaped unhurt, though owning this 
 time that he had "felt really frightened." Ten 
 days later, in another trial, the airship came 
 in contact with some trees, which pierced 
 the silk and let out the gas, so that it fell 
 precipitately twenty feet. But the aeronaut 
 appeared to bear a charmed life, for once more 
 he was none the worse for the fall. Several 
 other unsuccessful trials followed, and then, 
 on the 19th of October, Santos Dumont made 
 another grand attempt for the prize. 
 
 Starting with the wind in his favour, his 
 machine travelled at the rate of thirty miles 
 an hour, and rounded the Eiffel Tower in nine 
 minutes. But in the journey homewards the 
 airship had to struggle with a wind blowing 
 at thirteen miles an hour. In endeavouring 
 to "tack" the machinery became upset, and 
 Dumont, leaving his car, crawled along the 
 framework to the motor, which he succeeded 
 in putting in order again. But this naturally 
 
100 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 occasioned some delay, and though he accom- 
 plished the rest of his journey in eight minutes, 
 the Committee at first decided he had exceeded 
 the allotted time by forty seconds, and so had 
 lost the prize. Great popular indignation was 
 excited by this decision, for public sympathy 
 was all with the daring and persistent young 
 Brazilian, and M. Deutsch himself was most 
 anxious he should receive the award. Finally, 
 he was considered to have fairly won it, and 
 the money, which he afterwards divided among 
 the poor, was formally presented to him. 
 
 Early in the next year Santos Dumont con- 
 tinued his experiments at Monaco, and on one 
 occasion came down in the sea, and had to be 
 rescued in the Prince of Monaco's own steam 
 yacht. After this there was a talk of further 
 voyages being made in England, but the pro- 
 ject came to nothing, and although Dumont 
 made other ascents in Paris in the summer of 
 1903, he does not appear to have eclipsed his 
 previous record. 
 
 But although Santos Dumont came through 
 all his accidents and perils so happily, his 
 example led to terrible disaster on the part 
 of a luckless imitator. In 1902 M. Severo, 
 also a Brazilian, was fired with a desire to 
 share his fellow-countryman's fame, and he 
 also constructed an airship with which he 
 proposed to do great things. But while 
 Dumont was a skilled aeronaut of large ex- 
 perience, as well as a mechanician, Severo 
 
THE AIRSHIP 101 
 
 knew scarcely anything about the subject, 
 and had only been aloft once or twice. Proof 
 of his ignorance is shown by the fact that his 
 motor-engine was placed only a few feet away 
 from the valve through which the gas from 
 the balloon would escape. 
 
 The ascent took place in Paris early in the 
 morning of the 12th of May, and was wit- 
 nessed, unhappily, by Severo's wife and son. 
 Bidding them good-bye, he stepped into the 
 car, and, accompanied by an assistant, rose 
 above the town. The balloon rose steadily, 
 and appeared to steer well. Then Severo 
 commenced to throw out ballast, and when 
 the airship had risen 2000 feet it was sud- 
 denly seen to burst into a sheet of flame 
 A terrible explosion followed, and then the 
 whole fell to the ground a hopeless wreck, 
 and the two men were dashed to pieces in the 
 fall. It is believed that this dreadful disaster, 
 which recalls the fate of Pilatre de Rozier, was 
 caused by the hydrogen gas, which escaped 
 from the valve during the rapid rise, becoming 
 ignited by the engine, which, as has been said, 
 was placed dangerously close. 
 
 Nor was this, unhappily, the only accident 
 of the kind in Paris during the year. Only 
 five months later, on the 13th of October, 
 Baron Bradsky ascended with an assistant in 
 a large airship of his own invention. Through 
 faulty construction, the steel wires which fas- 
 tened the car to the balloon broke, the two 
 
102 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 became separated, the car fell, and its occu- 
 pants were killed on the spot. 
 
 So far, the credit of the only English air- 
 ship which has yet flown rests with Mr. 
 Stanley Spencer, the well-known aeronaut. 
 Mr. Spencer conies of a race of aeronauts. 
 His grandfather, Edward Spencer, was the 
 great friend and colleague of Charles Green, 
 and shared with him some of his chief balloon- 
 ing adventures, notably the terrible voyage 
 when Cocking lost his life. Green stood 
 godfather to Edward Spencer's son, who was 
 christened Charles Green after him. He also 
 grew up to be an aeronaut, and made several 
 inventions and improvements relating to bal- 
 loons and flying machines. His love of balloon- 
 ing, inherited from his father, has been passed 
 on to his children, and his three eldest sons, 
 Percival, Arthur, and Stanley, are chief among 
 British aeronauts, and indeed have practically 
 the monopoly of professional ballooning and 
 balloon manufacture in Great Britain. Nor 
 have they confined themselves to this country. 
 All three have taken their balloons and para- 
 chutes to distant parts of the world, and 
 among their many hundreds of ascents, both 
 abroad and at home, have met with all manner 
 of exciting and perilous adventures, though 
 never yet with serious mishap. Their know- 
 ledge of practical aeronautics, then, is un- 
 rivalled, and Mr. Stanley Spencer had the 
 experience of three generations to guide 
 
THE AIRSHIP 103 
 
 him when, in 1902, he set to work to 
 build an airship which he had long been 
 devising. 
 
 His first machine was a comparatively small 
 one, capable only of lifting a light man. It 
 took the usual form of a cigar-shaped balloon, 
 the framework of which was built of bamboo, 
 driven forward by a screw-propeller worked by 
 a small petrol engine. Warned by the fate 
 of the unfortunate Severo, Mr. Spencer placed 
 his engine far away from the valve. Profiting 
 also by Santos Dumont's experience, he con- 
 structed his balloon in such a manner that, 
 should it become torn and the gas escape, the 
 empty silk would collapse into the form of a 
 parachute and break the fall. Furthermore, 
 there was an arrangement by which, while 
 aloft, ordinary air could be forced into the 
 balloon to replace any loss of gas, and so 
 keep the silk always fully inflated and "taut " 
 — a very important factor in a machine that 
 has to be driven forward through the atmos- 
 phere. 
 
 With this airship Mr. Spencer, as also his 
 equally daring wife, made several highly suc- 
 cessful trials at the Crystal Palace, when it 
 was found to steer well and answer its helm 
 most satisfactorily. Mr. Spencer also made 
 two long voyages, from London and from 
 Blackpool, on both of which occasions he 
 found he could manoeuvre his airship with 
 considerable success, make circular flights, 
 
104 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 and sail against the wind, provided it was 
 blowing only at moderate speed. 
 
 Encouraged by his success, he next built a 
 similar but much larger machine, nearly a 
 hundred feet long, holding 30,000 cubic feet 
 of gas, and driven by a petrol motor of twenty- 
 four horse-power. In this case the propeller, in- 
 stead of being placed at the rear, as in general, 
 is at the front of the airship, thereby pulling 
 it forward through the air instead of pushing 
 it from behind. By this arrangement Mr. 
 Spencer thinks his balloon would have less 
 tendency to double up when urged against a 
 strong wind. The steering is done by a rudder 
 sail at the stern, and to cause his machine to 
 sail higher or lower, the aeronaut points its 
 head up or down by means of a heavy balance- 
 rope. 
 
 This new airship was ready by the summer 
 of 1 903, but the unfavourable weather of that 
 stormy season again and again interfered with 
 the experiments. On the 17th of September 
 Mr. Spencer announced his intention of sailing 
 from the Crystal Palace round the dome of 
 St. Paul's, and returning to his starting-place. 
 The Cathedral was indeed safely reached, but 
 the increasing breeze, now blowing half a gale, 
 baffled all his attempts to circle round. Again 
 and again, till his hands were cut and bleeding 
 with the strain of the ropes, he brought his 
 machine up, quivering, to the wind, but all to 
 no purpose, until at length, abandoning the 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 105 
 
 attempt, he sailed with the current to Barnet. 
 More favourable results may doubtless be 
 looked for with better weather conditions. 
 
 In France during 1903 the brothers Lebaudy 
 made some successful trips with an airship of 
 their own construction. Many other airships 
 are now being built in all parts of the world, 
 in preparation for the aeronautical competi- 
 tions to take place in America on the occasion 
 of the St. Louis Exhibition of this year. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE FLYING MACHINE 
 
 It is now time we turn our attention from 
 the airship to its important rival, the flying 
 machine. 
 
 At first sight it may perhaps appear that 
 so far the flying machine has accomplished 
 less than the airship, and gives less promise 
 of success, since up to the present time no 
 flying machine has taken a man any distance 
 into the air, or indeed done much more than 
 just lift itself off the ground. Nevertheless 
 those who have made a study of the matter 
 are full of hope for the future. Many experts 
 declare that already the limits of what can 
 be done with the airship, which depends upon 
 the lifting power of its gas to raise it and 
 
106 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 to sustain it in the air, are being reached. It 
 has indeed been proved that on a calm 
 day, or with only a light breeze, this form 
 of sky vessel can be steered safely about the 
 heavens, and doubtless as engines are con- 
 structed yet lighter and more powerful in 
 proportion to their weight, more successful 
 voyages still will be accomplished. But it 
 is extremely doubtful whether an airship 
 can ever be constructed which shall be able 
 to stand against a gale of wind. 
 
 So long as a balloon sails only with the 
 breeze it offers no resistance to the force of 
 the wind, and can be made of the lightest 
 and thinnest material. But directly it has to 
 face the wind, and fight its way against it 
 as an airship must do, then it has to be 
 made of sufficient strength and rigidity to 
 withstand the wind's power, or it will be 
 blown to pieces. To make so large a thing 
 as an airship withstand a rough wind, it 
 must be built of very strong and rigid 
 materials. To do this means to add to the 
 weight of the machine. To lift the increased 
 weight, a larger machine which can hold 
 more gas is needed. The larger the machine 
 the more surface it offers to the wind, and 
 the stronger therefore must be its construc- 
 tion. It will now be seen that we are arguing 
 in a circle, and we can understand that a point 
 must be reached in the making of airships 
 when, with our present materials, the advan- 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 107 
 
 tage gained by increase of strength will be 
 more than counterbalanced by increased 
 weight. On this point Sir Hiram Maxim 
 says : " It is not possible to make a balloon, 
 strong enough to be driven through the air 
 at any considerable speed, at the same time 
 light enough to rise in the air ; therefore 
 balloons must always be at the mercy of a 
 wind no greater than that which prevails 
 at least 300 days in the year;" adding, 
 "Those who seek to navigate the air by 
 machines lighter than air have, I think, come 
 practically to the end of their tether." 
 
 With the flying machine, on the contrary, 
 the same difficulty does not arise. Since it 
 is at all times heavier than air, and is kept 
 aloft simply by its motive power and mechan- 
 ism, its weight is of no consequence, pro- 
 vided only its engine is sufficiently powerful. 
 It may, therefore, be built as rigidly as need 
 be, while, from its size — which is much 
 smaller in proportion to its lifting power than 
 in the case of the airship— and also from 
 its construction, it is much less liable to be 
 affected by the wind. 
 
 In constructing a flying machine which is 
 heavier than air the inventor has before him 
 two examples of bodies which, though heavier 
 than the atmosphere, yet contrive to rise up- 
 wards into the sky ; these are, firstly, birds, and 
 secondly, the familiar schoolboy toys, kites. 
 To imitate the flying powers of birds and 
 
108 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 kites, he must first understand the means by 
 which their flight is accomplished ; and he 
 will find, on examination, that to a large 
 extent the same principle underlies each — the 
 principle of what is termed the " aeroplane." 
 As we watch birds — especially large birds, 
 
 Kestkel. 
 
 as hawks and gulls— winging their way about 
 the sky, we may notice that their flight is 
 accomplished in two ways ; either they are 
 moving through the air by flapping their 
 wings up and down, or else with wings wide 
 outstretched they are soaring or sailing in the 
 air for long times together without apparently 
 moving their wings at all. Certain birds, such 
 as vultures and albatrosses, possess this power 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 109 
 
 of soaring flight to an extraordinary degree, 
 and the exact way in which they keep them- 
 selves poised aloft is indeed still a mystery. 
 We cannot, however, as we watch, say, a 
 hawk, hovering in the air with motionless 
 wing, help being struck by its resemblance 
 to the schoolboy's kite, kept afloat high in 
 the sky by the action of the wind properly 
 applied to its surface, and we can at once 
 see that the bird makes use of the same 
 principle as the kite in its soaring or hovering 
 flight. Indeed, just as a kite sinks to earth 
 when the wind drops, so in a dead calm even 
 an albatross has to flap its wings to keep 
 afloat. 
 
 It is to the principle of the kite, therefore, 
 that the inventor of the flying machine must 
 turn. He must adapt the same principle to 
 his apparatus, and this he does in his aeroplane, 
 which, as will be seen, is an all-important 
 part of his machine, and which, in its simplest 
 form, is nothing more or less than a kite. 
 
 We know that if a light flat body, such 
 as a kite, is lying upon the ground, and the 
 wind gets under it so as to tilt it, it will be 
 lifted by the wind into the air. The string of 
 a kite is so adjusted that as the kite rises it 
 is still held at an angle to the wind's force, 
 and so long as the kite remains tilted at the 
 necessary angle so long it will continue to 
 rise or poise itself in the air while the wind 
 blows. When schoolboys fly their kites they 
 
110 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 choose an exposed spot, and a day when the 
 wind is blowing freshly and steadily. One 
 boy throws the kite into the air, while another, 
 holding the string to which it is fastened, 
 draws it tight by running with it against 
 the wind. By this means the kite, if rightly 
 adjusted, is held at the proper angle to the 
 wind, and started without dragging along 
 the ground to begin with. As soon as the 
 wind has fairly caught the kite and carried 
 it up into the air, the boy who holds the 
 string need run no longer, but if the breeze 
 suddenly fails, and the kite begins to drop, 
 he may still keep his toy aloft by running 
 quickly along and dragging the kite after 
 him ; the artificial wind he thus creates making 
 up for the lack of the other. 
 
 Now let us suppose that there is no string 
 to hold the kite in proper position, and no 
 boy to run with it; but that their places 
 are supplied by a motor and propeller to 
 drive it through the air ; while at the same 
 time it is so balanced as to preserve a fitting 
 angle against a wind of its own making. 
 We should then have a true flying machine, 
 heavier than air, and yet capable of sailing 
 through the sky. 
 
 This is the kind of flying machine that 
 inventors at the present moment are trying to 
 produce. They have, in their machines, to 
 reproduce artificially two essential conditions 
 that cause a kite to fly. They have to provide 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 111 
 
 a substitute for the strength of the wind, and 
 also a substitute for the pull of the string which 
 keeps the kite at the best angle to profit by 
 that strength. The first they achieve by using 
 a suitable engine or motor, and the second by 
 supplying it with what are called " aeroplanes " 
 — large flat surfaces, light but rigid, inclined 
 at a suitable angle to the horizon. By the use 
 of these the power of the engine is employed to 
 best advantage in causing the machine to sail 
 through the sky. 
 
 The great advantage of the aeroplane over 
 any other mode of flying is thus described by 
 Major Baden-Powell, one of our greatest living 
 authorities on aeronautical matters : " When 
 people realise that in the case of the aeroplane 
 a contrivance like the awning of a small steam 
 launch is capable of supporting the man and 
 the engines, and that in the case of the balloon 
 a mass like a big ship is necessary to lift the 
 same weight, one can readily understand the 
 advantages of the aeroplane, especially when 
 to the drawbacks of the bulky balloon are 
 added the great difficulties inherent in the 
 retention of a large volume of expensive, 
 inflammable, and subtle gas, ever varying in 
 its density." 
 
 The most successful inventors of flying 
 machines at the present day are all Americans, 
 though one of them has made his experiments 
 on this side of the Atlantic. They are Sir 
 Hiram Maxim, inventor of the famous gun, 
 
112 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 and one of the greatest mechanicians living ; 
 Professor Langley, Secretary of the Smith- 
 sonian Institute, Washington ; and the brothers 
 Wright. 
 
 Mr. Maxim, as he then was, commenced 
 his experiments in the early nineties. As 
 we have already shown, he went to Nature 
 for his guide, and in constructing his flying 
 machine took as his analogy the flight of 
 birds. Birds urge their way onwards in the 
 air by reason of the strength of their wings. 
 A flying machine must do the same by the 
 power of its engine ; and as a bird's wings 
 must be strong in proportion to the bird's 
 weight, so the strength or horse-power of the 
 engine must stand in a certain proportion 
 to the number of pounds it weighs. Mr. 
 Maxim's first task, therefore, was to discover 
 what proportion this must be, and by his 
 experiments he arrived at a conclusion which 
 Professor Langley in America, working at 
 the same task at the same time, but quite 
 independently, had also proved to be true, 
 namely, that the faster a machine travels 
 through the air the greater weight it may 
 carry ; or, in other words, the quicker a body 
 moves through the atmosphere the less ten- 
 dency will it have to fall to the ground. A 
 quick-flying bird like an albatross, therefore, 
 flies with less exertion, and so could carry a 
 greater weight, than a slow-moving bird like a 
 goose. It must therefore be to the advantage 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 
 
 113 
 
 of the flying machine that its engines should 
 attain as great a speed as possible. 
 
 Maxim's next task was to construct a suit- 
 able engine. Light but powerful engines had 
 not then reached the pitch of perfection they 
 
 The Maxim Airship. 
 
 have now, and his results proved at the time a 
 perfect revelation of what could be done in 
 this direction, and led to great advances beino- 
 made. & 
 
 Next came the designing of the great 
 machine itself. It was an enormous apparatus, 
 weighing over three tons, capable of carrying 
 three men, and supported by no less than 4000 
 
114 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 square feet of aeroplanes, placed one above the 
 other. Its steam-engine was of 363 horse- 
 power, and worked two screws of nearly 18 
 feet in diameter. Before such a machine could 
 rise from the ground it must first have attained 
 a very great forward impetus, and this it was 
 to receive by running at a great speed on 
 wheels along a railway track specially laid 
 down for it. To prevent the apparatus rising 
 unduly, a reversed rail was erected a short 
 distance above, on which the machine would 
 begin to run as soon as it lifted itself off the 
 lower track. Along this railway the flying 
 machine was tested, and it was found that as 
 soon as a speed of thirty-six miles an hour was 
 reached the wheels were lifted clear off the 
 ground, and were running only upon the upper 
 rail. On the last occasion a speed of forty-two 
 miles an hour was attained, when the lifting 
 power became so great that the restraining rail 
 broke away altogether, and the great flying 
 machine actually floated in the air for a few 
 moments, " giving those on board the sensation 
 of being in a boat," until, steam being shut off, 
 it fell to the ground and was broken. 
 
 The enormous expense of his experiments 
 has not prevented Sir Hiram Maxim from 
 repeating them, and he hopes soon to have 
 a much improved machine. Nevertheless his 
 experience and calculations have been of great 
 value to those who would follow in his foot- 
 steps, and have proved the possibility of con- 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 115 
 
 structing a flying machine which shall fly by 
 virtue of its own motion. 
 
 Meanwhile in America Professor Langley 
 was experimenting, independently, almost on 
 the same lines. He also was bent on producing 
 a flying machine, but instead of starting to work 
 upon a large apparatus like Maxim, he began 
 by making models, and gradually worked his 
 way up to bigger things. For many months 
 he studied to understand the principle of those 
 ingenious little toys sometimes seen, which, by 
 means of the tension of a twisted india-rubber 
 band, will keep afloat in the air for a few 
 seconds. Next he constructed small models 
 driven by steam, in which he found his great 
 difficulty was in keeping down the weight. 
 For years he persevered in his work without 
 any great success, until in 1896 he produced 
 a model machine which he called an " aero- 
 drome." It was quite small, weighing with 
 its engine only 25 lbs., and measuring but 
 14 feet from tip to tip of its aeroplanes. The 
 experiments were made over water, and the 
 necessary momentum was given by dropping 
 it from a platform 20 feet high. On more 
 than one occasion this little flying machine 
 rose with great steadiness in the face of the 
 wind to a height of 100 feet, moving so 
 smoothly that it might have carried a glass 
 of water without spilling a drop; and then, 
 the steam of its engine being exhausted, sank 
 down gracefully upon the water, having flown 
 
116 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 about half a mile in a minute and a half. 
 This success encouraged Professor Langley 
 next to construct a full-sized flying machine 
 on the same lines ; but this on its first voyage 
 plunged headlong into the water and was hope- 
 lessly damaged. The United States Govern- 
 ment have since granted him a sum of money 
 to continue his experiments. 
 
 Latest of all the airship inventors, and 
 perhaps so far the most successful, are the 
 brothers Wright. Up to the date of writing 
 this the full details of their work are not yet 
 made public, but it is known that on the 17th 
 of December 1903, their machine, which con- 
 sists of two large aeroplanes driven forward by 
 an engine of sixteen horse-power, after being 
 started along a short track on level ground, 
 rose into the air and flew for about half a 
 mile. 
 
 It remains for us now to make brief mention 
 of how men have tried, and are still trying, to 
 imitate the soaring or gliding flight of birds 
 without the use of machinery to assist them. 
 We have seen how an albatross can, when the 
 wind is blowing, convert itself, as it were, into 
 a kite, and keep aloft in the air for a while 
 without moving its wings. Similarly many 
 people have attempted, by attaching them- 
 selves to a large supporting surface or aero- 
 plane, and casting themselves off from a 
 height, to glide with the wind across wide 
 stretches of country. In this mode of soaring 
 
THE FLYING MACHINE 117 
 
 flight some have made considerable progress. 
 Herr Lilienthal, a German, was perhaps for a 
 time the most successful. He started from 
 small beginnings, jumping off a spring board 
 a few feet high, and gradually increasing the 
 height as he became more accustomed to his 
 apparatus. Later he had a large artificial 
 mound made specially for him, and from the 
 top of this he would throw himself into the 
 air, and with a favourable wind sail a distance 
 of four hundred yards at a considerable height 
 above the ground. Lilienthal's experiments, 
 however, came to a sad end. On August the 
 11th, 1896, after he had glided along in the air 
 for about two hundred yards, a sudden gust of 
 wind caught the wide-spread wings of his 
 apparatus, and tilted it upwards. This caused 
 him to lose his balance, and he fell from a 
 height of sixty feet and broke his spine. A 
 similar accident also caused the death, a few 
 years later, of a young Englishman, Mr. 
 Percy S. Pilcher, who had been following up 
 Lilienthal's experiments. 
 
 The greatest difficulty now to be overcome 
 in solving the problem of human flight, whether 
 with soaring apparatus or flying machine, may 
 be summed up in one word — "balance." Every 
 schoolboy knows that the great art of kite- 
 flying consists in so adjusting the point of 
 attachment of the string and the length of 
 the tail that his kite is properly balanced, and 
 is not liable to turn over or "dip" when in 
 
118 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 the air. Every observer of birds, too, has 
 noticed how largely the question of balance 
 enters into their flying. A bird in the air is 
 continually and instinctively adjusting its 
 wings to its position, and to every puff of 
 wind, even as a man on a bicycle is con- 
 tinually, though unconsciously, adjusting his 
 handle-bar to the inequalities of the road ; 
 and as a cyclist requires practice before he 
 can ride his machine, or a skater before he 
 can keep his feet on the ice, so even a bird 
 has to learn how to balance itself before it 
 can use its wings. 
 
 Dwellers in the country are familiar with 
 the way in which the parent birds teach their 
 fledglings to fly, instructing them by example, 
 and encouraging them in their first short flights 
 until they have become familiar with their 
 powers and can balance themselves aright in 
 the air. And if even birds, with whom flying 
 is an instinct, have to learn the art of balancing 
 themselves in the air by practice, how much 
 more so must such a clumsy creature as a 
 man, to whom flying is entirely unnatural. 
 Only by long and painful efforts can he ever 
 hope to succeed at all, and unfortunately all 
 such efforts are necessarily very danger- 
 ous. Many disastrous accidents have already 
 occurred, and although great progress has 
 been made, and the time may not now 
 be far distant when, by means of improved 
 machines, men will actually fly, it will 
 
CONCLUSION 119 
 
 be at the cost of much labour, and, it is to 
 be feared, at the sacrifice of many more 
 brave lives. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 In our last chapters we have, in some measure, 
 brought our aeronautical history up to the 
 present day, though of necessity many im- 
 portant points and notable voyages have been 
 passed over unnoticed. It now remains to us 
 but to gather up the loose ends of the story, 
 and then briefly to indicate the direction in 
 which we may expect new advances in the 
 future. 
 
 And, first of all, it may be well to mention 
 a few ballooning " records." The largest 
 balloon ever known was used as a captive 
 at the Paris Exhibition of 1878. It was of 
 883,000 cubic feet capacity, and capable of 
 lifting more than fifty passengers at a time. 
 Other mammoth balloons of almost as great 
 dimensions have also been employed for captive 
 work; but the largest balloon intended specially 
 for " right away " ascents was the " Giant," 
 built in Paris in 1863 by M. Nadar. It held 
 215,000 cubic feet of gas, and was made of 
 22,000 yards of best white silk, at 5s. 4d. a 
 
120 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 yard. The car was particularly elaborate, 
 almost as big as a small cottage, being of 
 two stories, and divided into several rooms. 
 It proved, however, to be a very dangerous 
 adjunct, for on the two occasions it was 
 used those within received very serious injury 
 during rough landings, and it was soon put 
 aside and replaced by an ordinary basket. 
 None of these monster sky craft appear to 
 have been very successful, and at the present 
 day the largest balloons in general use do not 
 exceed 50,000 or 60,000 cubic feet capacity. 
 
 The honour of the longest aerial voyage 
 ever made rests with the unfortunate Andree, 
 who, if his dates are to be relied upon, had 
 been forty-eight hours aloft in his balloon 
 when he despatched his last found message. 
 Not far behind in point of time, however, was 
 Count de la Vaulx, who in the summer of 
 1901 attempted to cross the Mediterranean by 
 balloon. Contrary winds in the end baffled 
 his venture, and he was forced to descend on 
 the deck of a steamer which was following his 
 course, but not before he had spent forty-one 
 hours in the sky. The year previous the Count 
 had also achieved a record long-distance voyage 
 in connection with some balloon competitions 
 held during the French "Exposition " of 1900. 
 Starting from Paris, he descended in Russia, 
 1193 miles away, having been aloft thirty-six 
 hours all but fifteen minutes. 
 
 For lofty ascents the palm still rests with 
 
CONCLUSION 121 
 
 Glaisher and Coxwell, whose famous voyage 
 of 1862, when, as related, a height of 37,000 
 feet (or seven miles) is said to have been 
 reached, has never been equalled. The exact 
 altitude attained on this occasion is, however, 
 as we have explained, only conjectural, neither 
 being capable at the last of taking observa- 
 tions, and no height being registered over 
 29,000 feet. On July 31st, 1901, two German 
 scientists, Dr. Berson and Dr. Suring, ascended 
 from Berlin to a registered altitude of 34,400 
 feet, or well over six miles. They were pro- 
 vided with compressed oxygen to breathe, but 
 even then became unconscious during the last 
 800 feet of the ascent. Three years before Dr. 
 Berson had made a very lofty ascent in England, 
 accompanied by Mr. Stanley Spencer, when 
 a height of 27,500 feet was reached. A terrible 
 accident occurred in connection with a lofty 
 scientific ascent made from Paris in 1875 by 
 Tissandier, inventor of the airship already 
 mentioned, and two companions. Their ob- 
 ject was to attain a record height, in which 
 they indeed succeeded, reaching 28,000 feet. 
 But despite the artificial air they took with 
 them to breathe, they all three became un- 
 conscious in the extreme upper regions, and 
 when, after one of the most awful voyages 
 in the whole history of ballooning, Tissandier 
 came to himself, it was to find the bodies of 
 his two friends stiff and cold beside him in 
 the car. 
 
122 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 Coming to the aeronautical work of the 
 present day, it is humiliating to have to 
 confess that, through lack of public support, 
 England has somewhat fallen behind other 
 nations. In America and on the Continent 
 large sums of money are subscribed for ex- 
 periments with balloons, airships, and flying 
 machines ; but in our own country all efforts in 
 these directions are due to private enterprise 
 alone. Among those most keenly interested 
 in aeronautical progress may be mentioned 
 Mr. P. Alexander, of Bath ; Major Baden- 
 Powell, President of the English Aeronauti- 
 cal Society ; and the Rev. J. M. Bacon. The 
 latter has made many scientific balloon ascents 
 for the study of meteorology, acoustics, and 
 other kindred sciences, and his observations 
 have proved of much interest and value. 
 During his voyages he has met with several 
 adventures, though no serious mishaps. On 
 one occasion, when the writer accompanied 
 him, during a night ascent made to observe 
 the great shower of Leonid shooting stars 
 foretold for the 16th of November 1899, 
 the balloon became unmanageable while lost 
 above the clouds. For ten hours it refused 
 to come down, during much of which time 
 the sea was heard beneath, and the voyagers 
 believed themselves blown out over the At- 
 lantic. A very stormy landing, in which the 
 writer broke her arm, was eventually made near 
 the coast in South Wales as before mentioned. 
 
CONCLUSION 123 
 
 In November 1902, Mr. Bacon, accom- 
 panied by Mr. Percival Spencer, crossed the 
 Irish Channel by balloon, the second time 
 only this dangerous passage has been made, 
 the first occasion being the voyage of Mr. 
 Windham Sadler, eighty-five years before. 
 Mr. Bacon's voyage was partly undertaken for 
 the Admiralty, who lent the services of a gun- 
 boat to follow the balloon's course over the 
 sea. One of the special objects of investiga- 
 tion was to test a theory, long held, that from 
 a considerable height aloft the bottom of the 
 sea becomes visible, even in rough weather 
 when the surface is troubled with waves. 
 This point was very successfully settled, for 
 although the sea was very rough, Mr. Bacon 
 not only saw, but succeeded in photographing, 
 from a height of 600 feet, the beds of sand and 
 rock lying in ten fathoms at the bottom of 
 the Irish Channel — a feat never before accom- 
 plished. 
 
 In scientific observations of the upper 
 atmosphere a valuable ally to the balloon 
 has been found in the kite. The making of 
 kites has now reached a high pitch of per- 
 fection, and by their means self-recording 
 scientific instruments can be raised to vast 
 heights in the air, and even men carried aloft 
 with safety. A kite which latterly has 
 excited much attention is the Cody kite. 
 With this, during the autumn of 1903, its 
 inventor, a Mexican, hazarded a bold ven- 
 
124 BALLOONS AND FLYING MACHINES 
 
 ture. Harnessing it to a light boat, and 
 waiting for a favourable wind, he started 
 from Calais at eight o'clock one November 
 evening, and was safely towed all night across 
 the Channel, reaching Dover at five the next 
 morning. 
 
 The aeronautical competitions at the St. 
 Louis Exhibition, in America, have given 
 a great impetus to one branch at least of 
 aeronautics, while the labour of many 
 scientific workers throughout the whole world 
 is directed to the improvement of our present 
 modes of exploring the heavens, and the 
 turning to best account of the means already 
 at our disposal. Never since the days when 
 the Montgolfier brothers floated their first 
 frail craft has so much interest as now been 
 manifested in the conquest of the sky, and 
 never has progress been more rapid and sure. 
 Whether the day will ever come when man 
 will rule the atmosphere as he now does the 
 sea is, as yet, uncertain, but there are many 
 who hope and believe not only that he will, 
 but that the day is not far distant when "the 
 birds will no longer hold undisputed sway 
 over the empire of the air. 
 
 Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &* Co. 
 Edinburgh <S^ London