Aircraft and Submarines - Abbot Willis John

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I stirred the fire and then began to scan the river, but Pilatre again cried: "See the river. We are dropping into it!" We again urged the fire, but still clung to the river bed. Presently I heard a noise in the upper part of the balloon, which gave a shock as though it had burst. I called to my companion: "Are you dancing?" The balloon by this time had many holes burnt in it and using my sponge I cried that we must descend. My companion however explained that we were over Paris and must now cross it; therefore raising the fire once more we turned south till we passed the Luxembourg, when, extinguishing the flames, the balloon came down spent and empty.

      If poor Pilatre played the part of a rather nervous man in this narrative he had the nerve still to go on with his aeronautical experiments to the point of death. In 1785 he essayed the crossing of the English Channel in a balloon of his own design, in which he sought to combine the principles of the gas and hot-air balloons. It appears to have been something like an effort to combine nitro-glycerine with an electric spark. At any rate the dense crowds that thronged the coast near Boulogne to see the start of the "Charles – Montgolfier" – as the balloon was named after the originators of the rival systems – saw it, after half an hour's drift out to sea, suddenly explode in a burst of flame. De Rozier and a friend who accompanied him were killed. A monument still recalls their fate, which however is more picturesquely recorded in the signs of sundry inns and cafés of the neighbourhood which offer refreshment in the name of Les Aviateurs Perdus.

      Thereafter experimenters with balloons multiplied amazingly. The world thought the solution of the problem of flight had been found in the gas bag. Within two months a balloon capable of lifting eighteen tons and carrying seven passengers ascended three thousand feet at Lyons, and, though sustaining a huge rent in the envelope, because of the expansion of the gas at that height, returned to earth in safety. The fever ran from France to England and in 1784, only a year after the first Montgolfier experiments, Lunardi, an Italian aeronaut made an ascension from London which was viewed by King George III. and his ministers, among them William Pitt. But the early enthusiasm for ballooning quickly died down to mere curiosity. It became apparent to all that merely to rise into the air, there to be the helpless plaything of the wind, was but a useless and futile accomplishment. Pleasure seekers and mountebanks used balloons for their own purposes, but serious experimenters at once saw that if the invention of the balloon was to be of the slightest practical value some method must be devised for controlling and directing its flight. To this end some of the brightest intellects of the world directed their efforts, but it is hardly overstating the case to say that more than a century passed without any considerable progress toward the development of a dirigible balloon.

      But even at the earlier time it was evident enough that the Quaker philosopher, from the American Colonies, not yet the United States, whose shrewd and inquiring disposition made him intellectually one of the foremost figures of his day, foresaw clearly the great possibilities of this new invention. In letters to Sir Joseph Banks, then President of the Royal Society of London, Franklin gave a lively account of the first three ascensions, together with some comments, at once suggestive and humorous, which are worth quoting:

      Some think [he wrote of the balloon] Progressive Motion on the Earth may be advanc'd by it, and that a Running Footman or a Horse slung and suspended under such a Globe so as to have no more of Weight pressing the Earth with their Feet than Perhaps 8 or 10 Pounds, might with a fair Wind run in a straight Line across Countries as fast as that Wind, and over Hedges, Ditches and even Waters. It has been even fancied that in time People will keep such Globes anchored in the Air to which by Pullies they may draw up Game to be preserved in the Cool and Water to be frozen when Ice is wanted. And that to get Money it will be contriv'd, by running them up in an Elbow Chair a Mile high for a guinea, etc., etc.

      With his New England lineage Franklin could hardly have failed of this comparison: "A few Months since the Idea of Witches riding through the Air upon a broomstick, and that of Philosophers upon a Bag of Smoke would have appeared equally impossible and ridiculous."

      To-day when aircraft are the eyes of the armies in the greatest war of history, and when it appears that, with the return of peace, the conquest of the air for the ordinary uses of man will be swiftly completed, Franklin's good-humoured plea for the fullest experimentation is worth recalling. And the touch of piety with which he concludes his argument is a delightful example of the whimsical fashion in which he often undertook to bolster up a mundane theory with a reference to things supernatural.

      I am sorry this Experiment is totally neglected in England, where mechanic Genius is so strong. I wish I could see the same Emulation between the two Nations as I see between the two Parties here. Your Philosophy seems to be too bashful. In this Country we are not so much afraid of being laught at. If we do a foolish thing, we are the first to laugh at it ourselves, and are almost as much pleased with a Bon Mot or a Chanson, that ridicules well the Disappointment of a Project, as we might have been with its success. It does not seem to me a good reason to decline prosecuting a new Experiment which apparently increases the power of Man over Matter, till we can see to what Use that Power may be applied. When we have learnt to manage it, we may hope some time or other to find Uses for it, as men have done for Magnetism and Electricity, of which the first Experiments were mere Matters of Amusement.

      This Experience is by no means a trifling one. It may be attended with important Consequences that no one can foresee. We should not suffer Pride to prevent our progress in Science.

      Beings of a Rank and Nature far superior to ours have not disdained to amuse themselves with making and launching Balloons, otherwise we should never have enjoyed the Light of those glorious objects that rule our Day & Night, nor have had the Pleasure of riding round the Sun ourselves upon the Balloon we now inhabit.

B. Franklin.

      The earliest experimenters thought that oars might be employed to propel and direct a balloon. The immediate failure of all endeavours of this sort, led them, still pursuing the analogy between a balloon and a ship at sea, to try to navigate the air with sails. This again proved futile. It is impossible for a balloon, or airship to "tack" or manœuvre in any way by sail power. It is in fact a monster sail itself, needing some other power than the wind to make headway or steerage way against the wind. The sail device was tested only to be abandoned. Only when a trail rope dragging along the ground or sea is employed does the sail offer sufficient resistance to the wind to sway the balloon's course this way or that. And a trailer is impracticable when navigating great heights.

      For these reasons the development of the balloon lagged, until Count Zeppelin and M. Santos-Dumont consecrated their fortunes, their inventive minds, and their amazing courage to the task of perfecting a dirigible. In a book, necessarily packed with information concerning the rapid development of aircraft which began in the last decade of the nineteenth century and was enormously stimulated during the war of all the world, the long series of early experiments with balloons must be passed over hastily. Though interesting historically these experiments were futile. Beyond having discovered what could not be done with a balloon the practitioners of that form of aeronautics were little further along in 1898 when Count Zeppelin came along with the first plan for a rigid dirigible than they were when Blanchard in 1786, seizing a favourable gale drifted across the English Channel to the French shore, together with Dr. Jefferies, an American. It was just 124 years later that Bleriot, a Frenchman, made the crossing in an airplane independently of favouring winds. It had taken a century and a quarter to attain this independence.

      In a vague way the earliest balloonists recognized that power, independent of wind, was necessary to give balloons steerage way and direction. Steam was in its infancy during the early days of ballooning, but the efforts to devise some sort of an engine light enough to be carried into the air were untiring. Within a year after the experiments of the Montgolfier brothers, the suggestion was made that the explosion of small quantities of gun-cotton and the expulsion of the resulting gases might be utilized in some fashion to operate propelling machinery. Though the suggestion was not developed to any useful point it was of interest as forecasting the fundamental idea of the gas engines of to-day which have made aviation possible – that is, the creation of power by a series of explosions within the motor.

      In the effort to make balloons dirigible one of the first steps was to change the form from the spherical or pear-shaped bag to a cylindrical, or cigar-shape.

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