MR ScHROEDER’S AIR-SHIP.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1429, 13 September 1878, Page 3

MR ScHROEDER’S AIR-SHIP.

[From the “New York Tribune.”] “ I am not an enthusiast, but a practical man,” said Professor E. W. Schroeder, the aerial navigator, who is building an air-ship in this city with which to journey to Europe in forty-eight hours, as he sat on one of the benches in Stuyvesant Park yesterday, with drawings of his inventions spread out on his knees. “Nor am I a mere adventurer, but the son of a distinguished nobleman of Hanover, a Colonel in the Prussian army, and T have just as good a home as a man can want. Some of the papers have been trying to make me out a crazy adventurer, and two years ago, when I was trying my experiment, the Baltimore papers ridiculed mo as a lunatic, but after some of my inventions had been adopted in Prance, they wanted to lay claim to them as of American origin.” “ I am so firmly convinced,” continued Mr Schroeder, “ of the practicability of going to Europe on a current of air that I will risk my life in the trial. Why, I have received dozens of letters from all parts of the -world from persons begging to bo allowed to go with me. Among others, the most celebrated aeronaut in Europe, Christopher Collier, of Brussels, has asked me, but I shall take only two besides myself. I have no fear of accidents, for the material of the balloon or gas receiver is to be wonderfully strong, closer knit even than silk; hero is some of it,” and lie exhibited a white fabric of stout texture. “ They call it ‘ batiste,’ and it can not be procured in Europe. If the receiver should explode, there is above the balloon a piece of canvas so arranged as to act as a parachute, to let me down slowly. With the same arrangement, when a balloon burst with me once in Brazil, I came down so slowly that I took out my pistol and fired holes into the canvas in order to hurry. The published description of my balloon is fantastical and incorrect. The distance between the car and balloon is two instead of twenty feet; the length is ninety-six feet; it is twenty-five feet in diameter, with a capacity of 45,000 cubic feet of gas, the lifting power of the gas being one ounce to the square foot. I have made upwards of 4-00 ascensions, and never met with an accident. Heretofore I have worked the machinery by band. On my ocean trip I shall have an electric engine. On all my trips across the ocean, before this, I would let up from the steamer’s deck small balloons, which I observed would be caught in a current of air, and carried cast; higher up they would bo caught by a contrary gust of wind and whirled west, which proved to me that a lower and warm current of air blew from west to east, while the upper current blew from’east to west. Now I shall get in the lower current and go straight to Europe. I cannot fly in tho teeth of the wind, but, if necessary, by using the wings of my machine I can mount to a favourable current, and continue my progress. “ In two or three weeks my ship will be finished,” continued Mr Schroeder. “ I shall bo flying around over Brooklyn, New York and New Jersey. I shall subject my balloon to the severest test before I start on my ocean voyage, I shall pay a visit to ■ Washington, and let the officers of the Coast Survey see for themselves. Returning, I shall go to various places in the Eastern States, and then, about September, I will cross the ocean. Within a year I want to organise a company to build twenty or thirty of my ships, so that I can have two ships leaving New York every day and two coming in, carrying tho mail between this country aud Europe. They will be regular air steamers, and are destined to supersede every other method of travel. There is only one improvement needed, and that a French Trofossor, whoso name I must not mention, promises to procure mo soon. He tclla m,e that he has discovered a non-explosive gas, and one that possesses throtimes the lifting power of hydrogen gas. If this is so, than we can make balloons out of copper, and the only risk, that of explosion, is gone. Some persons in Montreal are writing to met» join them in an air-ship ascension. They arc idiots to think that after spending Sliu'oo on my balloon 1 would join them. I am very well protected by patents on my inventions, but Eitchell, up in Massachusetts, has infringed on my patent.”