LONDON TO NEW YORK IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1227, 18 December 1882, Page 2

LONDON TO NEW YORK IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.

An aerial trip from London to New York in twenty-four hours ! Such a feat, says the European Mail, can hardly be said to have been dreamt of before, and certainly never entered into our philosophy prior to the experiments recently made in Paris, where a new aerostat or balloon has been tried with most remarkable results. The new aerostat is cigarshaped. At either end is a fan affixed to a transveral shaft worked by a fivehorse power engine. The engine emits neither sparks nor flame. It works the fans between seven and eight hundred revolutions a minute, and has been found to impart an incredible speed to the balloon, even when steered dead in the eye of the wind. The first experiments having proved successful, and shown that balloons could be made to move against atmospherical currents, the eonsruction of the aerostat was improved upon. The cigar was divided internally by means of a transverse cloth bulkhead or deck, leaving the upper part for gas and the lower for machinery and passengers. But this has again been improved on, and plans have just been completed for the construction of a thin steel balloon, with air-tight compartments, to be worked by both horizontal and vertical centrifugal fans. This aerostat is designed to carry 1000 passengers, and to make the journey between Paris or London and New York in leas than twentyfour hours. The machinery has been designed, and will be constructed for the inventor of the balloon, Mr Edison. Mr Charles Norbeck, the well-known Russian engineer, is conducting the experiments in France.