Fantastic Airships of Past Which Succeeded In Flying-But Only on Paper!

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 756, 31 August 1929, Page 22

Fantastic Airships of Past Which Succeeded In Flying-But Only on Paper!

■| NE -f the earliest contributions to the literature i of aviatioD is “The Great Steam Duck; or, a I Concise Description of a Most Us*.~ ll and Extraordinary Invention for Aerial Navigation, by a member of the Louisville Literary Brass Band.” The author, who remains anonymous, says that in November, 1839, he “invented ar extraordinary Flying Duck . . . founded upon the strictest philosophical principles. This animal partakes of rara avis, is shaped like a mallard duck, but has greater depth of wing and beam.”

The Steam Duck was to be fifteen feet long from beak to tail and six feet jn diameter “at the base or thickest part.” Its wings, of whalebone and very stout silk, aud “plastered with a certain slippery compound to ease their motion,” have hut one joint.

“The internal machinery is as remarkable for its simplicity as the external. A small, light, powerful engine is placed in the breast or craw. A piston moves upward and drives two slight flywheels on the spokes of which are two sliding pins describing a circle as they revolve, of any convenient diameter. . . . The escape pipe passing along the bottom is conducted out of a small hole under the tail or rudder, and thus gives an additional impetus to the aerostat, every puff. “The fireplace and grate are in front of the boilers, and to save all possible power by lightening the ashes and cinders as soon as created fall through a hole in the breast and are lost in the air. The engine room has a small partition for fuel, coal or wood. Wood is preferable when good and well seasoned, from its efficacy in raising steam.

“It is not to be expected that a bird so rare and wonderfuij” flying at 200

miles an hour, “with suitable deduction for the resistance of the atmosphere . . . can escape the bullet of the rifleman,” the description continues. “But any one of common sense can perceive that there never was a real bird with a scape-pipe in the situation described . . . Yet it might not be amiss to attach to the works an alarm bell which would prevent all possibility of mistake.” Aeronautical inventions which scarcely, if ever, got beyond the paper diagram stag , are by no means limited to such ab urdities as given above. Research reveals poetry, pathos and beauty tn the maze of pompous ludicrousness. “There may be made, I think, some flying instrument so that a man sitting in the middle may put in motion some artificial wings to beat the air like a bird flying," wrote Roger Bacon, the Admirable Doctor of the thirteenth century, with one of his prophetic gleams into the future course of science. He said he knew of the existence of such a machine, but disclaimed having seen it or being acquainted with anyone else who had, but that nevertheless he knew an ingenious person who had “contrived” one. Besides the machine which would emulate the flight of birds. Bacon described a ship which was probably the germ of the idea of lighter-than-air craft —a large, hollow metal globe “wrought extremely thin that, filled with ethereel air and launched into the atmosphere, would float like a vessel i on the water.” 1 But while his ideas may have served i as inspiration for those who followed j him, the credit for being the first real i pioneer in the science of flight belongs

' I jto Leonardo da Vinci. The subject I fired his imagination and the expressic of his ultimate desire has the echo of a prophecy. To achieve a flight from the summit of Monte Ceceri (Mountain of the Swan) was his ambition. Da Vinci’s investigations in this field are lbodied in his notebook “Sul Volo degli Uecelii” (“On the Flight of Birds”), wherein we find studies of birds in flight under different weather conditions. He also laid down the principle of the parachute, while another sketch proves conclusively that he evolved the theory of the helicopter. Certain of his utterances now take on a new meaning. , Great flyers of the present have em '■ phasised the importance or a thorough i knowledge of air currents. “The t science of the winds . . . will be the . means of arriving at the knowledge of , ringed creatures in the air and in the , wind," said Leonardo. One of da > Vinci’s sketches of a flying machine is » a complicated plank-like strncture on which the aviator is supposed to lie, with feet in stirrups, to operate aerial oars. Typical of later schemes was one , propounded by John Wilkins (16141672), Bishop of Chester and a founder of the Royal Society, who gravely discussed a journey to the moon from , a hypothetical point beyond the - earth’s attraction. An amusing Italian cartoon depicts Puicinello acting on hls suggestion, a brace of ducks fast- * I ened to the mast of the lunar boat indlcating the estimated length of the 1 trip. The Brazilian friar Bartholomew, I Laurence de Gusman, in 1709 petii tioned the King of Portugal to grant 1 him exclusive rights to one of the 5 strangest contraptions ever committed

to paper In the name of aeronautics. Two lodestones were to draw this flying ship after them, amber bead* strung on an iron net were to help keep it aloft "by a secret operation/* while the heat of the sun was to cause the straw mats lining the bottom of the boat to be drawn toward the bead!. Everything was labelled, including "the artist," who was shown intelligently gazing through a telescope and taking up an Inconsiderate portion <rf the room designed “for convenieney of ten or eleven men beside the artlnt." So impressed was the Portuguese monarch with the advantages of ttt ship for the transaction of the royal business that he agreeably ordered the death of any "transgressors," pointed Bartholomew First Professor of Mathematics at tho University of Coimbra, and promised him the Aral vacancy at the College of Barcelona with an annual pension of 600,000 rei*. ! . More scientific, but equally imptso , tleal. was the idea of a Frenchman. j Joseph G alien, who proposed to collect rarefied air into a vessel measaring more than a mile each way and , capable of lifting fifty-four timea lM ’ weight carried by Noah's Ark. General Comte Philippe de Segar j • mentions a prodigious balloon bearing 1 i tons of gunpowder, and designed M f carry 50 men, which French soldier! i are said to have fonnd on enteriol i Moscow in 1812. He states that tW» ■ "winged monster" was constructed W - command of Emperor Alexander s j Russia under the direction of a <J* r ' ; man “artificer” and was intended t® ' , destroy Napoleon, with a shower | • balls and fire, but that several s l ' l tempts to raise It failed, “the spring* s by which the wings were to be worked ‘ i having always broken."-