THE TRAVEL OF TO-MORROW
The travel of to-morrow! It is a fascinating subject, for, as we
look backward through the last century and see the marvellous
progress that has been made, it is impossible to believe that now
we have come to a standstill. How then shall we travel in the
future? Will it be in some new form of railway train or motor-car,
with increased speed and added comfort? Or shall we leave solid
earth behind us altogether and make our journeys in great airships
and aeroplanes?
We will begin with the more commonplace methods, and consider the
possibilities of improvements and innovations in railway travel.
Lately a great deal has been said and written about the mono-rail,
and it seems quite likely that alterations will take place in
this direction, for a single-line railway is comparatively cheap
to construct, and has many other advantages, among them that of
greatly increased speed. It is estimated that this could easily
reach two miles a minute.
In Africa we saw a very primitive form of mono-railway, and there
is another in Algeria, where the trucks or baskets filled with
agricultural produce hang on either side of a single line and are
drawn along by mules.
A real mono-railway with engines, railway carriages, and trucks is
already in existence in Ireland, where it runs between Listowel
and Ballybunion. The line is raised some feet from the ground, and
is about 10 miles in length. The engine is a very curious-looking
machine, with a boiler on each side and two funnels. This is
arranged so that the weight is evenly balanced. There are also
methods by which the trains on a mono-railway may be steadied by
means of a wonderful contrivance called a gyroscope.
Closely allied to the single-line railway is the hanging railway,
which was first invented to carry loads of merchandise or minerals
across rivers or over rough forest lands where an ordinary line
would be difficult and expensive to construct. There is one of
these hanging railways in Rhodesia, where a strong wire crosses
from bank to bank of a river, and carries a chair-shaped seat which
can hold two passengers. This is dragged backwards and forwards by
means of a second wire.
[Illustration: MONO-RAIL CAR, WITH GYROSCOPE.]
Sometimes, instead of wire, rope is used, and these rope railways
can be seen in use at many of the mines in South Africa.
Other and more elaborate railways in the air have been made in
Germany, and there is one for passengers running between Barmen
and Elberfield. In this case the single rail is raised on high
trestles, and the carriage, which looks very much like a large
tramcar, runs along the line suspended beneath the trestles.
Then, too, we may in the future have railways that will take us
across the English Channel, either through a great tunnel or over a
bridge, reaching, as was proposed in 1884, from Folkestone to Cape
Grisnez.
A third plan that has been suggested for crossing to France is
that of a submarine bridge, upon which a curious construction or
platform would run, and on this the trains themselves could be
taken from shore to shore, while still another proposal was that
large ferry-steamers should be built, on the lower decks of which
the trains could be carried.
And now we will leave the earth and look at the pictures of
airships and the wonderful aeroplanes, which, although improvements
are being made every day, can already travel at an almost
incredible speed and with a security that only a little while ago
would have been considered quite impossible. Nowadays air travel
is not only a possibility but an accomplished fact, and it is hard
to realise that it has come about during the last twenty years, and
that before then practical flying machines were unknown.
[Illustration: OVERHEAD TROLLEY.]
From very early times, however, inventors and scientists have
dreamed and experimented, and no less than seven hundred years ago,
Roger Bacon, one of the most learned men of his day, seems to have
looked down through the centuries and to have actually seen the
aeroplanes with which we are now familiar.
"There may be made a flying instrument," he says, "so that a man
sitting in the midst of the instrument and turning some mechanism
may move some artificial wings so that they may beat the air like a
bird in flight."
It was a strange prophecy, but in those far-off times--the dark
ages we call them--men had already fixed their hopes on flight, and
school children were trained in the use of wings as in that of the
globes.
We are not told what advantages this curious accomplishment gave to
the little boys and girls of the thirteenth century, and, indeed,
it may have brought them ill-fortune, for in those days inventors
were often accused of witchcraft, and new ideas were looked upon
with suspicion. Even centuries later, when the first balloons
were causing great excitement in England, many people thought that
it was wrong to spurn the laws of nature by attempting to fly.
[Illustration: MONOPLANE, THE FIRST TYPE TO CROSS THE CHANNEL.]
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries some very strange
flying machines were made, and even before that time, in the reign
of James IV. of Scotland, we find that "The Abbot of Tungland tuik
in hand to flie with wingis." The bold Churchman, however, did not
succeed in his rash venture, but fell from the wall of Stirling
Castle and broke his thigh.
In 1709 another monk planned a wonderful flying ship which was to
carry twelve men besides stores of food, and about sixty years
later a Frenchman made himself "A whirl of feathers, curiously
interlaced and extending gradually at suitable distances in a
horizontal direction from his head to his feet." In this eccentric
costume the would-be bird-man fluttered down from a height of
seventy feet and escaped uninjured.
[Illustration: WATERPLANE, BIPLANE, AND SCOUT BALLOON.]
The makers of balloons, meanwhile, met with more success, and
they bravely experimented with their frail contrivances, which
at first were filled with heated air and necessitated a fire
in the basket-work car, fed with fuel of chopped straw. As may
be imagined, many accidents occurred, but the inventors went
on their way undaunted, and in the middle of the nineteenth
century we find a man named Nadar constructing an enormous balloon
called the "Giant," which seems to have been the forerunner of
the great airships of to-day. This monster would, we hear, have
exactly fitted into the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. It had a
smaller balloon attached to it, and below both a car fitted with
wheels. This was divided into compartments for the captain and the
passengers, with beds, baggage, and provisions, while a printing
office and a photographer's room were included.
Nadar's ambitions, however, did not stop at this marvel. Indeed,
the "Giant" was only intended to be a means of raising funds for
the making of a flying machine, which was to be called the aeronef
and have wings and a screw propeller.
The difficulty then, and for many years afterwards, was to make an
engine which at the same time should be sufficiently strong and
yet light. It was not until another fifty years had passed that
this problem was solved and then we find the modern aeroplanes and
hydroplanes being gradually developed and improved.
In 1909 a French aviator crossed the Channel for the first time,
and since then the progress has been extraordinary, so that now
we think little of feats which a dozen years ago would have been
considered quite outside the bounds of possibility.
Side by side with the aeroplanes, dirigible balloons have been
developed, and we can hardly doubt that in the future this mode of
travel will come to be as safe and almost as commonplace as our
railways and motor-cars of to-day.
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HAPPY HOMES
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