ON BOARD THE ALBATROSS
“When will man cease to crawl in the depths to live in the azure and
quiet of the sky?”
To this question of Camille Flammarion’s the answer is easy. It will be
when the progress of mechanics has enabled us to solve the problem of
aviation. And in a few years—as we can foresee—a more practical
utilization of electricity will do much towards that solution.
In 1783, before the Montgolfier brothers had built their fire-balloon,
and Charles, the physician, had devised his first aerostat, a few
adventurous spirits had dreamt of the conquest of space by mechanical
means. The first inventors did not think of apparatus lighter than air,
for that the science of their time did not allow them to imagine. It
was to contrivances heavier than air, to flying machines in imitation
of the birds, that they trusted to realize aerial locomotion.
This was exactly what had been done by that madman Icarus, the son of
Daedalus, whose wings, fixed together with wax, had melted as they
approached the sun.
But without going back to mythological times, without dwelling on
Archytas of Tarentum, we find, in the works of Dante of Perugia, of
Leonardo da Vinci and Guidotti, the idea of machines made to move
through the air. Two centuries and a half afterwards inventors began to
multiply. In 1742 the Marquis de Bacqueville designed a system of
wings, tried it over the Seine, and fell and broke his arm. In 1768
Paucton conceived the idea of an apparatus with two screws, suspensive
and propulsive. In 1781 Meerwein, the architect of the Prince of Baden,
built an orthopteric machine, and protested against the tendency of the
aerostats which had just been invented. In 1784 Launoy and Bienvenu had
maneuvered a helicopter worked by springs. In 1808 there were the
attempts at flight by the Austrian Jacques Degen. In 1810 came the
pamphlet by Denian of Nantes, in which the principles of “heavier than
air” are laid down. From 1811 to 1840 came the inventions and
researches of Derblinger, Vigual, Sarti, Dubochet, and Cagniard de
Latour. In 1842 we have the Englishman Henson, with his system of
inclined planes and screws worked by steam. In 1845 came Cossus and his
ascensional screws. In 1847 came Camille Vert and his helicopter made
of birds’ wings. In 1852 came Letur with his system of guidable
parachutes, whose trial cost him his life; and in the same year came
Michel Loup with his plan of gliding through the air on four revolving
wings. In 1853 came Béléguic and his aeroplane with the traction
screws, Vaussin-Chardannes with his guidable kite, and George Cauley
with his flying machines driven by gas. From 1854 to 1863 appeared
Joseph Pline with several patents for aerial systems. Bréant,
Carlingford, Le Bris, Du Temple, Bright, whose ascensional screws were
left-handed; Smythies, Panafieu, Crosnier, &c. At length, in 1863,
thanks to the efforts of Nadar, a society of “heavier than air” was
founded in Paris. There the inventors could experiment with the
machines, of which many were patented. Ponton d’Amécourt and his steam
helicopter, La Landelle and his system of combining screws with
inclined planes and parachutes, Louvrié and his aeroscape, Esterno and
his mechanical bird, Groof and his apparatus with wings worked by
levers. The impetus was given, inventors invented, calculators
calculated all that could render aerial locomotion practicable.
Bourcart, Le Bris, Kaufmann, Smyth, Stringfellow, Prigent, Danjard,
Pomés and De la Pauze, Moy, Pénaud, Jobert, Haureau de Villeneuve,
Achenbach, Garapon, Duchesne, Danduran, Pariesel, Dieuaide, Melkiseff,
Forlanini, Bearey, Tatin, Dandrieux, Edison, some with wings or screws,
others with inclined planes, imagined, created, constructed, perfected,
their flying machines, ready to do their work, once there came to be
applied to thereby some inventor a motor of adequate power and
excessive lightness.
This list may be a little long, but that will be forgiven, for it is
necessary to give the various steps in the ladder of aerial locomotion,
on the top of which appeared Robur the Conqueror. Without these
attempts, these experiments of his predecessors, how could the inquirer
have conceived so perfect an apparatus? And though he had but contempt
for those who obstinately worked away in the direction of balloons, he
held in high esteem all those partisans of “heavier than air.” English,
American, Italian, Austrian, French—and particularly French—whose work
had been perfected by him, and led him to design and then to build this
flying engine known as the “Albatross.” which he was guiding through
the currents of the atmosphere.
“The pigeon flies!” had exclaimed one of the most persistent adepts at
aviation.
“They will crowd the air as they crowd the earth!” said one of his most
excited partisans.
“From the locomotive to the aeromotive!” shouted the noisiest of all,
who had turned on the trumpet of publicity to awaken the Old and New
Worlds.
Nothing, in fact, is better established, by experiment and calculation,
than that the air is highly resistant. A circumference of only a yard
in diameter in the shape of a parachute can not only impede descent in
air, but can render it isochronous. That is a fact.
It is equally well known that when the speed is great the work of the
weight varies in almost inverse ratio to the square of the speed, and
therefore becomes almost insignificant.
It is also known that as the weight of a flying animal increases, the
less is the proportional increase in the surface beaten by the wings in
order to sustain it, although the motion of the wings becomes slower.
A flying machine must therefore be constructed to take advantage of
these natural laws, to imitate the bird, “that admirable type of aerial
locomotion.” according to Dr. Marcy, of the Institute of France.
In short the contrivances likely to solve the problem are of three
kinds:—
1. Helicopters or spiralifers, which are simply screws with vertical
axes.
2. Ornithopters, machines which endeavour to reproduce the natural
flight of birds.
3. Aeroplanes, which are merely inclined planes like kites, but towed
or driven by screws.
Each of these systems has had and still has it partisans obstinately
resolved to give way in not the slightest particular. However, Robur,
for many reasons, had rejected the two first.
The ornithopter, or mechanical bird, offers certain advantages, no
doubt. That the work and experiments of M. Renard in 1884 have
sufficiently proved. But, as has been said, it is not necessary to copy
Nature servilely. Locomotives are not copied from the hare, nor are
ships copied from the fish. To the first we have put wheels which are
not legs; to the second we have put screws which are not fins. And they
do not do so badly. Besides, what is this mechanical movement in the
flight of birds, whose action is so complex? Has not Doctor Marcy
suspected that the feathers open during the return of the wings so as
to let the air through them? And is not that rather a difficult
operation for an artificial machine?
On the other hand, aeroplanes have given many good results. Screws
opposing a slanting plane to the bed of air will produce an ascensional
movement, and the models experimented on have shown that the disposable
weight, that is to say the weight it is possible to deal with as
distinct from that of the apparatus, increases with the square of the
speed. Herein the aeroplane has the advantage over the aerostat even
when the aerostat is furnished with the means of locomotion.
Nevertheless Robur had thought that the simpler his contrivance the
better. And the screws—the Saint Helices that had been thrown in his
teeth at the Weldon Institute—had sufficed for all the needs of his
flying machine. One series could hold it suspended in the air, the
other could drive it along under conditions that were marvelously
adapted for speed and safety.
If the ornithopter—striking like the wings of a bird—raised itself by
beating the air, the helicopter raised itself by striking the air
obliquely, with the fins of the screw as it mounted on an inclined
plane. These fins, or arms, are in reality wings, but wings disposed as
a helix instead of as a paddle wheel. The helix advances in the
direction of its axis. Is the axis vertical? Then it moves vertically.
Is the axis horizontal? Then it moves horizontally.
The whole of Robur’s flying apparatus depended on these two movements,
as will be seen from the following detailed description, which can be
divided under three heads—the platform, the engines of suspension and
propulsion, and the machinery.
Platform.—This was a framework a hundred feet long and twelve wide, a
ship’s deck in fact, with a projecting prow. Beneath was a hull solidly
built, enclosing the engines, stores, and provisions of all sorts,
including the watertanks. Round the deck a few light uprights supported
a wire trellis that did duty for bulwarks. On the deck were three
houses, whose compartments were used as cabins for the crew, or as
machine rooms. In the center house was the machine which drove the
suspensory helices, in that forward was the machine that drove the bow
screw, in that aft was the machine that drove the stern screw. In the
bow were the cook’s galley and the crew’s quarters; in the stern were
several cabins, including that of the engineer, the saloon, and above
them all a glass house in which stood the helmsman, who steered the
vessel by means of a powerful rudder. All these cabins were lighted by
port-holes filled with toughened glass, which has ten times the
resistance of ordinary glass. Beneath the hull was a system of flexible
springs to ease off the concussion when it became advisable to land.
Engines of suspension and propulsion.—Above the deck rose thirty-seven
vertical axes, fifteen along each side, and seven, more elevated, in
the centre. The “Albatross” might be called a clipper with thirty-seven
masts. But these masts instead of sails bore each two horizontal
screws, not very large in spread or diameter, but driven at prodigious
speed. Each of these axes had its own movement independent of the rest,
and each alternate one spun round in a different direction from the
others, so as to avoid any tendency to gyration. Hence the screws as
they rose on the vertical column of air retained their equilibrium by
their horizontal resistance. Consequently the apparatus was furnished
with seventy-four suspensory screws, whose three branches were
connected by a metallic circle which economized their motive force. In
front and behind, mounted on horizontal axes, were two propelling
screws, each with four arms. These screws were of much larger diameter
than the suspensory ones, but could be worked at quite their speed. In
fact, the vessel combined the systems of Cossus, La Landelle, and
Ponton d’Amécourt, as perfected by Robur. But it was in the choice and
application of his motive force that he could claim to be an inventor.
Machinery.—Robur had not availed himself of the vapor of water or other
liquids, nor compressed air and other mechanical motion. He employed
electricity, that agent which one day will be the soul of the
industrial world. But he required no electro-motor to produce it. All
he trusted to was piles and accumulators. What were the elements of
these piles, and what were the acids he used, Robur only knew. And the
construction of the accumulators was kept equally secret. Of what were
their positive and negative plates? None can say. The engineer took
good care—and not unreasonably—to keep his secret unpatented. One thing
was unmistakable, and that was that the piles were of extraordinary
strength; and the accumulators left those of Faure-Sellon-Volckmar very
far behind in yielding currents whose ampères ran into figures up to
then unknown. Thus there was obtained a power to drive the screws and
communicate a suspending and propelling force in excess of all his
requirements under any circumstances.
But—it is as well to repeat it—this belonged entirely to Robur. He kept
it a close secret. And, if the president and secretary of the Weldon
Institute did not happen to discover it, it would probably be lost to
humanity.
It need not be shown that the apparatus possessed sufficient stability.
Its center of gravity proved that at once. There was no danger of its
making alarming angles with the horizontal, still less of its
capsizing.
And now for the metal used by Robur in the construction of his
aeronef—a name which can be exactly applied to the “Albatross.” What
was this material, so hard that the bowie-knife of Phil Evans could not
scratch it, and Uncle Prudent could not explain its nature? Simply
paper!
For some years this fabrication had been making considerable progress.
Unsized paper, with the sheets impregnated with dextrin and starch and
squeezed in hydraulic presses, will form a material as hard as steel.
There are made of it pulleys, rails, and wagon-wheels, much more solid
than metal wheels, and far lighter. And it was this lightness and
solidity which Robur availed himself of in building his aerial
locomotive. Everything—framework, hull, houses, cabins—were made of
straw-paper turned hard as metal by compression, and—what was not to be
despised in an apparatus flying at great heights—incombustible. The
different parts of the engines and the screws were made of gelatinized
fiber, which combined in sufficient degree flexibility with resistance.
This material could be used in every form. It was insoluble in most
gases and liquids, acids or essences, to say nothing of its insulating
properties, and it proved most valuable in the electric machinery of
the “Albatross.”
Robur, his mate Tom Turner, an engineer and two assistants, two
steersman and a cook—eight men all told—formed the crew of the aeronef,
and proved ample for all the maneuvers required in aerial navigation.
There were arms of the chase and of war; fishing appliances; electric
lights; instruments of observation, compasses, and sextants for
checking the course, thermometers for studying the temperature,
different barometers, some for estimating the heights attained, others
for indicating the variations of atmospheric pressure; a storm-glass
for forecasting tempests; a small library; a portable printing press; a
field-piece mounted on a pivot; breech loading and throwing a
three-inch shell; a supply of powder, bullets, dynamite cartridges; a
cooking-stove, warmed by currents from the accumulators; a stock of
preserves, meats and vegetables sufficient to last for months. Such
were the outfit and stores of the aeronef—in addition to the famous
trumpet.
There was besides a light india-rubber boat, insubmersible, which could
carry eight men on the surface of a river, a lake, or a calm sea.
But were there any parachutes in case of accident? No. Robur did not
believe in accidents of that kind. The axes of the screws were
independent. The stoppage of a few would not affect the motion of the
others; and if only half were working, the “Albatross” could still keep
afloat in her natural element.
“And with her.” said Robur to his guests—guests in spite of
themselves—“I am master of the seventh part of the world, larger than
Africa, Oceania, Asia, America, and Europe, this aerial Icarian sea,
which millions of Icarians will one day people.”