THE PRACTICAL SCIENCE SERIES
_The following Vols. are now ready or in the Press_:--
BALLOONS, AIRSHIPS, AND FLYING MACHINES. By
GERTRUDE BACON.
MOTORS AND MOTORING. By Professor HARRY SPOONER.
RADIUM. By Dr. HAMPSON.
METEOROLOGY; or, WEATHER EXPLAINED. By J. GORDON
M‘PHERSON, M.A., LL.D.
_Others in Preparation_
[Illustration: THE AUTHORESS, HER FATHER, AND MR. SPENCER MAKING AN
ASCENT.
_Frontispiece._
]
BALLOONS
AIRSHIPS AND FLYING
MACHINES
BY
GERTRUDE BACON
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK
1905
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING 9
II. THE COMING OF THE GAS BALLOON 23
III. FAMOUS BALLOON VOYAGES OF THE PAST 38
IV. THE BALLOON AS A SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENT 57
V. THE BALLOON IN WARFARE 69
VI. THE AIRSHIP 84
VII. THE FLYING MACHINE 105
VIII. CONCLUSION 119
BALLOONS, AIRSHIPS, AND FLYING MACHINES
CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF BALLOONING
One November night in the year 1782, so the story runs, two brothers
sat over their winter fire in the little French town of Annonay,
watching the grey smoke-wreaths from the hearth curl up the wide
chimney. Their names were Stephen and Joseph Montgolfier, they were
papermakers by trade, and were noted as possessing thoughtful minds and
a deep interest in all scientific knowledge and new discovery. Before
that night--a memorable night, as it was to prove--hundreds of millions
of people had watched the rising smoke-wreaths of their fires without
drawing any special inspiration from the fact; but on this particular
occasion, as Stephen, the younger of the brothers, sat and gazed at
the familiar sight, the question flashed across his mind, “What is the
hidden power that makes those curling smoke-wreaths rise upwards, and
could I not employ it to make other things rise also?”
[Illustration: MEDALLION SHOWING BROTHERS MONTGOLFIER.]
Then and there the brothers resolved on an experiment. They made
themselves a small fire of some light fuel in a little tin tray or
chafing-dish, and over the smoke of it they held a large paper-bag. And
to their delight they saw the bag fill out and make a feeble attempt
to rise. They were surely on the eve of some great invention; and yet,
try as they would, their experiment would not quite succeed, because
the smoke in the bag always became too cool before there was enough
in it to raise it from the table. But presently, while they were thus
engaged, a neighbour of theirs, a widow lady, alarmed by seeing smoke
issuing from their window, entered the room, and after watching their
fruitless efforts for some while, suggested that they should fasten the
tray on to the bottom of the bag. This was done, with the happy result
that the bag immediately rose up to the ceiling; and in this humble
fashion the first of all balloons sailed aloft.
That night of 1782, therefore, marks the first great step ever made
towards the conquest of the sky. But to better understand the history
of “Aeronautics”--a word that means “the sailing of the air”--we must
go back far beyond the days of the Montgolfier brothers. For in all
times and in all ages men have wanted to fly. David wished for the
wings of a dove to fly away and be at rest, and since his time, and
before it, how many have not longed to take flight and sail away in the
boundless, glorious realms above, to explore the fleecy clouds, and to
float free in the blue vault of heaven.
And since birds achieve this feat by means of wings, man’s first idea
was to provide himself with wings also. But here he was at once doomed
to disappointment. It is very certain that by his own natural strength
alone a man will never propel himself through the air with wings like
a bird, because he is made quite differently. A bird’s body is very
light compared with its size. The largest birds in existence weigh
under thirty pounds. A man’s body, on the contrary, is very heavy and
solid. The muscles that work a bird’s wing are wonderfully powerful and
strong, far stronger in proportion than the muscles of a man’s arm.
To sustain his great weight in the air, a man of eleven stone would
require a pair of wings nearly twenty feet in span. But the possession
of such mighty wings alone is not enough. He must also possess bodily
strength to keep them in sufficient motion to prevent him from falling,
and for this he would require at least the strength of a horse.
Such strength a man has never possessed, or can ever hope to; but
even as it is, by long practice and great effort, men have succeeded
at different times, not exactly in flying, but in helping themselves
along considerably by means of wings. A man is said to have flown in
this way in Rome in the days of Nero. A monk in the Middle Ages, named
Elmerus, it is stated, flew about a furlong from the top of a tower
in Spain, another from St. Mark’s steeple in Venice, and another from
Nuremburg. But the most successful attempt ever made in this direction
was accomplished about 200 years ago by a French locksmith of the name
of Besnier. He had made for himself a pair of light wooden oars, shaped
like the double paddle of a canoe, with cup-like blades at either
end. These he placed over his shoulders, and attached also to his
feet, and then casting himself off from some high place, and violently
working his arms and legs so as to buffet the air downwards with his
paddles, he was able to raise himself by short stages from one height
to another, or skim lightly over a field or river. It is said that
subsequently Besnier sold his oars to a mountebank, who performed most
successfully with them at fairs and festivals.
[Illustration: BESNIER AND HIS OARS.]
But it was soon clear that the art of human flight was not to be
achieved by such means; and when men found that they were unable
to soar upwards by their own bodily strength alone, they set about
devising some apparatus or machine which should carry them aloft. Many
ancient philosophers bent their minds to the inventing of a machine for
this purpose. One suggested that strong flying birds, such as eagles or
vultures, might be harnessed to a car, and trained to carry it into the
sky. Another gravely proposed the employment of “a little imp”--for in
those days the existence of imps and demons was most firmly believed
in. A third even went so far as to give an actual _recipe_ for flying,
declaring that “if the eggs of the larger description of swans, or
leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled with nitre, the
purest sulphur, quicksilver, or kindred materials which rarefy by their
caloric energy, and if they externally resemble pigeons, they will
easily be mistaken for flying animals.” (!)
The first man who appeared to have any inkling of the real way of
solving the problem of a “flying chariot,” and who in dim fashion seems
to have foreshadowed the invention of the balloon, was that wonderful
genius, Roger Bacon, the Learned Friar of Ilchester, the inventor or
re-inventor of gunpowder, who lived in the thirteenth century. He had
an idea--an idea which was far ahead of his times, and only proved to
be true hundreds of years after--that the earth’s atmosphere was an
actual substance or “true fluid,” and as such he supposed it to have
an upper surface as the sea has, and on this upper surface he thought
an airship might float, even as a boat floats on the top of the water.
And to make his airship rise upwards to reach this upper sea, he said
one must employ “a large hollow globe of copper or other similar metal
wrought extremely thin, to have it as light as possible, and filled
with _ethereal air_ or liquid fire.”
It is doubtful whether Bacon had very clear ideas of what he meant by
“ethereal air.” But, whether by accident or insight, he had in these
words hit upon the true principle of the balloon--a principle only
put into practice five centuries later. He saw that a body would rise
upwards through the air if it were filled with something lighter than
air, even as a body will rise upwards through the water if it is made
of, or filled with, something lighter than water. We know that if we
throw an empty bottle tightly corked into the sea it does not sink, but
rises upwards, because it is filled with air, which is lighter than
water. In the same way exactly a light bag or balloon which is filled
with some gas which is lighter than air will not stay on the surface
of the ground, but will rise upwards into the sky to a height which
depends upon its weight and buoyancy.
Later philosophers than Bacon came to the same conclusion, though they
do not seem to have seen matters more clearly. As recently as 1755 a
certain learned French priest actually suggested that since the air
on the top of high mountains is known to be lighter than that at an
ordinary level, men might ascend to these great heights and bring down
the light air “in constructions of canvas or cotton.” By means of
this air he then proposed to fly a great machine, which he describes,
and which seems to have been as large and cumbersome as Noah’s Ark.
Needless to say, the worthy Father’s proposal has never yet been put
into practice.
But it is time now that we return to the two brothers Montgolfier and
their paper-bag of smoke. Their experiments proved at once that in
smoke they had found something which was lighter than air, and which
would, therefore, carry a light weight upwards. But of what this
something was they had, at the time, but a confused idea. They imagined
that the burning fuel they had used had given off some special light
gas, with the exact nature of which they were unacquainted. The very
word gas, be it here said, was in those days almost unknown, and of
different gases, their nature and properties, most people had but the
very vaguest notions.
And so for some time the Montgolfiers and their followers supposed
that the presence of this mysterious gas was necessary to the success
of their experiments, and they were very careful about always using
special kinds of fuel, which they supposed gave off this gas, to
inflate their bags. Later experiments proved, however, what every one
now knows, that the paper-bag rose, not because of the gases given off
by the fire, but by reason of the hot air with which it became filled.
Nearly all substances, no matter how solid, expand more or less under
the influence of heat, and air expands very greatly indeed. By thus
expanding heated air becomes lighter than the surrounding air, and,
because it is lighter, rises upwards in the atmosphere, and continues
to rise until it has once more regained the average temperature.
[Illustration: MONTGOLFIER’S BALLOON.]
Encouraged by the success of their first humble experiment, the
Montgolfiers next tried their paper-bag in the open air, when to their
delight it sailed upwards to a height of 70 feet. The next step was
to make a much larger craft of 600 cubic feet capacity and spherical
in shape, which they called a “Balloon,” because it was in appearance
like a large, round, short-necked vessel used in chemistry which was
technically known by that name. This great bag, after being inflated,
became so powerful that it broke loose from its moorings, and floated
proudly upwards 600 feet and more, and came down in an adjoining
field. After a few more successful trials the brothers thought that
the time had come to make known their new invention. Accordingly
they constructed a great balloon of 35 feet in diameter, and issued
invitations to the public to come and see the inflation. This was
successfully made over a fire of chopped straw and wool, and the giant
rose up into the sky amid the deafening applause of a huge multitude,
and after attaining a height of 7000 feet, fell to the ground a mile
and a half away.
The news of this marvellous event spread like wild-fire throughout the
kingdom, and soon not only all France, but all Europe also, was ringing
with the tidings. The French Royal Academy of Sciences immediately
invited Stephen Montgolfier to Paris, and provided him with money to
repeat his experiment. He accordingly constructed a yet larger machine,
which stood no less than 72 feet high, had it most magnificently
painted and decorated and hung with flags, and sent it up at Versailles
in the presence of the King and all his court.
This particular balloon is noteworthy as having been the first of all
balloons to carry living passengers into the air. They were three
in number, a sheep, a cock, and a duck. Breathlessly the assembled
multitude watched these innocent victims placed in the basket and soar
calmly and majestically above their heads; and eagerly they followed
the balloon to where it fell half a mile away to learn their fate.
Would they have been suffocated in those upper regions of the air which
no human being had yet explored, or would they be dashed to pieces in
the descent? But they found the trio quite uninjured; the unimaginative
sheep grazing quietly, and the duck cheerfully quacking. Forthwith
the cry then arose that it was time for a man to hazard the ascent,
and King Louis, who, like every one else, was vastly excited over the
wonder, suggested that two criminals then lying under sentence of death
should be sent aloft.
But now a brave French gentleman--M. Pilâtre de Rozier, a name ever
to be remembered in the history of the conquest of the air--uprose in
indignation. “Shall vile criminals have the first glory of rising into
the sky!” he cried, and then and there he proudly claimed for himself
the honour of being first among mortals in the history of the world
to sail the air. His courageous resolve was wildly applauded, and
forthwith preparations were commenced for the new venture. A yet larger
balloon was made, in height as tall as a church tower, with a mouth 15
feet across. Around the mouth was fastened a gallery of wicker-work,
three feet wide, to hold the passengers, and below all was slung with
chains an iron brazier of burning fuel.
By way of precaution, when all was complete De Rozier made a few short
captive excursions, the balloon being fastened to earth by a rope. But
all proving satisfactory, he decided to hazard a “right away” trip on
the 21st of November 1783, when he was also to be accompanied by an
equally courageous fellow-countryman, the Marquis d’Arlandes. It would
be difficult to conceive a more daring and perilous enterprise than
these two brave Frenchmen set themselves. They were to venture, by
an untried way, into unknown realms where no mortal had been before;
they were to entrust their lives to a frail craft whose capabilities
had never yet been tested, and at a giddy height they were to soar
aloft with an open fire, which at any moment might set light to the
inflammable balloon and hurl them to destruction.
Wild indeed was the applause of the crowd as the mighty craft, after
due inflation, rose majestically into the sky, carrying with it its two
brave voyagers--
the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea;
and with what anxiety was its course followed as, rising rapidly to a
height of 3000 feet, it drifted away on an upper current which bore it
right over the city of Paris. The travellers themselves experienced
various excitements during their adventurous trip. They had constantly
to stir the fire and feed it with fresh fuel; they had also with wet
sponges continually to extinguish the flames when the light fabric
from time to time ignited. At one period they feared descending into
the river or on the house-tops, at another a sharp shock gave them the
impression that their balloon had burst. But they came safely in the
end through all perils and alarms, descending quietly, after a voyage
of twenty-five minutes’ duration, five miles from their starting-place.
[Illustration: AN EARLY HYDROGEN BALLOON.]
Thus was invented and perfected in the course of less than a year
the first of all craft which carried man into the sky--the Hot-Air
or Montgolfier Balloon. To this day large hot-air balloons inflated
by the same methods employed a hundred years ago occasionally take
passengers aloft. Indeed, there now seems a likelihood that the use of
the Montgolfier balloon will be largely revived for military purposes,
since, with modern improvements, it would appear to be more quickly and
easily inflated than a gas balloon in time of warfare. With miniature
hot-air balloons we are all familiar, for every schoolboy has made
them for himself of coloured papers, and watched them float away on
the breeze with as much admiration and delight as the two brothers of
Annonay watched their bag first float upwards to the ceiling.
But almost before the invention of the hot-air balloon had been
completed, and before Pilâtre de Rozier had made his ascent, a rival
craft had appeared upon the scene, to which we must more specially
refer in the next chapter.