Part 1 (1/2)

The Dominion of the Air

by J M Bacon

CHAPTER I THE DAWN OF AERONAUTICS

”He that would learn to fly ht up to the constant practice of it frooose will do, so by degrees learning to rise higher till he attain unto skill and confidence”

So wrote Wilkins, Bishop of Chester, as reckoned ain the days of the Commonwealth But so soon as we coood Bishop was borrowing froone before him; and, look back as far as ill, mankind is discovered to have entertained persistent and often plausible ideas of huood or ill, taken practical shape Thus, as long ago as the days when Xenophon was leading back his warriors to the shores of the Black Sea, and ere the Gauls had first burned Roeon which could fly, partly by means of mechanism, and partly also, it is said, by aid of an aura or spirit And here arises a question Was this aura a gas, or did men use it as spiritualists do today, as merely a word to conjure with?

Four centuries later, in the days of Nero, there was a h as to lose his life thereby Here, at any rate, was an honest man, or the story would not have ended thus; but of the rest--and there are ht--we have no more reason to credit their claie

In medieval tiius) of folks who created clouds which rose to heaven by means of ”an earthen pot in which a little ie of flying saints, as also of flying dragons

Flying in those days of yore h to the ood old tienius of a Maskelyne to do a ”levitation” trick We can picture the scene at a ”flying seance” On the one side the decidedly professional shownorant and highly superstitious audience, eager to hear or see so--the same audience that, deceived by a simple trick of schoolboy science, would listen to supernatural voices in their groves, or oracular utterances in their temples, or watch the urns of Bacchus fill themselves ine Surely for their eyes it would need no oria, or eon rise and fly

It is interesting to note, however, that in the case last cited there is unquestionably an allusion to some crude form of firework, and what norant! Our firework makers still manufacture a ”little Devil” Pyrotechnic is as old as history itself; we have an excellent description of a rocket in a document at least as ancient as the ninth century And that a species of pyrotechny was resorted to by those who sought to i recipe for a flying body given by a Doctor, eke a Friar, in Paris in the days of our King John:--

”Take one pound of sulphur, two pounds of carbon, six pounds of rock salt ground very fine in ain order to ascend and float away should be long, graceful, well filled with this fine powder; but to produce thunder the covering should be short, thick, and half full”

Nor does this recipe stand alone Take another sample, of which chapter and verse are to be found in the MSS of a Jesuit, Gaspard Schott, of Palero:--

”The shells of hen-eggs, if properly filled and well secured against the penetration of the air, and exposed to solar rays, will ascend to the skies and soer description of swans, or leather balls stitched with fine thongs, be filled with nitre, the purest sulphur quicksilver, or kindred y, and if they externally rese ani back in history, there were three main ideas on which would-be aeronauts of old exercised their ingenuity

There was the last-mentioned method, which, by the way, Jules Verne partly relies on when he takes his heroes to the hest practical developht of ”Brock's Benefit” at the Crystal Palace There is, again, the ”taoose” method, to which we must return presently; and, lastly, there is a third enius who conceived it, we must without further delay be introduced This er Bacon, Melchisedeck-fashi+on, cae that is hard to trace He was, however, a born philosopher, and possessed of intellect and penetration that placed hieneration A rasped, and as far as possible carried out, ideas which dawned on other men only after centuries Thus, many of his utterances have been prophetic It is probable that aunpowder It is certain that he divined the properties of a lens, and diving deep into experimental and mechanical sciences, actually foresaw the tiines to traverse land and water with great speed and carry with them persons and merchandise” Clearly in his dreams Bacon saw the Atlantic not merely explored, but on its boso records, conteriest seas He saw, too, a future Du in the air, and not only in a dead cal his oith the feathered race He tells his drea instru in thesos which ”

But he lived too long before his tienius, but also in his fearless outspokenness He presently fell under the ban of the Church, through which he lost alike his liberty and the ation Had it been othere may fairly believe that the ”admirable Doctor,” as he was called, would have been the first to show ate the air His ideas are perfectly easy to grasp He conceived that the air was a true fluid, and as such must have an upper limit, and it would be on this upper surface, he supposed, as on the bosom of the ocean, that uess truly He would watch the cirrus clouds sailing grandly ten miles above him on soination, would be tossing the waves of our ocean of air Wait for soen and an io aloft and see; but as to an upper sea, it is truly there, and weout to a limitless horizon at such tiloo such an upper sea as he postulated was, as we have said, by a hollow globe

”The lobe, of copper or other suitable ht as possible,”

and ”it must be filled with ethereal air or liquid fire” This ritten in the thirteenth century, and it is scarcely edifying to find four hundred years after this the Jesuit Father Lana, who contrived to make his na to hilish Friar, with certain unfortunate differences, however, which in fairness we must here clearly point out Lana proclaiiant's shoulders Torricelli, with his closed bent tube, had just shown the world how heavily the air lies above us It then required littlepower of any vessel void of air on the earth's surface Thus Lana proposed the construction of an air shi+p which possibly because of its picturesquesness has won him notoriety But it was a fraud We have but to conceive a dainty boat in which the aeronaut would sit at ease handling a little rudder and a sih a schoolboy would have known better, he thought would guide his vessel when in the air

So much has been claimed for Father Lana and his ht to insist on the weakness of his reasoning An air shi+p si its course in the slightest degree by either sail or rudder It is si in a torrent; but to co properly with the air shi+p weno sail or other appendage projecting into the air, which would, of course, introduce other conditions If, however, a in to propel it so that it travels either faster or slower than the strea could be guided, and the saht of some adequate paddle, fan, or other propeller But he did not One further explanatory sentence may here be needed; for we hear of balloons which are capable of being guided to a small extent by sail and rudder In these cases, however, the rudder is a guide rope trailing on earth or sea, so introducing a fresh element and fresh conditions which are easy to explain

Suppose a free balloon drifting down the wind to have a sail suddenly hoisted on one side, what happens? The balloon will si till this sail is in front, and thus continue its straightforward course

Suppose, however, that as soon as the side sail is hoisted a trail rope is also dropped aft fro The tendency of the sail to fly round in front is now checked by the dragging rope, and it is constrained to rele on one side; at the sa rope, so that it travels slower than the wind, which, now acting on its slant sail, iboat

Lana having in iination built his shi+p, proceeds to make it float up into space, for which purpose he proposes four thin copper globes exhausted of air Had this last been his own idea we ht have pardoned him We have, however, pointed out that it was not, and we reat predecessor he fails to see that he would lose enorlobes instead of one

But, beyond all, he failed to see what the lobes when exhausted must infallibly collapse by virtue of that very pressure of the air which he sought to ly insisted on that if the too much belauded speculations of Lana have any value at all it is that they throw into stronger contrast the wonderful insight of the philosopher who so long preceded hilobe ests ”ethereal air” or ”liquid fire,” neither of which, we contend, were ee of experi one, whether he had not in his as and air rarefied by heat on which we launch our balloons into space to-day

Early progress in any art or science is commonly intermittent It was so in the story of aeronautics Advance was like that of the inco an occasional wave far in front of its rising flood It was a phenoer Bacon and left his mark on the sand where none other approached for centuries In those centuries men were either too priest-ridden to lend an ear to Science, or, like children, followed only the Will-o'-the-Wisp floating above the quagmire which held theold, or the elixir that should conquer death, or the signs in the heavens that should foretell their destinies; and the taint of this may be traced even when the dark period that folloas clearing away Four hundred years after Roger's death, his illustrious na his Inductive Philosophy, and with coLet us look at soht on the way he regarded the proble with

”It is reported,” Francis Bacon writes, ”that the Leucacians in ancient tih cliffe into the sea; tying about hireat fowles; and fixing unto his body divers feathers, spread, to breake the fall Certainly(as Kites and the like) would beare up a good weight as they flie And spreading of feathers, thin and close, and in great breadth, will likewise beare up a great weight, being even laid without tilting upon the sides The further extension of this experiht upon”