CIRCLING EIFFEL TOWER IN AIR SHIP. 583 



will be on the same pattern as the old, except with a slightly greater 

 cubic capacity. It can hardly be ready for a prize trial, however, 

 before the contests next spring. Still, Santos-Dumont knows now 

 that he can navigate the air, and he is merely going to do again what 

 lie has already done. 



But M. Santos-Dumont will soon have competitors, among them M. 

 Deutsch himself, who expects to put in the field within a short time a 

 colossus 65 yards Long, with a capacity of over 2,500 cubic yards, and 

 a gasoline motor of 60 horsepower. 



A DESCRIPTION OF THE AIR SHIP. 



Recall the flying machine of your imagination, and you will have 

 read} 7 -made for your mind's eye a likeness of this Santos-Dumont V. 

 It is simply that conventional creature pictured in the usual wild tale 

 of the future, the regulation cigar-shaped thing 'mid a vague compli- 

 cation of wings and rudders and cords and cylinders. The gas bag is 

 a tremendous cigar, while the framework beneath for basket and 

 motor is a smaller tremendous cigar. Now, there is a reason for this 

 shape quite apart from the demands of twenty-first century romances. 

 It would be as absurd to try to steer a spherical balloon as to guide a 

 spherical steamboat. The spindle form offers less resistance to air 

 currents, so almost from their earliest experiments the flying-machine 

 architects have adopted the cigar for a model. To secure rigidity they 

 put an air balloon, or ballonet, inside the gas balloon, and when a 

 cooling cloud or change of temperature contracts the gas, they pump 

 air as needed into the ballonet, which makes the entire bag tight and 

 snug. Santos Dumont first tills his balloon as full as possible with pure 

 hydrogen, and the inner balloon lies empty in the belly of the big one. 

 He thus has as a margin against condensation the ballonet's capacity, 

 50 cubic yards. The ballonet tills with air automatically from a pump 

 worked by the motor, and in case of expansion and too great pressure 

 the springs in the valves are forced open and the air is let out first, and 

 the gas afterwards, if necessary. In the photographs you may see the 

 air duct hanging from the balloon to the pump. 



The tiny steel threads that suspend the framework seem absurdly 

 inadequate. Near the ends they are twisted into springs, which allow 

 for a slight rocking caused by the motor's vibration. A few yards 

 away the tine piano wires arc invisible, and then the man in his aerial 

 car appears to follow as a satellite under the balloon. The great 

 yellowish bag of hydrogen, 37^ yards long, Q\ yards in diameter, 

 with a capacity of 715 cubic yards, looks sleek and peeled, like the 

 pigskin of an enormous Rugby football, and nothing at all like silk. 

 Each panel in the texture has been rigorously tested under pressure 

 and is capable of the maximum strain exacted. The elongated, trian- 

 gular car beneath is constructed of three slender unpainted pine 



