ADVENTISTS. 



AERIAL NAVIGATION. 



Conferences and the Oriental mission field. 

 Each of the union conferences includes three duly 

 organized local conferences, besides unorganized 

 mission territory. At last reports 60 ministers 

 and about 100 other workers were employed 

 within its territory, with about 7,500 Sabbath 

 keepers, from whom a tithe of nearly $50,000 a 

 year was received. A missionary training-school, 

 a health institute, a food factory, and an indus- 

 trial school are located at Friedensau, Germany, 

 where the conference was held; a health institute 

 has been established in Denmark; and publish- 

 ing houses are sustained in Norway and Sweden. 



The summary of the statistics of the Church 

 in all parts of the world for the year ending 

 Dec. 31, 1901, includes footings from the 

 union and State and local conferences and mis- 

 sions as follow: Atlantic Union (9 conferences 

 and missions), 8,430 members; Canadian Union 

 (4 conferences, etc.), 1,093 members; Southern 

 Union (8 conferences, etc.), 2,500 members; Lake 

 Union (5 conferences, etc., and the church at 

 Battle Creek, Mich.), 19,689 members; North- 

 western Union (5 conferences, etc.), 11,791 mem- 

 bers; Southwestern Union (6 conferences, etc.), 

 10,144 members; Pacific Union (9 conferences, 

 etc.), 9,884 members; German Union, 3,818 mem- 

 bers; Scandinavian Union, 2,059 members; British 

 Union, 992 members; Central European Union, 492 

 members; Oriental missions, 236 members; Aus- 

 tralasian Union Conference (7 state conferences 

 or missions), 2,533 members; and the conferences 

 or missions in Mexico, the West Indies, Central 

 and South America, India, Japan, China, South 

 Africa, and the islands of the sea, of which 25 

 are enumerated, 4,537 members; total, 78,188 

 members, showing an increase of 2,429 from 

 the previous year. Other footings of the table 

 are: Whole number of laborers (553 ministers, 

 340 licentiates, 611 missionary licentiates), 1,591; 

 of churches, 2,011, with 89,356 members; of com- 

 panies, 356, with 5.239 members; of isolated Sab- 

 bath keepers, 3,593; amount of tithes, $578,628, 

 showing an increase for the year in this item of 

 $68,369. The Seventh-day Adventists have sev- 

 eral publishing houses in the United States, in- 

 cluding the one at Battle Creek, Mich.; other 

 publishing houses in America, Europe, and Aus- 

 tralia, issuing periodicals and books in several 

 languages; a large sanitarium at Battle Creek, 

 Mich., and other sanitariums in the United States 

 and other countries; and a number of educa- 

 tional institutions in America and abroad. 



IV. The Church of God. This branch is the 

 result of a separation from the Seventh-Day Ad- 

 ventist Church, which took place about 1865, on 

 account of differences respecting certain points 

 of doctrine and practise. The number of mem- 

 bers is estimated at about 6,000. It has a sani- 

 tarium (controlled by a stock company) at 

 White Cloud, Minn., and an orphan asylum at 

 Kenwood Park, Iowa. The meetings are mostly 

 held in schoolhouses, so that the value of church 

 property is estimated to be not more than $2.000; 

 while the cost of the sanitarium was about $20,- 

 000. The General Conference was incorporated 

 in 1899, and usually meets at Stanberry, Mo., 

 where the denominational publishing house is 

 situated, and where 3 periodicals and large edi- 

 tions of tracts are published. At the eighteenth 

 annual Conference, held at Stanberry, Mo., in 

 November, 1901, the treasurer reported receipts 

 of $2,865 and expenditures of $2,900. Resolu- 

 tions were adopted expressing belief " in the per- 

 sonal coming of Christ, the absolute mortality* of 

 man, his death and resurrection, Christ's future 

 kingdom on earth and the perpetuity of God's 



moral law, the Ten Commandments, including 

 the fourth, which requires the observance of the 

 seventh day of the week as the holy Sabbath of 

 the Lord," as the truths which distinguish the 

 denomination as a people, and directing that 

 these subjects be made paramount in all the de- 

 nominational publications and preaching. An- 

 other resolution declared that the purposes of the 

 General Conference include works of benevolence 

 and charity. 



V. The Churches of God in Christ Jesus 

 (or Age-to-Come Adventists as they are popu- 

 larly known) are a group of churches that look 

 for the final restitution of all things which God 

 hath spoken and the actual establishment of the 

 kingdom of God on the earth with Christ as 

 king; and for the literal resurrection of the dead, 

 with immortality to the righteous and the final 

 destruction of the wicked. In the absence of 

 officially published statistics, it is estimated that 

 they have 182 organizations worshiping in their 

 own buildings and nearly as many in other 

 rooms, with Sunday-schools maintained wher- 

 ever there is an organization, and about 5,000 

 members. The business is transacted by the 

 State or district conferences. 



AERIAL NAVIGATION. All the recent 

 comparatively successful attempts at navigating 

 the air have been by means of the development 

 and improvement of dirigible balloons; little has 

 been done to carry forward the splendid experi- 

 ments of Maxim and Langley in mechanical flight 

 (see Annual Cyclopaedia for 1897, p. 4). The 

 idea of a spindle-shaped balloon, sustaining pas- 

 sengers and machinery, and impelled by a wheel 

 composed of vanes or fans of canvas at one or 

 both of its extremities, is not new, and such an 

 invention was mentioned in a letter written by 

 Francis Hopkinson to Benjamin Franklin as early 

 as May 24, 1784. Rufus Porter exhibited models 

 of such a machine in New York and Washington 

 in 1835-'40 which flew rapidly and were capable 

 of sustaining themselves for a considerable 

 length of time ; but his large machine, its balloon 

 160 feet long and 16 feet in diameter, was a fail- 

 ure. He used steam as his motive power. 



Giffard, Tissandier, Renard. The first suc- 

 cessful dirigible balloon was that of Henri Gif- 

 fard, which was built in 1852, and used as a pro- 

 pelling power a high-pressure 3-horse-power 

 steam-engine with a small boiler, together weigh- 

 ing about 500 pounds, actuating a screw with 

 plane blades. His balloon was spindle-shaped, 

 3.66 diameters (144 feet) in length, and attained 

 a maximum speed of 6.7 miles an hour. Twenty 

 years later M. Depuy de L5me employed man- 

 power in the impulsion of a balloon 118 feet long 

 and capable of carrying 10 or 15 men, 7 of whom 

 furnished the power, and attained a speed of 

 something more than 6 miles an hour. M. Gas- 

 ton Tissandier adopted the electric storage-bat- 

 tery, coupled with a dynamo-electric machine, 

 as a source of power. He constructed for the 

 exhibition of 1881 a model, 11 feet long and 4 

 feet in diameter, filled with hydrogen, and drove 

 it at the rate of about 10 feet per second (about 

 7 miles an hour), as a maximum. With his 

 brother, M. Albert Tissandier, he built another, 

 91 feet long and 29 feet in diameter, fitted with 

 a Siemens dynamo, driving a screw nearly 10 feet 

 in diameter, and supplied with a current from an 

 accumulator of their own invention weighing 

 about 400 pounds. This machine, carrying the 

 two inventors, made at various times from 7 to 

 9 miles an hour for an hour or two together. 

 Messrs. Renard and Krebs, experimenting, like 

 their rivals, in Paris, also constructed a some- 



