Andrée’s Cooking-stove 
also provided with a valve placed high up in the 
side of the balloon, on the equator, which was 
operated in the usual way with a line. His 
cooking apparatus was ingenious, and was the 
invention of a friend, a Swedish engineer. He 
was unable to light a match in the car for fear 
of an explosion, so an arrangement had to be 
devised to overcome this difficulty. 
The method of using this apparatus was as 
follows: the prepared food was mixed with a 
certain known proportion of water and placed 
in the pot, the spirit lamp was filled, and a wax 
match placed in the finger-like hammer. This 
hammer was made on the principle of that of a 
flint-lock gun, the trigger of which was pulled by 
the cord, which was conveyed in a pipe that was 
affixed to the outside of apparatus, through the 
handle, thence up the rubber tube to the man in 
the balloon. The whole apparatus was lowered 
after preparation below the car the length of the 
webbing belt, which was some twenty-five feet 
long, or sufficiently far away from the gas in the 
balloon to make the risk of an explosion a 
negligible quantity. Now, the different foods 
supplied required a certain time, which was a 
known quantity, for their cooking ;_ therefore 
when all was ready and the match in position 
the whole concern was lowered to the extreme 
length of the webbing belt; then the cord that 
Sprang from trigger was pulled, the hammer 
163 
