MECHANICAL PARADOXES. 



4. Balloons as Air-ships. 



For a considerable number of years now 

 a good many people have been engaged in 

 attempts to work out the problem of navigating 

 the air in, on, or under balloon air-ships. 

 For the most part they are not inventors. 

 They do not contrive or even try to contrive 

 original applications or combinations of natural 

 forces or mechanical arrangements, which will 

 open an entirely new chapter of human possi- 

 bilities. They are merely using over again 

 devices and schemes which have been used 

 a hundred times before, introducing the latest 

 improvement in light strong engines, the latest 

 development in light strong cords and silk, 

 the very best varnish, and so on with a thousand 

 other details, producing, and sometimes not 

 producing, a slightly better result by the care- 

 ful combination than had been produced before. 



Montgolfier, and the others who first thought 

 of inflating with light gas an air-bag huge 

 enough to lift a man, were inventors. Those 

 who first thought of replacing the air-bags 

 by aeroplanes to act as kites or birds' wings 

 do, were inventors. Those who thought of 

 making the gas-bag cigar-shaped, so as to 

 move end-on with less resistance to the air, 

 were also inventors. But these principles having 

 been invented, it is not invention to apply to 

 them the latest improvements in mechanical 



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