BALLOONS AS AIR-SHIPS. 



contrivances, which is the chief business of air- 

 ship designers. 



The fact is that their object is impossible, 

 and will never be realised. 



To make a balloon that shall travel some- 

 what faster and be a little safer than others 

 is, of course, quite possible ; and many people 

 appear to think that when one of the so-called 

 inventors has accomplished this, he is on the 

 high road to success. But their professed object 

 is to " conquer the air/' to devise a contrivance 

 that shall supply not merely a possible but a 

 practical means of navigating the air, some- 

 thing that shall come within measurable dis- 

 tance of being as safe, as regular, and as econom- 

 ical in the air as a good ship is at sea. 



To accomplish this by balloons is im- 

 possible. 



Many of the paradoxes hitherto considered 

 have been actualities, things accomplished either 

 naturally or artificially in actual fact. The 

 present section is concerned with a paradoxical 

 idea ; and our interest will be in examining 

 this idea, to see how impossible of realisation 

 is a scheme upon which many men have spent 

 and are spending a great deal of time, money, 

 and ingenuity. 



Swimming in a fluid like air, and swimming 

 on a fluid like water, differ from travelling on 

 the ground not only in the manner and means 

 of support, but also in the fact that the fluid 



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