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THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



[May, 



THE AERIAL TRANSIT MACHINE. 



Analysis of the projected Aerial Transit Machine, and of the principles 

 involved in its construction and employment. 



From the earliest period of antiquity the desire to navigate the 

 skies has ever formed one of the most prominent passions of the 

 human breast. In the commencement, ere man had acquired sufficient 

 skill to be able to submit his ideas to the test of experiment, the in- 

 dulgence of this passion could only display itself in vain aspirations 

 or the wild effusions of an unrestrained and romantic imagination. 

 To this source may be traced some of the most elaborate conceptions 

 of the Heathen poets ; the fables of Daedalus and Icarus, of Perseus and 

 Bellerophon, the air-borne car of Medea, the winged heel of Mercury, 

 the Harpy, Chimara, Pegasus, and many others equally fanciful and 

 absurd, which characterise the history and mythology of the remoter 

 ages. 



As the world, however, advanced, and some insight began to be ob- 

 tained into the nature and constitution of the surrounding atmosphere, 

 the reveries of the poet gradually gave way to those of the philoso- 

 pher, and men at length bethought themselves of imitating what, be- 

 fore, they had been contented to admire. Thenceforward to the 

 present period, all that human ingenuity could devise, has been con- 

 stantly arrayed in the pursuit of this favourite object, and the empire 

 of the skies has never ceased to be contested with an energy and zeal 

 almost as great as ever was displayed in the subjugation of the earth. 

 Of the schemes to which this interesting inquiry has given rise, 

 some, and those among the earliest, professed to operate after the 

 manner of birds, by the mechanical reaction of wings agcinst the 

 subjacent air. Such was the nature of the plans of Roger Bacon, 

 Fleyder, and others, too numerous to mention, some of whom attested 

 the insufficiency of their devices at the expense of their limbs, and 

 even of their lives, while some, more cautious, only projected expe- 

 riments, which they left to others to perform. 



To schemes of this description, which may be termed the mechan- 

 ical, succeeded others based upon the physical or chemical principles 

 of the atmosphere, real or presumed. Of this nature were the de- 

 signs of Bishop Wilkins, and the Jesuit Lana, and that (more absurd 

 than either) which, proceeding upon the supposition that the particles 

 constituting the upper strata of the setherial mass were of a more 

 buoyant consistency than those below them, proposed to accomplish 

 its object by enclosing in a proper vessel a portion of air abstracted 

 from the very regions which itself was to offer the onlv means of ap- 

 proaching. 



It would occupy more space than we could here afford, and serve 

 moreover no beneficial purpose, were we to attempt to recount, much 

 less to describe, all the schemes that have been successively proposed, 

 dilated upon, tried, found wanting, and subsequently abandoned, in the 

 prosecution of this interesting design. Suffice it to say that in the 

 one material point, namely, the procuring an elevation into the bosom 

 of the air, they all proved equally inefficacious, until the discovery of 

 the balloon by the brothers Montgolfier in the year 1782. Two in- 

 stances, indeed, and but two, are authentically recorded, in which the 

 attempt to fly by mechanical means has been attended with partial 

 success— that of the Marquis de Bacqueville, who, in the year 1742, 

 accomplished a flight partly across the Seine in Paris, and that of an 

 individual of the name of Degen, who, at Vienna, some years ago, 

 succeeded in raising himself to a height of about 50 feet by means of 

 the alternate reaction of large surfaces shaped after the fashion of an 

 umbrella, and worked by the exercise of the arms and legs. These 

 however, were but the more splendid failures; and the prospects of 

 aerial navigation may be said to have been at the very lowest ebb 

 when the ingenious discovery of M. M. Montgolfier, with the subse- 

 quent improvements of M. Charles, in which hvdrogen gas was made 

 to take the place of heated air, revived the drooping spirit of enter- 

 prise with the promise of a more easy triumph in the fields of air. 

 Abandoning the former mode of operating for the purpose of obtain- 

 ing an ascent, men now directed their attention entirely to the means 



of controlling the motions of the machine, by the intervention of 

 which that, apparently the most arduous and perplexing condition of 

 atmospheric transport, had been so suddenly and unexpectedly accom- 

 plished. 



In this, however, as in the more independent processes of flight by 

 mere mechanical reaction, human ingenuity was doomed to be de- 

 feated. With all the flattering prospects of success which an almost 

 unlimited power of support appeared to hold out, not only was there 

 no commensurate progress in the essential object of securing a defi- 

 nite direction, but even greater difficulties appeared upon further ac- 

 quaintance to stand in the way of aerial guidance by means of the 

 balloon, than were apprehended, before that instrument had brought 

 men into a more practical acquaintance with the character and con- 

 ditions of the element with which they had to contend. The magni- 

 tude cf the forces developed, owing to the necessary bulk of the ma- 

 chine, seemed to deride all attempts at control, while at the same 

 time the expenses attending its construction and employment, im- 

 posed a limitation upon the experiments, by means of which alone 

 these obstacles could be expected, if ever, to be overcome. Under these 

 accumulated and, perhaps, insurmountable difficulties, the balloon 

 gradually ceased to be regarded as an object of scientific interest, and 

 at length shared the fate of all other discarded favourites, in a neglect 

 as inconsiderate as it had formerly been courted and admired. 



After a period of excitemeut, a state of lethargy is no uncommon 

 result; and accordingly when the first burst of admiration and won- 

 derment had subsided, and a succession of failures had begun to cha- 

 racterise the new art with something like a tinge of absurdity, the 

 public gradually settled down into a condition of apathy and disregard in 

 respect of aerial navigation, even the more profound from the greatness 

 of the disappointment to which they had so recently been subjected. 

 Occasionally, indeed, the rumour of some new improvement in the 

 art of "flying made easy," more plausible or presumptuous than the 

 rest, would startle them from their propriety, and, for a while over- 

 coming their antipathy to the balloon, awaken a languid spirit of spe- 

 culation, in which the dread of disappointment could plainly be seen 

 predominating over the feebler expectations of success. These, how- 

 ever, were but temporary excitements, which died away as soon as 

 they were felt, and the subject appeared to have been almost entirely 

 forgotten, except by a few of the most ardent cultivators of the art, 

 when the announcement of a really new project, totally unlike any that 

 had gone before, aud repudiating all connexion with the obnoxious 

 instrument by which they had been so often before deluded, has again 

 roused all their sympathies, and produced a fever of expectation 

 which a mouth of cool reflection has not yet been able to allay. 



The first communication of this project in a tangible form, having 

 taken place since the publication of our last number, ' we were pre- 

 cluded from giving it that notice at the time which we would 

 otherwise have bestowed upon it; not only as in itself meriting 

 investigation, but in consideration of the intense interest and divided 

 opiuions it had certainly excited throughout no small nor uneducated 

 portion of the community. Ushered in with a somewhat more than 

 ordinary degree of pretension, backed by reference to experiments of 

 a most flattering description with models, and, to crown all, stamped, 

 as it were, with the authority of a bill in Parliament, it not only 

 justifies but imperatively calls for an inquiry which, to be available, 

 must be equally searching and exact. It is of no use to regard a 

 scheme of such complicated contrivance and involving such recondite 

 principles, in a superficial manner or in a general point of view. The 

 mere fact of a principle being correct is no proof of the practicability 

 of a scheme which is founded upon it; and if the success of a model 

 were conclusive in respect of the object it is intended to represent, 

 neither would Mr. Cocking have perished in the descent witli his 

 parachute, nor would this very question of aerial navigation have 

 remained undetermined to the present day. 2 In fact the working of 



1 The public were first mailc acquainted with the details of Mr. Hemon's 

 patent tliroiiL.li the plans anil descriptions n hich appeared in the weekly 

 j.airn ils ut that rather ominous date, the 1st of April. 



2 It is well known that Mr. Cocking had spent up« aids of 20 years in 

 framing and improving models of the m tchine In which he atterwards lost 



