348 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



once lift the dead weight *of the machine, and to propel it or direct its course. 

 The balloon on the contrary, is itself a lifting power, lifting itself and carrying 

 foreign weight that may be a force to direct or propel it. To make fly a machine 

 that is heavier than the air there is needed to merely lift it a greater part, if not 

 all, that it can carry of the weight of force necessary to affect or effect its motion. 

 A machine that is lighter than the air will at least rise of itself and carry more or 

 less surplus weight of force that may be required to make it do something more 

 than merely rise. We do not forget that the self-lifting machine is in one respect 

 at a disadvantage with the inert or dead weight machine. To be lighter than air 

 means to be bulky and to offer in motion great resistance to the air, while what 

 is heavier than air is more compact and its motion more easily caused or directed. 

 This one advantage of the flying machine over the balloon counts, however, but 

 little, so long as it cannot both lift itself and carry the little extra weight of the 

 force required to propel it. The balloon will carry no mean weight besides its 

 own, possibly passenger or freight weight, and the extra weight of a force that 

 may direct or even propel the whole. Strange to say, the principle of the flying 

 machine that has never given any practical results in aerostation, and indeed has 

 given little or no promise of future practical results, seems for some years to have 

 been more in favor of scientists than has been the balloon principle, from which 

 most important, not to say exceedingly promising results have been obtained. 

 When it comes to serious suggestions of possible means of future aerial trave^l, 

 confidence in science, inventive talent and mechanical skill is lost, and he who 

 is sanguine of the future is by many of the good and wise looked upon as a fit 

 subject for mild ridicule. In answer to the question, from which principle may 

 the best results be expected ? we may note that the dead weight principle has 

 given no promise that we shall get from it, alone at least, any practical result. 

 The balloon principle has already given us so much that no one may positively 

 negative the opinion of Glaisher, that it is the " first principle of some aerial 

 machine that remains to be suggested." 



The peculiar disadvantage of the balloon, that of bulkiness, may be mini- 

 mized, and the flying principle itself may doubtless be utilized to its full value in 

 its application to the direction or propulsion of the balloon. There has been al- 

 most no progress lately in this matter. The fact that little has been accomplished 

 here, while there has been great advance elsewhere, is taken as a proof that little 

 may be looked for, but we think this a mistaken supposition. The growing in- 

 terest and faith in the future of aerial travel is well seen by the attention paid 

 lately by scientific journals to the question. As societies for the advancement of 

 aeronautics have been established in Britain, America, France and other coun- 

 tries, there is reason to believe that our knowledge of this most difficult depart 

 ment of science will be more extensive in the near future, and he believed 

 that aerial navigation would yet become a success. 



