Boys' Second Book of Inventions. Baker Ray Stannard
in his pockets, reflectively looking up at his air-ship among the top branches of some chestnut trees in the grounds of Baron Edmund de Rothschild, Boulevard de Boulogne.
"This," he says, "was near the hôtel of Princesse Ysabel, Comtesse d'Eu, who sent up to me in my tree a champagne lunch, with an invitation to come and tell her the story of my trip.
"When my story was over, she said to me:
"'Your evolutions in the air made me think of the flight of our great birds of Brazil. I hope that you will succeed for the glory of our common country.'"
And an examination showed that the air-ship was practically uninjured.
So he escaped death a second time. Less than a month later he had a still more terrible mishap, best related in his own words. He says:
"And now I come to a terrible day – August 8, 1901. At 6.30 A.M., I started for the Eiffel Tower again, in the presence of the committee, duly convoked. I turned the goal at the end of nine minutes, and took my way back to Saint-Cloud; but my balloon was losing hydrogen through the automatic valves, the spring of which had been accidentally weakened; and it shrank visibly. All at once, while over the fortifications of Paris, near La Muette, the screw-propeller touched and cut the suspension-cords, which were sagging behind. I was obliged to stop the motor instantly; and at once I saw my air-ship drift straight back to the Eiffel Tower. I had no means of avoiding the terrible danger, except to wreck myself on the roofs of the Trocadero quarter. Without hesitation I opened the manœuvre-valve, and sent my balloon downward.
"At 32 metres (106 feet) above the ground, and with the noise of an explosion, it struck the roof of the Trocadero Hotels. The balloon-envelope was torn to rags, and fell into the courtyard of the hotels, while I remained hanging 15 metres (50 feet) above the ground in my wicker basket, which had been turned almost over, but was supported by the keel. The keel of the Santos-Dumont V. saved my life that day.
"After some minutes a rope was thrown down to me; and, helping myself with feet and hands up the wall (the few narrow windows of which were grated like those of a prison), I was hauled up to the roof. The firemen from Passy had watched the fall of the air-ship from their observatory. They, too, hastened to the rescue. It was impossible to disengage the remains of the balloon-envelope and suspension apparatus except in strips and pieces.
"My escape was narrow; but it was not from the particular danger always present to my mind during this period of my experiments. The position of the Eiffel Tower as a central landmark, visible to everybody from considerable distances, makes it a unique winning-post for an aërial race. Yet this does not alter the other fact that the feat of rounding the Eiffel Tower possesses a unique element of danger. What I feared when on the ground – I had no time to fear while in the air – was that, by some mistake of steering, or by the influence of some side-wind, I might be dashed against the Tower. The impact would burst my balloon, and I should fall to the ground like a stone. Though I never seek to fly at a great height – on the contrary, I hold the record for low altitude in a free balloon – in passing over Paris I must necessarily move above all its chimney-pots and steeples. The Eiffel Tower was my one danger – yet it was my winning-post!
"But in the air I have no time to fear. I have always kept a cool head. Alone in the air-ship, I am always very busy. I must not let go the rudder for a single instant. Then there is the strong joy of commanding. What does it feel like to sail in a dirigible balloon? While the wind was carrying me back to the Eiffel Tower I realised that I might be killed; but I did not feel fear. I was in no personal inconvenience. I knew my resources. I was excessively occupied. I have felt fear while in the air, yes, miserable fear joined to pain; but never in a dirigible balloon."
Even this did not daunt him. That very night he ordered a new air-ship, Santos-Dumont VI., and it was ready in twenty-two days. The new balloon had the shape of an elongated ellipsoid, 32 metres (105 feet) on its great axis, and 6 metres (20 feet) on its short axis, terminated fore and aft by cones. Its capacity was 605 cubic metres (21,362 cubic feet), giving it a lifting power of 620 kilos (1,362 pounds). Of this, 1,100 pounds were represented by keel, machinery, and his own weight, leaving a net lifting-power of 120 kilos (261 pounds).
On October 19, 1901, he made another attempt to round the Eiffel Tower, and was at last successful in winning the $20,000 prize. Following this great feat, Santos-Dumont continued his experiments at Monte Carlo, where he was wrecked over the Mediterranean Sea and escaped only by presence of mind, and he is still continuing his work.
The future of the dirigible balloon is open to debate. Santos-Dumont himself does not think there is much likelihood that it will ever have much commercial use. A balloon to carry many passengers would have to be so enormous that it could not support the machinery necessary to propel it, especially against a strong wind. But he does believe that the steerable balloon will have great importance in war time. He says:
"I have often been asked what present utility is to be expected of the dirigible balloon when it becomes thoroughly practicable. I have never pretended that its commercial possibilities could go far. The question of the air-ship in war, however, is otherwise. Mr. Hiram Maxim has declared that a flying machine in South Africa would have been worth four times its weight in gold. Henri Rochefort has said: 'The day when it is established that a man can direct an air-ship in a given direction and cause it to manœuvre as he wills … there will remain little for the nations to do but to lay down their arms.'"
But such experiments as Santos-Dumont's, whether they result immediately in producing an air-ship of practical utility in commerce or not, have great value for the facts which they are establishing as to the possibility of balloons, of motors, of light construction, of air currents, and moreover they add to the world's sum total of experiences a fine, clean sport in which men of daring and scientific knowledge show what men can do.
CHAPTER III
THE EARTHQUAKE MEASURER
Of all strange inventions, the earthquake recorder is certainly one of the most remarkable and interesting. A terrible earthquake shakes down cities in Japan, and sixteen minutes later the professor of earthquakes, in his quiet little observatory in England, measures its extent – almost, indeed, takes a picture of it. Actual waves, not unlike the waves of the sea blown up by a hurricane, have travelled through or around half the earth in this brief time; vast mountain ranges, cities, plains, and oceans have been heaved to their crests and then allowed to sink back again into their former positions. And some of these earthquake waves which sweep over the solid earth are three feet high, so that the whole of New York, perhaps, rises bodily to that height and then slides over the crest like a skiff on an ocean swell.
At first glance this seems almost too strange and wonderful to believe, and yet this is only the beginning of the wonders which the earthquake camera – or the seismograph (earthquake writer, as the scientists call it) – has been disclosing.
The earthquake professor who has worked such scientific magic is John Milne. He lives in a quaint old house in the little Isle of Wight, not far from Osborne Castle, where Queen Victoria made her home part of the year. Not long ago he was a resident of Japan and professor of seismology (the science of earthquakes) at the University of Tokio, where he made his first discoveries about earthquakes, and invented marvellously delicate machines for measuring and photographing them thousands of miles away. Professor Milne is an Englishman by birth, but, like many another of his countrymen, he has visited some of the strangest nooks and corners of the earth. He has looked for coal in Newfoundland; he has crossed the rugged hills of Iceland; he has been up and down the length of the United States; he has hunted wild pigs in Borneo; and he has been in India and China and a hundred other out-of-the-way places, to say nothing of measuring earthquakes in Japan. Professor Milne laid the foundation of his unusual career in a thorough education at King's College, London, and at the School of Mines. By fortunate chance, soon after his graduation, he met Cyrus Field, the famous American, to whom the world owes the beginnings of its present ocean cable system. He was then just twenty-one, young and raw, but plucky. He thought he was prepared for anything the world might bring him; but when Field asked him one Friday if he could sail for Newfoundland the next Tuesday, he was so taken with astonishment that he hesitated, whereupon Field leaned forward and looked at him in a way that Milne