Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1878 — MR. SCHROEDER’S AIR-SHIP. [ARTICLE]

MR. SCHROEDER’S AIR-SHIP.

The Inventor Proposes to troia the Ocean “ I am not an enthusiast, but a practical man, ” said Prof. F. W. Schroeder, the aerial navigator, who is building an air-ship in this city with which to journey to Europe in forty-eight hoars, as he sat on one of the benches in Stuyvesant park yesterday, with drawings of his inventions spread out on his knees. “ Nor am I a mere adventurer, but the son of a distinguished uoblemau of Hanover, a Colonelin the Prussian army, and I have just as good a home *as a man can want. Some of the papers have been trying to make me out a Adventurer, and, two years ago, when I was trying my experiment, the Baltimore papers ridiculed me as a lunatic, but after some of my inventions had been adopted in France they wanted to lay claim to thein as of American origin. ” “I am so firmly convinced,’’continued Mr. Schroeder, “of the practicability of going to Europe ou a current of air that I will risk my life in the trial. Why, I have received dozens of letters from all parts of the-world from persona begging to be allowed to go with me. Among others, the most celebrated aerenaut in Europe, Christopher Brussels, has asked me, but I shall take only two beside myself. I have no fear of accidents, for the material of the balloon or gas receiver will be wonderfully strong, closer knit even than silk—here is some of it,” end he exhibited a white fabric of stout texture. “They called it batiste,” and it cannot be procured in Europe. If the receiver should explode, there is, above the balloon, a piece ol canvas so arranged as to act as a parachute to let me down slowly. With the same arrangment, when a balloon burst with me once in Brazil, I came down so slowly that I took out my pistol and fired holes into the oanvas in' order to hurry. The published description of my balloon is fantastical and incorrect. The distance between the car and balloon is two instead of twenty feet; the length is ninety-six feet. It is twenty-five feet in diameter, with a capacity of 45,000 cubic feet of gas, the lifting power of the gas being one onnee to the square foot. I have made upward of 400 ascensions, and never met with an accident. Heretofore I have worked the machinery by hand. On my ocean trip I shall have an electric engine. On all my trips across the ocean before this I would let up froffl. the steamer’s deck small balloons, which I observed would be caught in a current of air and carried east; higher up they would be caught by a contrary gust of wind and whirled west, which proved to me that a lower and warm current of air blew from west to east, while the upper current blew from east to west. Now I shall get in the lower current and go straight to Europe. I cannot fly in the teeth of the wind, but, if necessary, by usmg the wings of my machine, I can mount to a favorable current and continue my progress.”