Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 December 1890 — WILL BUILD AIR SHIPS. [ARTICLE]

WILL BUILD AIR SHIPS.

PREPARING TO NAVIGATE THE UPPER REGIONS. F. N. Atwood, of Chicago, Claims to P« Able.to Build a Ship that Will Go-Ap-plication Made for Lotrers Patent on Twrnty-two Separate Devices—A Company Incorporated to Carry Out the Inventor’s Ideas—Description of the Principles of the Projected Machine. [Chicago dispatch.] F. N. Atwood, a graduate of the boston School of Technology, and formerly a marine engineer, has been diligently struggling with the problems of aerial navigation for the last twenty years, and has just made application for letters patent to protect no less than twentytwo separate devices he has completed. The inventor was visited by a reporter at his office, room 513 Rialto Building. He talked freely of his experimenis. “Any one can build an air-ship,” said Mr. Atwood, “but the problem is to make it navigate the air. We may attach a gas bag to a freight-car and call the combination an air-ship. Two important and elementary principles are to be observed in making a vessel that is to navigate the air successfully. “Every one knows that so many cubic feet of gas will lift so much dead weight. Gas enough may be carried on any airship to lift the vessel and its cargo. The other important point, then, is to propel the vessel after it is elevated.” Mr. Atwood has devised a wind-wheel or fan to be driven by steam or electric power, by which he claims to be able to drive an immense air ship at a high rate of speed. A company has teen incorporated in this city, known as the Chicago Air-Ship Company, by G. O. Shields, W. B. Bogeoh, F. N. Atwood, and H. Haupt, Jr. The capita! stock is $200,000, of which $160,000 has been placed. As soon as the remainder of the stock is placed the company will organize under the State law, and work on the proposed air-ship will be commenced. The first vessel to be built will br 270 feet long. 48 feet high and 40 feet wide. It will have two lifting wheels and two driving wheels, each ten feet in diameter. These are to be driven by steam or electric power, and from numerous experiments and tests that have been made both in this country and in Europe it is known to a certainty that these wheels can be made to lift several thousand pounds each when revolved at a high rate of speed. There is to be a large gas dome with two auxiliary domes inside. Underneath this there is to be a cabin or house about 100 feet long and 20 feet wide. This is to be well lighted, heated and comfortably furnished. Underneath the house the engine will be placed, so that its weight will serve as ballast for the vessel. One of the devices which it is designed to use is that of the kite. The air-ship will be built with large aroplanes or wings aggregating at least 7,000 square feet of scaling surface. The belief is based on scientific experiments that the vessel may be lifted by its engine and air-wheels to a height of, sr.", 5,000 feet; that both the lifting and driving power may then be shut off—as a railway engineer shuts off his steam on a downgrade—and the bow of the vessel slightly depressed, when the weight of the vessel will drive it in whatever direction headed, even against a strong wind, at a terrific rate of speed. The curvature of the earth’s surface is such that the vessel, starting at such a height as that mentioned, would scale fifty to 100 miles before it would again touch the earth. When the vessel approaches within 500 feet of the earth the bow may be again elevated and the driv-ing-wheels set in motion, and it will rise rapidly on the same kite or scaling principle, the momentum acquired by the downward run aiding the engine in the matter of maintaining the great speed already acquired. Another principle to be utilized is that of the parachute. In case of an accident to the machinery or gas reservoirs, the vessel could not fall i apidly to the earth. The same aroplanes already mentioned, together with long wide wings, which hang from the sides near the top of the vessel, and which would then be thrown out by any downward motion, would give such a vast air surface that the vessel would settle down as slowly and as safely as the man who descends with his parachute. Mr, Atwood has devised a plan for supporting the vessel on land that is new in aeronautics. A monster pivot, framed into the bottom of the hull of the air-ship, to which is attached an aircushion, supports the main weight of the vessel. Six other posts or pivots are set into the hull at different points, to the bottom of which are attached wheels or casters. These are set on adjustable springs, so that they will adjust themselves to any irregularities in the shape of the ground. The main pivot being ahead of the vessel, and a rudder set at the stern, the air-ship becomes a great weather . vane, and no matter how hard the wind may blow or how rapidly it may change its direction, the bow of the vessel will turn just as rapidly and will always head directly into the wind.