Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 April 1894 — Flying Machines. [ARTICLE]

Flying Machines.

Benjamin Franklin used to compare the balloon of his day to a child who would presently come to man’s estate. He thought the aerostation was in embryo, and it due time would do marvelous things. But his aspirations, one may now say, were too sanguine. Our aerial achievements are still literally “ in the air,” the flights of our best aeronauts are involuntary. They are “ blown about with every wind. ” It is true that the parachute has been brought to considerable perfection, but that is not flying, but falling. It is something to be able to fall softly from a great height, but it is not much. It hardly seems worth while to go up so far in order to come down again. This reflection applies to the very latest improvements in the science. The winged man of Steglitz has, we are told, “ accomplished a journey of 250 yards, ” bnt this merely means that, starting from a tower he has built for the purpose with a spring board, or from a steep hill, he has flown down that distance. As for the aerial machines of various kinds that are to “ revolutionize warfare ” by dropping dynamite over cities and armies, they may be marvels of mechanical science, but they have never yet “ risen to the occasion,” or even risen at all. Even the “ Maxim” invention has, I understand, “never left the rails,” which, although a great virtue in a locomotive, is very little credit to a flying machine.—[l-ondon News.