Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 August 1896 — A BICYLE THAT FLIES. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A BICYLE THAT FLIES.

The Problem of Aerial Navigation Solved by a Young Long islander. The problem of aerial navigation, which has bothered the minds of scientists and inventors for several hundred years, has been solved by a young man of 19 who has gone out of the beaten track of past experiments and devised u simple apparatus which actually flies. The name of this young genius is J.. C. Ryder, of Richmond Hill, L. 1., and the main principle of his device is taken from the bicycle. Mr. Ryder recently "flew” on his aerial bicycle from Hempstead to Richmond Hill, a distance of seven miles, rising to an altitude of several hundred feet. Mr. Ryder says of l*'s experiments with the machine: ‘I experimented three years on a flying apparatus, and could not make any headway, but on June 25, after a month’s hard labor, 1 made a model, 20

Inches long, with a cylinder of silk and thick bamboo ribs. When inflated with gas this cone-shaped thing had to have 50 pounds of anchorage to keep It from rising. I then built two aluminum sweep#, two feet long, by 10 inches wide, with half an inch steel bar, 12 inches long, for an axle, and clamped it to the bottom of the cone! Then 1

*°ok * piece of aluminum 20 Inches long, and adjusted a handle bar and a seat, and attached a sprocket wheel and pedals at the bottom of the rod. I fixed a wheel geared to 100 to revolve the sweeps, and a chain to propel the gear wheel*, as well as a one-eighth inch bar for use as a piston. After I got the machine fixed in this way the momentous question of whether it would fly or not was still to be settled. I pumped the gas into the cone, and smarted It off. It rose steadily, and then, to my great surprise, it flew in the teeth of a gale of wind blowing 20 miles an hour. 1 had an alarm clock, with an attachment to let out the gas at a given time, on the machine. When the clock gave out the gas escaped, and the model came down to the ground. “I then built a wheel to carry 500 pounds and made my next experiment July 20. It was highly successful in every way. I rose a couple of hundred feet into the air and worked the pedals against a strong wind. When I wanted to descend I let the gas escape and came to earth- like a bird on the wing.” Mr. Ryder's present machine weighs 95 pounds and has a lifting power of threr tons.

AN AERIAL RICYCLE.