Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1880 — A New Flying-Machine. [ARTICLE]

A New Flying-Machine.

Within two or three weeks the scientific and general public of New York will be afforded an opportunity to witness the Dowers of Professor C. F. Ritchel’s new flyingmachine. The well-known inventor has for the past three years been devoting his attention to the problem of aerial navigation, and has succeeded, he thinks, in bringing that interesting question to a satisfactory solution. The great trouble with the flying-machines on which so much time and money have been expended and lives lost heretofore on both sides of the Atlantic was that, while direction was possible under favorable circumstances, the matter of elevation or depression was entirely < dependent on a valve iu the balloon and the carrying of ballast. Professor Ritchel has now completed a machine, which he considers will render the sustaining balloon independent of the stratified aerial currents, believe it from the objectionable valve, and dispense with the ballast arrangement altogether. The new machine is furnished with a fan apparatus, whereby it can be raised or depressed at pleasure. The forward familiar steering helm of the machine can be used so as to act as propelling power, also, while the stern fgn, which is to act as an elevator or a depressor, is made to contribute to the impelling'force, both Subject, together or separately, to the will of the conductor. In connection with the new machine the Professor has invented new material for the carrying balloon, consisting of Scotch gingham, with ruboer ooating. The whole fabric is vulcanized, and proves to be fifty per cent, lighter than any balloon yet used. The possibilities which the future has in stove for the invention, as Mr. Ritchel estimates them, are simply bewildering to the ordinary mind, and if they can be realized, there is little doubt that a complete revolution would mildly describe the changes that the affairs of mankind, as now conducted, are des-' tined to undergo. — 2l7. Y. Times.