“Nothing.”
“What? Not a clump of trees?”
“No.”
“Not even the tops of branches?”
“Not even that.”
“So we’re not in the center of that clearing anymore?”
“Not in the clearing and not in the park.”
“At least do you see roofs of houses, tops of monuments?” said Uncle Prudent, whose disappointment, combined with fury, had never stopped increasing.
“No roofs, no tops.”
“What! Not even a flagpole, not even a church clock tower, not even a factory chimney?”
“Nothing but space.”
Just at that moment, the door of the cell opened. A man appeared on the threshold.
It was Robur.
“Honorable balloonians,” he said gravely, “you are now free to come and go—”
“Free!” shouted Uncle Prudent.
Phil Evans struck the glass violently.
And what did they see?
“Yes—within the limits of the Albatross!”
Uncle Prudent and Phil Evans rushed out of the cell.
And what did they see?
Twelve or thirteen hundred meters below them, the surface of a land they sought in vain to recognize.
CHAPTER
6
Which engineers, mechanics, and other learned persons would perhaps do well to skip
“In what epoch will man cease his crawling in the swamps to live in the azure and the peace of the heavens?”
To this question from Camille Flammarion, the reply is easy: in the epoch when mechanical progress allows a solution to the problem of aviation. And in a few years—as has been predicted—a more practical means of using electricity will lead to the solution of the problem.
Long before 1783, when the Montgolfier brothers had constructed the first hot-air balloon and the physicist Charles the first gas balloon, a few adventurous minds had dreamed of conquering space through mechanical apparatuses. These first inventors had not been thinking of lighter-than-air apparatuses—which the physics of their time would not in any way have allowed them to imagine. It was with heavier-than-air apparatuses, flying machines, made in imitation of birds, that they intended to bring about aerial locomotion.
That is exactly what had been done by that fool Icarus, Dædalus’s son, whose wings, attached with wax, fell from him as he approached the sun.
But, without going back clear to mythological times or speaking about Archytas of Tarentum, already in the work of Danti of Perugia, Leonardo da Vinci, and Guidotti, we can find the idea of machines intended to move amid the atmosphere. Two and a half centuries later, inventors began multiplying. In 1742, the Marquis de Bacqueville built a system of wings, tested it over the Seine, and broke an arm when he fell. In 1768, Paucton conceived the design of an apparatus with two suspensive and propulsive propellers. In 1781, Meerwein, architect to the Prince of Baden, constructed a machine with birdlike movement, and protested against the idea of steering the balloons that had just been invented. In 1784, Launoy and Bienvenu maneuvered a helicopter worked by springs. In 1808, attempts at flight by the Austrian Jakob Degen. In 1810, a pamphlet by Deniau, of Nantes, laying out the principles of the “Heavier-Than-Air.” Then, from 1811 to 1840, studies and inventions by Berblinger, Vignal, Sarti, Dubochet, and Cagniard de la Tour. In 1842, we find the Englishman Henson with his system of inclined planes and steam-powered propellers; in 1845, Cossus and his apparatus with ascensional propellers; in 1847, Camille Vert and his helicopter with feathered wings; in 1852, Letur with his system of dirigible parachutes, experiments with which cost him his life; in the same year, Michel Loup with his plan of gliding on the support of four rotating wings; in 1853, Béléguic and his airplane powered by traction propellers, Vaussin-Chardanne with his free-flying dirigible kite, George Cayley with his plans for flying machines fitted with gas-powered motors. From 1854 to 1863 appeared Joseph Pline, who patented multiple aerial systems, Bréant, Carlingford, Le Bris, Du Temple, Bright whose ascensional propellers turned in opposite directions, Smythies, Panafieu, Crosnier, etcetera. Finally, in 1863, thanks to Nadar’s efforts, a Heavier-Than-Air Society was founded in Paris. There, inventors tried experiments with machines, some of which have already been patented: de Ponton d’Amécourt and his steam-powered helicopter, de La Landelle and his combined system of propellers with inclined planes and parachutes, de Louvrié and his aeroscaphe, d’Esterno and his mechanical bird, de Groof and his apparatus with wings moved by levers.1 With this fresh impetus given, inventors invent and calculators calculate everything needed to make aerial locomotion practical. Bourcart, Le Bris, Kaufmann, Smyth, Stringfellow, Prigent, Danjard, Pomès and de la Pauze, Moy, Pénaud, Jobert, Hureau de Villeneuve, Achenbach, Garapon, Duchesne, Danduran, Parisel, Dieuaide, Melikoff, Forlanini, Brearey, Tatin, Dandrieux, and Edison—some with wings or propellers, others with inclined planes—imagine, create, construct, perfect their flying machines, which will be ready to run on the day when a motor of considerable power and extreme lightness will be attached to them by some inventor.
Kindly pardon this rather long enumeration. Was it not necessary to show all the steps on the ladder to aerial locomotion, at the summit of which Robur the Conqueror had appeared? Without the trial and error and the experiments of his predecessors, could the engineer have conceived such a perfect machine? No, certainly not!2 And, although he had nothing but disdain for those who were still obstinate enough to attempt to build dirigible balloons, he held in high esteem all the partisans of “Heavier-Than-Air,” English, American, Italian, Austrian, French—especially French, for it was their work, perfected by him, that led him to the design and construction of this engine of flight, the Albatross, sent out across the currents of the atmosphere.
“Pigeons fly!” said one of the most persistent supporters of aviation.3 “We’ll tread on the air as we tread on the earth!” replied one of its most tireless advocates.4
“After the locomotive, the aeromotive!” shouted the noisiest one of all, who blasted the trumpets of publicity to wake up the Old and New Worlds.5
Nothing indeed could be better established, by experiment and calculation, than that air is a very resistant point of support. A circular shape a meter in diameter, forming a parachute, can not only moderate a descent through the air, but also render that descent isochronous. This much we know.
We know also that, when the speed of movement is fast, the force of gravity varies roughly inversely to the square of that speed, becoming almost insignificant.
We know as well that the more weight is added to a flying animal, the less wing surface has to be added proportionally to support it, although the movements it makes will be slower.
A flying machine must therefore be constructed in such a way as to use these natural laws, to imitate the bird, “that admirable emblem of aerial locomotion,” as Dr. Marey of the Institut de France said.
In brief, the machines that might resolve this problem come in three varieties:
1. Helicopters or spiralifères, which are merely propellers on vertical axes.6
2. Ornithopters, engines which reproduce the natural flight of birds.
3.