The Dominion of the Air | Page 5

aeronautics, arrogating to himself the
bold conception of the English Friar, with certain unfortunate
differences, however, which in fairness we must here clearly point out.
Lana proclaimed his speculations standing on a giant's shoulders.
Torricelli, with his closed bent tube, had just shown the world how
heavily the air lies above us. It then required little mathematical skill to
calculate what would be the lifting power of any vessel void of air on
the earth's surface. Thus Lana proposed the construction of an air ship
which possibly because of its picturesquesness has won him notoriety.
But it was a fraud. We have but to conceive a dainty boat in which the
aeronaut would sit at ease handling a little rudder and a simple sail.
These, though a schoolboy would have known better, he thought would
guide his vessel when in the air.
So much has been claimed for Father Lana and his mathematical and
other attainments that it seems only right to insist on the weakness of
his reasoning. An air ship simply drifting with the wind is incapable of
altering its course in the slightest degree by either sail or rudder. It is
simply like a log borne along in a torrent; but to compare such a log
properly with the air ship we must conceive it WHOLLY submerged in
the water and having no sail or other appendage projecting into the air,
which would, of course, introduce other conditions. If, however, a man
were to sit astride of the log and begin to propel it so that it travels
either faster or slower than the stream, then in that case, either by
paddle or rudder, the log could be guided, and the same might be said
of Lana's air boat if only he had thought of some adequate paddle, fan,
or other propeller. But he did not. One further explanatory sentence

may here be needed; for we hear of balloons which are capable of being
guided to a small extent by sail and rudder. In these cases, however, the
rudder is a guide rope trailing on earth or sea, so introducing a fresh
element and fresh conditions which are easy to explain.
Suppose a free balloon drifting down the wind to have a sail suddenly
hoisted on one side, what happens? The balloon will simply swing till
this sail is in front, and thus continue its straightforward course.
Suppose, however, that as soon as the side sail is hoisted a trail rope is
also dropped aft from a spar in the rigging. The tendency of the sail to
fly round in front is now checked by the dragging rope, and it is
constrained to remain slanting at an angle on one side; at the same time
the rate of the balloon is reduced by the dragging rope, so that it travels
slower than the wind, which, now acting on its slant sail, imparts a
certain sidelong motion much as it does in the case of a sailing boat.
Lana having in imagination built his ship, proceeds to make it float up
into space, for which purpose he proposes four thin copper globes
exhausted of air. Had this last been his own idea we might have
pardoned him. We have, however, pointed out that it was not, and we
must further point out that in copying his great predecessor he fails to
see that he would lose enormous advantage by using four globes
instead of one. But, beyond all, he failed to see what the master genius
of Bacon saw clearly--that his thin globes when exhausted must
infallibly collapse by virtue of that very pressure of the air which he
sought to make use of.
It cannot be too strongly insisted on that if the too much belauded
speculations of Lana have any value at all it is that they throw into
stronger contrast the wonderful insight of the philosopher who so long
preceded him. By sheer genius Bacon had foreseen that the emptied
globe must be filled with SOMETHING, and for this something he
suggests "ethereal air" or "liquid fire," neither of which, we contend,
were empty terms. With Bacon's knowledge of experimental chemistry
it is a question, and a most interesting one, whether he had not in his
mind those two actual principles respectively of gas and air rarefied by
heat on which we launch our balloons into space to-day.

Early progress in any art or science is commonly intermittent. It was so
in the story of aeronautics. Advance was like that of the incoming tide,
throwing an occasional wave far in front of its rising flood. It was a
phenomenal wave that bore Roger Bacon and left his mark on the sand
where none other approached for centuries. In those centuries men were
either too priest-ridden to lend