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. Airplanes, which, to tell the truth, are simply kitelike inclined planes, but which are driven or powered by propellers with horizontal axes.
Each of these systems has had, and still does have, supporters determined to stand their ground on the point.
However, Robur, for many reasons, had rejected the last two.
That the ornithopter, the mechanical bird, presents certain advantages, no doubt. The work and experiments of Monsieur Piraud, in 1884, proved as much. But, as people said to him at the time, one must not slavishly imitate nature. Trains are not modeled after quadrupeds, nor steamships after fish. The former are fitted with wheels that are not legs, the latter with propellers that are nothing like fins. And they work none the worse for it; quite the contrary. Besides, do we know what actually happens mechanically in bird flight, a series of very complex movements? Didn’t Dr. Marey suspect that the quills separate during the lift of the wing to let the air pass through, a movement difficult to produce, to say the least, with an artificial machine?
On the other hand, airplanes had given a few good results; that could not be doubted. Propellers opposing an oblique plane to the air was the way to produce ascension, and experiments with model apparatuses proved that the available weight, that is to say the weight available in addition to that of the apparatus itself, increases with the square of the speed. These were great advantages—superior even to those of balloons in motion.
Nevertheless, Robur had believed that what was best was still what was simplest. Moreover, propellers—those “Saint Helixes” that had been thrown in his face at the Weldon Institute—would suffice for all the needs of his flying machine. Some would keep the apparatus suspended in midair; others would pull it through the sky in marvelous conditions of speed and security.
The fact is that, in theory, with a propeller of sufficiently short length but considerable surface area, as Mr. Victor Tatin said, one could “extend the idea to its extreme, and support an indefinite weight with the most minimal force.”7
If the orthopter—flapping bird wings—rises by resting on the air in the normal way, the helicopter rises by hitting the air obliquely with its propeller blades, as if it were ascending on an inclined plane. The blades, in fact, are helicoidal wings in place of paddle-shaped wings. The propeller runs necessarily in the direction of its axle. Is that axle vertical? Then it moves vertically. Is it horizontal? Then it moves horizontally.
The whole flying machine of the engineer Robur was in those two functions.
Here is its exact description, which can be divided into three basic sections: the platform, the suspension and propulsion engines, the machinery.
Platform.—This is a construction thirty meters long and four wide, a genuine ship’s deck, with a bow shaped like a spear. Below it swells a solidly reinforced hull, which contains the machines that produce mechanical power, the munitions hold, the tackle, the tools, and the general hold for supplies of all sorts, including the ship’s stock of freshwater. Around the deck, some lightweight supports linked by wire netting, to hold up a guardrail. On the surface rise three deckhouses, with some compartments designed for lodging the crew and others for the machinery. In the central deckhouse is the machine that drives all the suspension propellers; in the one near the bow, the machine for the front propeller; in the one near the stern, the machine for the back propeller—these three machines each running individually. On the bow side, in the first deckhouse, are the office, the galley, and the crew’s quarters. On the stern side, in the last deckhouse, various cabins are arranged, including the engineer’s own cabin and a dining room, and above them, a glass box for the helmsman who steers the apparatus by means of a powerful rudder. All these deckhouses are illuminated by portholes made of tempered glass, which offers ten times as much resistance as ordinary glass. Below the hull a system of flexible springs is set up to reduce bumps, although landing can be done with extreme grace when the engineer is master over the movements of the apparatus.
Engines for suspension and propulsion.—Above the platform, thirty-seven axes rise vertically: fifteen on each side, and seven higher ones in the center. It might be taken for a ship with thirty-seven masts. Only, each of these masts, instead of bearing sails, carry two horizontal propellers, relatively small in pitch and diameter, but rotatable at prodigious speed.8 Each of these axes moves independently from the others, and moreover, in pairs, the axes turn in opposite directions—an arrangement necessary to prevent the apparatus from gyrating. Thus, the propellers, while still rising on a vertical column of air, are balanced against horizontal resistance. Consequently, the apparatus is fitted with seventy-four suspension propellers, with the three blades of each one held on the outside by a metal circle, which, functioning as a flywheel, economizes the driving force. At the bow and the stern, mounted on horizontal axes, two propulsion propellers, with four blades each, of very high reverse pitch, turning in opposite directions and communicating the movement of propulsion. These propellers, of much larger diameter than the suspension propellers, can also turn with excessive speed.
The Albatross
In short, this apparatus combines the systems already recommended by Messrs. Cossus, de La Landelle, and de Ponton d’Amé-court, systems perfected by the engineer Robur. But above all it was in the choice and application of driving force that he has the right to be considered a true inventor.
Machinery.—It is neither steam from water or other liquids, nor compressed air or other elastic gases, nor explosive mixtures susceptible of producing mechanic action, that Robur calls upon for the power necessary to sustain and move his apparatus. It is electricity, that agent which will be, someday, the soul of the industrial world. Moreover, no electromotive machine to produce it. Nothing but batteries
