Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/651

rotations per minute. The entire weight of this flying machine and crew is eight thousand pounds and its lifting power ten thousand. Unfortunately, the surplus power of two thousand pounds during the experiment lifted the machine off the rails on which it was running, and broke the rear axletrees that were holding it down, thus wrecking the apparatus. The prominent English physicists. Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, etc., speak of Maxim's air-ship with the greatest enthusiasm; they expect him actually to solve the problem in a near future. The German scientists, however, at the Sixty-sixth Congress of German Naturalists, which was held in Vienna in September, stated that while Maxim's experiment has certainly brought the problem nearer its solution, it has cost one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and left the question of steering the air-ship, which is at present the greatest impediment to ultimate success, altogether unimproved. They expressed their hope of seeing the real invention made by a German, after all, although their nation does not command pecuniary means which permit of such costly experimenting as that done by Mr. Maxim, whose apparatus, they say, is in its main traits merely the application of Mr. Kress the German inventor's model, executed in colossal dimensions. Mr. Kress demonstrated before the assembly the capacities of his model, which he constructed some years ago, and was loudly applauded as his machine rose with great speed and landed at the appointed place on one of the galleries. Prof. Ludwig Boltzmann, of the Vienna University, gave a general survey of the latest inventions. He considered as a very important step the work done by the engineer, Mr. Otto Lilienthal, in Berlin. This gentleman, while using a flying machine of the smallest possible dimensions, has made great progress in the art of steering it, partly by the application of a rudder that takes the place of a bird's tail, partly by well-calculated motion of his own body and feet. An extensive practice is likely to produce absolute mastery of this part of the problem. "The aëronaut," said Prof. Maxim in his report before the British Association, "has to excel not as an expert in technique only, but also as an acrobat." This implies the same conception of the task to which Prof. Boltzmann gave utterance when speaking of Mr. Lilienthal's work and its prospects. He added that Mr. Kress has recently constructed an apparatus for steering which is based on new principles and gives fair promise of good results.

 

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Montenegro enjoys a paternal government. Mr, W. H. Oozens-Hardy tells of an officer who, when asked why he had put five men in prison, replied that they had seen after dark a figure dressed in white, sitting on a grave. Ghost stories, he said, were bad for public morals.