HOW I BECAME AN AËRONAUT
air-ship which should be just large enough to raise, along with my own 100 pounds of weight, as much more for the motor, fuel, and absolutely indispensable rigging. Later I might gradually increase the dimensions of the apparatus and the power of the machine, using the data which my successive trials would furnish.
I looked for the workshop of some little mechanic near my hotel in the central quarter of Paris. There I could have my plans executed under my own eyes and apply my own hands to the work. I found such a work-shop in the Rue du Colisée. There I worked out a tandem of two cylinders of a petroleum motor, that is, their prolongation, one after the other, to work the same connecting-rod, while fed by a single carburator. To bring everything down to the minimum of weight, I cut out from each part whatever was not strictly necessary to solidity. In this way I realized something which was remarkable at the time—a 3 horse-power motor weighing only sixty-six pounds.
To ascertain the practical value of my new motor, I attached it to an ordinary petroleum tricycle, from which I had removed its original 1 horse-power motor. I have always been handy in mechanics; as I have already said, my father—himself an engineer of the École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures of Paris—taught me the principles from my tenderest years, and while yet a boy I was accustomed to handle machines and modify their parts. Therefore, the tricycle with its sixty-six pound motor of 3 horse-power worked well, although the adjustment had been made with my own hands.
1 soon had an opportunity to test it. The great series of automobile road-races, which had its climax in the Paris-Berlin race of 1901, had begun with the Paris-Bordeaux race in 1895, won with a 4 horse-power machine at an average speed of 25 kilometers (15 miles) per hour. In 1896, the Paris-Marseilles-and-return run, was accomplished at the rate of 30 kilometers (18 miles) per hour. Now, in 1898, it was the Paris-Amsterdam contest. Although I was not entered for this race,—I had been too much occupied with my air-ship to think about it—it suddenly occurred to me to try my novel tricycle among all the others. I started, and to my contentment, I found myself able to keep at the head of the long string. My vehicle was the lightest and most powerful of all in proportion to its size.
I often think I might have had one of the first places at the finish (the average speed was only 40 kilometers, or 25 miles per hour), had I not begun to fear that the jarring of my motor in so long and strenuous an effort might at last derange it and delay the more important work on my air-ship. I, therefore, fell out of the race while still at the head of the procession; I had given my new motor the best test it could have.
My experience with automobiles has stood me in good stead for my air-ship experiments. The petroleum motor is still a delicate and capricious organism; and there are sounds in its spitting rumble which are intelligible only to the long-experienced ear. Should the time come in some future flight of mine when the motor of my air-ship threatens danger, I am pretty sure my ear will hear the warning. This almost instinctive faculty I owe to my automobile experience dating from the year 1893, when I came into possession of my first machine—a Peugeot roadster of 2 horse-power. My next was the petroleum tricycle. In the autumn of 1898 I gave these up for what was then a very modern 6 horse-power Panhard, with which I made a trip from Paris to Nice in fifty-four hours. Had I not taken up ballooning, I must surely have become a road-racing automobile enthusiast, exchanging one type for another and always in search of more power and speed, keeping pace with the progress of the automobile industry, as so many other members of the Automobile Club of France have done.
My ballooning interest stopped me. While experimenting I was tied down to Paris. I could take no more long trips; and the petroleum automobile, with its wonderful facility for finding fuel in every little town that boasts a grocery store, lost its greatest use in my eyes. At this period (1898) I saw what was to me then an unknown make—a light-running American electric buggy, manufactured in Chicago. It appealed alike to my eye and reason, and I bought it. I have never had cause to regret the purchase. It serves me for running about Paris, and is without noise or odor.
I at once drew up the plan of a cylindrical balloon, terminating fore-and-aft in the shape of a long-drawn-out cartridge. It was 25 meters (82 feet) long, with a radius of 1.75 meters (6 feet), and 180 cubic meters (6,355 cubic feet) in volume. My calculations left me only 66 pounds weight for the balloon envelope. To keep within these limits, I first gave up the network and the outer cover of the ordinary balloon. I considered this sort of second envelope, holding the first within it, to be superfluous, and even harmful, if not dangerous. To the envelope proper I attached
