Types of Car.

Automobiles may be classified according to the purpose they serve, according to their size and weight, or according to their motive power. We will first review them under the latter head.

A. Petrol.—The petrol motor, suitable alike for large cars of 40 to 60 horse-power and for the small bicycle weighing 70 lbs. or so, at present undoubtedly occupies the first place in popular estimation on account of its comparative simplicity, which more than compensates certain defects that affect persons off the vehicle more than those on it—smell and noise.

The chief feature of the internal explosion motor is that at one operation it converts fuel directly into energy, by exploding it inside a cylinder. It is herein more economical than steam, which loses power while passing from the boiler to the driving-gear.

Petrol cycles and small cars have usually only one cylinder, but large vehicles carry two, three, and sometimes four cylinders. Four and more avoid that bugbear of rotary motion, “dead points,” during which the momentum of the machinery alone is doing work; and for that reason the engines of racing cars are often quadrupled.

For the sake of simplicity we will describe the working of a single cylinder, leaving the reader to imagine it acting alone or in concert with others as he pleases.

In the first place the fuel, petrol, is a very inflammable distillation of petroleum: so ready to ignite that it must be most rigorously guarded from naked lights; so quick to evaporate that the receptacles containing it, if not quite airtight, will soon render it “stale” and unprofitable for motor driving.

The engine, to mention its most important parts, consists of a single-action cylinder (giving a thrust one way only); a heavy flywheel revolving in an airtight circular case, and connected to the piston by a hinged rod which converts the reciprocating movement of the piston into a rotary movement of the crank-shaft built in with the wheel; inlet and outlet valves; a carburettor for generating petrol gas, and a device to ignite the gas-and-air mixture in the cylinder.

The action of the engine is as follows: as the piston moves outwards in its first stroke it sucks through the inlet valve a quantity of mixed air and gas, the proportions of which are regulated by special taps. The stroke ended, the piston returns, compressing the mixture and rendering it more combustible. Just as the piston commences its second outward stroke an electric spark passed through the mixture mechanically ignites it, and creates an explosion, which drives the piston violently forwards. The second return forces the burnt gas through the exhaust-valve, which is lifted by cog-gear once in every two revolutions of the crank, into the “silencer.” The cycle of operations is then repeated.

We see that during three-quarters of the “cycle”—the suction, compression, and expulsion—the work is performed entirely by the flywheel. It follows that a single-cylinder motor, to work at all, must rotate the wheel at a high rate. Once stopped, it can be restarted only by the action of the handle or pedals; a task often so unpleasant and laborious that the driver of a car, when he comes to rest for a short time only, disconnects his motor from the driving-gear and lets it throb away idly beneath him.

The means of igniting the gas in the cylinders may be either a Bunsen burner or an electric spark. Tube ignition is generally considered inferior to electrical because it does not permit “timing” of the explosion. Large cars are often fitted with both systems, so as to have one in reserve should the other break down.

Electrical ignition is most commonly produced by the aid of an intensity coil, which consists of an inner core of coarse insulated wire, called the primary coil; and an outer, or secondary coil, of very fine wire. A current passes at intervals, timed by a cam on the exhaust-valve gear working a make-and-break contact blade, from an accumulator through the primary coil, exciting by induction a current of much greater intensity in the secondary. The secondary is connected to a “sparking plug,” which screws into the end of the cylinder, and carries two platinum points about 1/32 of an inch apart. The secondary current leaps this little gap in the circuit, and the spark, being intensely hot, fires the compressed gas. Instead of accumulators a small dynamo, driven by the motor, is sometimes used to produce the primary current.

By moving a small lever, known as the “advancing lever,” the driver can control the time of explosion relatively to the compression of the gas, and raise or lower the speed of the motor.

The strokes of the petrol-driven cylinder are very rapid, varying from 1000 to 3000 a minute. The heat of very frequent explosions would soon make the cylinder too hot to work were not measures adopted to keep it cool. Small cylinders, such as are carried on motor cycles, are sufficiently cooled by a number of radiating ribs cast in a piece with the cylinder itself; but for large machines a water jacket or tank surrounding the cylinder is a necessity. Water is circulated through the jacket by means of a small centrifugal pump working off the driving gear, and through a coil of pipes fixed in the front of the car to catch the draught of progression. So long as the jacket and tubes are full of water the temperature of the cylinder cannot rise above boiling point.

Motion is transmitted from the motor to the driving-wheels by intermediate gear, which in cycles may be only a leather band or couple of cogs, but in cars is more or less complicated. Under the body of the car, running usually across it, is the countershaft, fitted at each end with a small cog which drives a chain passing also over much larger cogs fixed to the driving-wheels. The countershaft engages with the cylinder mechanism by a “friction-clutch,” a couple of circular faces which can be pressed against one another by a lever. To start his car the driver allows the motor to obtain a considerable momentum, and then, using the friction lever, brings more and more stress on to the countershaft until the friction-clutch overcomes the inertia of the car and produces movement.

Gearing suitable for level stretches would not be sufficiently powerful for hills: the motor would slow and probably stop from want of momentum. A car is therefore fitted with changing gears, which give two or three speeds, the lower for ascents, the higher for the level: and on declines the friction-clutch can be released, allowing the car to “coast.”

B. Steam Cars.—Though the petrol car has come to the front of late years it still has a powerful rival in the steam car. Inventors have made strenuous efforts to provide steam-engines light enough to be suitable for small pleasure cars. At present the Locomobile (American) and Serpollet (French) systems are increasing their popularity. The Locomobile, the cost of which (about £120) contrasts favourably with that of even the cheaper petrol cars, has a small multitubular boiler wound on the outside with two or three layers of piano wire, to render it safe at high pressures. As the boiler is placed under the seat it is only fit and proper that it should have a large margin of safety. The fuel, petrol, is passed through a specially designed burner, pierced with hundreds of fine holes arranged in circles round air inlets. The feed-supply to the burner is governed by a spring valve, which cuts off the petrol automatically as soon as the steam in the boiler reaches a certain pressure. The locomobile runs very evenly and smoothly, and with very little noise, a welcome change after the very audible explosion motor.

The Serpollet system is a peculiar method of generating steam. The boiler is merely a long coil of tubing, into which a small jet of water is squirted by a pump at every stroke of the cylinders. The steam is generated and used in a moment, and the speed of the machine is regulated by the amount of water thrown by the pumps. By an ingenious device the fuel supply is controlled in combination with the water supply, so that there may not be any undue waste in the burner.

C. Electricity.—Of electric cars there are many patterns, but at present they are not commercially so practical as the other two types. The great drawbacks to electrically-driven cars are the weight of the accumulators (which often scale nearly as much as all the rest of the vehicle), and the difficulty of getting them recharged when exhausted. We might add to these the rapidity with which the accumulators become worn out, and the consequent expense of renewal. T. A. Edison is reported at work on an accumulator which will surpass all hitherto constructed, having a much longer life, and weighing very much less, power for power. The longest continuous run ever made with electricity, 187 miles at Chicago, compares badly with the feat of a petrol car which on November 23, 1900, travelled a thousand miles on the Crystal Palace track in 48 hours 24 minutes, without a single stop. Successful attempts have been made by MM. Pieper and Jenatsky to combine the petrol and electric systems, by an arrangement which instead of wasting power in the cylinders when less speed is required, throws into action electric dynamos to store up energy, convertible, when needed, into motive power by reversing the dynamo into a motor. But the simple electric car will not be a universal favourite until either accumulators are so light that a very large store of electricity can be carried without inconvenient addition of weight, or until charging stations are erected all over the country at distances of fifty miles or so apart.

Whether steam will eventually get the upper hand of the petrol engine is at present uncertain. The steam car has the advantage over the gas-engine car in ease of starting, the delicate regulation of power, facility of reversing, absence of vibration, noise and smell, and freedom from complicated gears. On the other hand the petrol car has no boiler to get out of order or burst, no troublesome gauges requiring constant attention, and there is small difficulty about a supply of fuel. Petrol sufficient to give motive power for hundreds of miles can be carried if need be; and as long as there is petrol on board the car is ready for work at a moment’s notice. Judging by the number of the various types of vehicles actually at work we should say that while steam is best for heavy traction, the gas-engine is most often employed on pleasure cars.

By kind permission of The Liquid Air Co.
This graceful little motor-car is driven by Liquid Air. It makes absolutely no smell or noise.

D. Liquid Air will also have to be reckoned with as a motive power. At present it is only on its probation; but the writer has good authority for stating that before these words appear in print there will be on the roads a car driven by liquid air, and able to turn off eighty miles in the hour.

Manufacture.—As the English were the pioneers of the steam car, so are the Germans and French the chief manufacturers of the petrol car. While the hands of English manufacturers were tied by shortsighted legislation, continental nations were inventing and controlling valuable patents, so that even now our manufacturers are greatly handicapped. Large numbers of petrol cars are imported annually from France, Germany, and Belgium. Steam cars come chiefly from America and France. The former country sent us nearly 2000 vehicles in 1901. There are signs, however, that English engineers mean to make a determined effort to recover lost ground; and it is satisfactory to learn that in heavy steam vehicles, such as are turned out by Thorneycroft and Co., this country holds the lead. We will hope that in a few years we shall be exporters in turn.

Having glanced at the history and nature of the various types of car, it will be interesting to turn to a consideration of their travelling capacities. As we have seen, a steam omnibus attained, in 1830, a speed of no less than thirty-five miles an hour on what we should call bad roads. It is therefore to be expected that on good modern roads the latest types of car would be able to eclipse the records of seventy years ago. That such has indeed been the case is evident when we examine the performances of cars in races organised as tests of speed. France, with its straight, beautifully-kept, military roads, is the country par excellence for the chauffeur. One has only to glance at the map to see how the main highways conform to Euclid’s dictum that a straight line is the shortest distance between any two points, e.g. between Rouen and Dieppe, where a park of artillery, well posted, could rake the road either way for miles.

The growth of speed in the French races is remarkable. In 1894 the winning car ran at a mean velocity of thirteen miles an hour; in 1895, of fifteen. The year 1898 witnessed a great advance to twenty-three miles, and the next year to thirty miles. But all these speeds paled before that of the Paris to Bordeaux race of 1901, in which the winner, M. Fournier, traversed the distance of 327-1/2 miles at a rate of 53-3/4 miles per hour! The famous Sud express, running between the same cities, and considered the fastest long-distance express in the world, was beaten by a full hour. It is interesting to note that in the same races a motor bicycle, a Werner, weighing 80 lbs. or less, successfully accomplished the course at an average rate of nearly thirty miles an hour. The motor-car, after waiting seventy years, had had its revenge on the railways.

This was not the only occasion on which an express service showed up badly against its nimble rival of the roads. In June, 1901, the French and German authorities forgot old animosities in a common enthusiasm for the automobile, and organised a race between Paris and Berlin. It was to be a big affair, in which the cars of all nations should fight for the speed championship. Every possible precaution was taken to insure the safety of the competitors and the spectators. Flags of various colours and placards marked out the course, which lay through Rheims, Luxembourg, Coblentz, Frankfurt, Eisenach, Leipsic, and Potsdam to the German capital. About fifty towns and large villages were “neutralised”—that is to say, the competitors had to consume a certain time in traversing them. At the entrance to each neutralised zone a “control” was established. As soon as a competitor arrived, he must slow down, and a card on which was written the time of his arrival was handed to a “pilot,” who cycled in front of the car to the other “control” at the farther end of the zone, from which, when the proper time had elapsed, the car was dismissed. Among other rules were: that no car should be pushed or pulled during the race by any one else than the passengers; that at the end of the day only a certain time should be allowed for cleaning and repairs; and that a limited number of persons, varying with the size of the car, should be permitted to handle it during that period.

A small army of automobile club representatives, besides thousands of police and soldiers, were distributed along the course to restrain the crowds of spectators. It was absolutely imperative that for vehicles propelled at a rate of from 50 to 60 miles an hour a clear path should be kept.

At dawn, on July 27th, 109 racing machines assembled at the Fort de Champigny, outside Paris, in readiness to start for Berlin. Just before half-past three, the first competitor received the signal; two minutes later the second; and then at short intervals for three hours the remaining 107, among whom was one lady, Mme. de Gast. At least 20,000 persons were present, even at that early hour, to give the racers a hearty farewell, and demonstrate the interest attaching in France to all things connected with automobilism.

Great excitement prevailed in Paris during the three days of the race. Every few minutes telegrams arrived from posts on the route telling how the competitors fared. The news showed that during the first stage at least a hard fight for the leading place was in progress. The French cracks, Fournier, Charron, De Knyff, Farman, and Girardot pressed hard on Hourgières, No. 2 at the starting-point. Fournier soon secured the lead, and those who remembered his remarkable driving in the Paris-Bordeaux race at once selected him as the winner. Aix-la-Chapelle, 283 miles from Paris and the end of the first stage, was reached in 6 hours 28 minutes. Fournier first, De Knyff second by six minutes.

By kind permission of The Liquid Air Co.
Diagram of the Liquid Air Motor-Car, showing A, reservoir of liquid air; B, pipes in which the liquid is transformed into atmospheric air under great pressure; C, cylinders for driving the rear wheels by means of chain-gear.

On the 28th the racing became furious. Several accidents occurred. Edge, driving the only English car, wrecked his machine on a culvert, the sharp curve of which flung the car into the air and broke its springs. Another ruined his chances by running over and killing a boy. But Fournier, Antony, De Knyff, and Girardot managed to avoid mishaps for that day, and covered the ground at a tremendous pace. At Düsseldorf Girardot won the lead from Fournier, to lose it again shortly. Antony, driving at a reckless speed, gained ground all day, and arrived a close second at Hanover, the halting-place, after a run averaging, in spite of bad roads and dangerous corners, no less than 54 miles an hour!

The chauffeur in such a race must indeed be a man of iron nerves. Through the great black goggles which shelter his face from the dust-laden hurricane set up by the speed he travels at he must keep a perpetual, piercingly keen watch. Though travelling at express speed, there are no signals to help him; he must be his own signalman as well as driver. He must mark every loose stone on the road, every inequality, every sudden rise or depression; he must calculate the curves at the corners and judge whether his mechanician, hanging out on the inward side, will enable a car to round a turn without slackening speed. His calculations and decisions must be made in the fraction of a second, for a moment’s hesitation might be disaster. His driving must be furious and not reckless; the timid chauffeur will never win, the careless one will probably lose. His head must be cool although the car leaps beneath him like a wild thing, and the wind lashes his face. At least one well-tried driver found the mere mental strain too great to bear, and retired from the contest; and we may be sure that few of the competitors slept much during the nights of the race.

At four o’clock on the 29th Fournier started on the third stage, which witnessed another bout of fast travelling. It was now a struggle between him and Antony for first place. The pace rose at times to eighty miles an hour, a speed at which our fastest expresses seldom travel. Such a speed means huge risks, for stopping, even with the powerful brakes fitted to the large cars, would be a matter of a hundred yards or more. Not far from Hanover Antony met with an accident—Girardot now held second place; and Fournier finished an easy first. All along the route crowds had cheered him, and hurled bouquets into the car, and wished him good speed; but in Berlin the assembled populace went nearly frantic at his appearance. Fournier was overwhelmed with flowers, laurel wreaths, and other offerings; dukes, duchesses, and the great people of the land pressed for presentations; he was the hero of the hour.

Thus ended what may be termed a peaceful invasion of Germany by the French. Among other things it had shown that over an immense stretch of country, over roads in places bad as only German roads can be, the automobile was able to maintain an average speed superior to that of the express trains running between Paris and Berlin; also that, in spite of the large number of cars employed in the race, the accidents to the public were a negligible quantity. It should be mentioned that the actual time occupied by Fournier was 16 hours 5 minutes; that out of the 109 starters 47 reached Berlin; and that Osmont on a motor cycle finished only 3 hours and 10 minutes behind the winner.

In England such racing would be undesirable and impossible, owing to the crookedness of our roads. It would certainly not be permissible so long as the 12 miles an hour limit is observed. At the present time an agitation is on foot against this restriction, which, though reasonable enough among traffic and in towns, appears unjustifiable in open country. To help to convince the magisterial mind of the ease with which a car can be stopped, and therefore of its safety even at comparatively high speeds, trials were held on January 2, 1902, in Welbeck Park. The results showed that a car travelling at 13 miles an hour could be stopped dead in 4 yards; at 18 miles in 7 yards; at 20 miles in 13 yards; or in less than half the distance required to pull up a horse-vehicle driven at similar speeds.

Uses.—Ninety-five per cent of motors, at least in England, are attached to pleasure vehicles, cycles, voiturettes, and large cars. On account of the costliness of cars motorists are far less numerous than cyclists; but those people whose means enable them to indulge in automobilism find it extremely fascinating. Caricaturists have presented to us in plenty the gloomier incidents of motoring—the broken chain, the burst tyre, the “something gone wrong.” It requires personal experience to understand how lightly these mishaps weigh against the exhilaration of movement, the rapid change of scene, the sensation of control over power which can whirl one along tirelessly at a pace altogether beyond the capacities of horseflesh. If proof were wanted of the motor car’s popularity it will be seen in the unconventional dress of the chauffeur. The breeze set up by his rapid rush is such as would penetrate ordinary clothing; he dons cumbrous fur cloaks. The dust is all-pervading at times; he swathes himself in dust-proof overalls, and mounts large goggles edged with velvet, while a cap of semi-nautical cut tightly drawn down over neck and ears serves to protect those portions of his anatomy. The general effect is peculiarly unpicturesque; but even the most artistically-minded driver is ready to sacrifice appearances to comfort and the proper enjoyment of his car.

In England the great grievance of motorists arises from the speed limit imposed by law. To restrict a powerful car to twelve miles an hour is like confining a thoroughbred to the paces of a broken-down cab horse. Careless driving is unpardonable, but its occasional existence scarcely justifies the intolerant attitude of the law towards motorists in general. It must, however, be granted in justice to the police that the chauffeur, from constant transgression of the law, becomes a bad judge of speed, and often travels at a far greater velocity than he is willing to admit.

The convenience of the motor car for many purposes is immense, especially for cross-country journeys, which may be made from door to door without the monotony or indirectness of railway travel. It bears the doctor swiftly on his rounds. It carries the business man from his country house to his office. It delivers goods for the merchant; parcels for the post office.

In the warfare of the future, too, it will play its part, whether to drag heavy ordnance and stores, or to move commanding officers from point to point, or perform errands of mercy among the wounded. By the courtesy of the Locomobile Company we are permitted to append the testimony of Captain R. S. Walker, R.E., to the usefulness of a car during the great Boer War.

“Several months ago I noticed a locomobile car at Cape Town, and being struck with its simplicity and neatness, bought it and took it up country with me, with a view to making some tests with it over bad roads, &c. Its first trip was over a rough course round Pretoria, especially chosen to find out defects before taking it into regular use. Naturally, as the machine was not designed for this class of work, there were several. In about a month these had all been found out and remedied, and the car was in constant use, taking stores, &c., round the towns and forts. It also performed some very useful work in visiting out-stations, where searchlights were either installed or wanted, and in this way visited nearly all the bigger towns in the Transvaal. It was possible to go round all the likely positions for a searchlight in one day at every station, which frequently meant considerably over fifty miles of most indifferent roads—more than a single horse could have been expected to do—and the car generally carried two persons on these occasions. The car was also used as a tender to a searchlight plant, on a gun-carriage and limber, being utilised to fetch gasolene, carbons, water, &c., &c., and also to run the dynamo for charging the accumulators used for sparking, thus saving running the gasolene motor for this purpose. To do this the trail of the carriage, on which was the dynamo, was lowered on to the ground, the back of the car was pulled up, one wheel being supported on the dynamo pulley and the other clear of the ground, and two bolts were passed through the balance-gear to join it. On one occasion the car ran a 30 c.m. searchlight for an hour, driving a dynamo in this way. In consequence of this a trailer has been made to carry a dynamo and projector for searchlighting in the field, but so far this has not been so used. The trailer hooks into an eye, passing just behind the balance-gear. A Maxim, Colt, or small ammunition cart, &c., could be attached to this same eye.

“Undoubtedly the best piece of work done by the car so far was its trial trip with the trailer, when it blew up the mines at Klein Nek. These mines were laid some eight months previously, and had never been looked to in the interval. There had been several bad storms, the Boers and cattle had been frequently through the Nek, it had been on fire, and finally it was shelled with lyddite. The mines, eighteen in number, were found to be intact except two, which presumably had been fired off by the heat of the veldt fire. All the insulation was burnt off the wires, and the battery was useless. It had been anticipated that a dynamo exploder would be inadequate to fire these mines, so a 250 volt two h.p. motor, which happened to be in Pretoria, weighing about three or four hundredweight, was placed on the trailer; a quarter of a mile of insulated cable, some testing gear, the kits of three men and their rations for three days, with a case of gasolene for the car, were also carried on the car and trailer, and the whole left Pretoria one morning and trekked to Rietfontein. Two of us were mounted, the third drove the car. At Rietfontein we halted for the night, and started next morning with an escort through Commando Nek, round the north of the Magaliesburg, to near Klein Nek, where the road had to be left, and the car taken across country through bush veldt. At the bottom the going was pretty easy; only a few bushes had to be charged down, and the grass, &c., rather wound itself around the wheels and chain. As the rise became steeper the stones became very large, and the car had to be taken along very gingerly to prevent breaking the wheels. A halt was made about a quarter of a mile from the top of the Nek, where the mines were. These were reconnoitered, and the wire, &c., was picked up; that portion which was useless was placed on top of the charges, and the remainder taken to the car. The dynamo was slid off the trailer, the car backed against it; one wheel was raised slightly and placed against the dynamo pulley, which was held up to it by a man using his rifle as a lever; the other wheel was on the ground with a stone under it. The balance gear being free, the dynamo was excited without the other wheel moving, and the load being on for a very short time (that is, from the time of touching lead on dynamo terminal to firing of the mine) no harm could come to the car. When all the leads had been joined to the dynamo the car was started, and after a short time, when it was judged to have excited, the second terminal was touched, a bang and clouds of dust resulted, and the Klein Nek Minefield had ceased to exist. The day was extremely hot, and the work had not been light, so the tea, made with water drawn direct from the boiler, which we were able to serve round to the main body of our escort was much appreciated, and washed down the surplus rations we dispensed with to accommodate the battery and wire, which we could not leave behind for the enemy.

“On the return journey we found this extra load too much for the car, and had great difficulty getting up to Commando Nek, frequently having to stop to get up steam, so these materials were left at the first blockhouse, and the journey home continued in comfort.

“A second night at Rietfontein gave us a rest after our labour, and the third afternoon saw us on our way back to Pretoria. As luck would have it, a sandstorm overtook the car, which had a lively time of it. The storm began by blowing the sole occupant’s hat off, so, the two mounted men being a long way behind, he shut off steam and chased his hat. In the meantime the wind increased, and the car sailed off ‘on its own,’ and was only just caught in time to save a smash. Luckily the gale was in the right direction, for the fire was blown out, and it was impossible to light a match in the open. The car sailed into a poort on the outskirts of Pretoria, got a tow from a friendly cart through it, and then steamed home after the fire had been relit.

“The load carried on this occasion (without the battery, &c.) must have been at least five hundredweight besides the driver, which, considering the car is designed to carry two on ordinary roads, and that these roads were by no means ordinary, was no mean feat. The car, as ordinarily equipped for trekking, carries the following: Blankets, waterproof sheets, &c., for two men; four planks for crossing ditches, bogs, stones, &c.; all necessary tools and spare parts, a day’s supply of gasolene, a couple of telephones, and one mile of wire. In addition, on the trailer, if used for searchlighting: One 30 c.m. projector, one automatic lamp for projector, one dynamo (100 volts 20 ampères), two short lengths of wire, two pairs of carbons, tools, &c. This trailer would normally be carried with the baggage, and only picked up by the car when wanted as a light; that is, as a rule, after arriving in camp, when a good many other things could be left behind.”

Perhaps the most useful work in store for the motor is to help relieve the congestion of our large towns and to restore to the country some of its lost prosperity. There is no stronger inducement to make people live in the country than rapid and safe means of locomotion, whether public or private. At present the slow and congested suburban train services on some sides of London consume as much time as would suffice a motor car to cover twice or three times the distance. We must welcome any form of travel which will tend to restore the balance between country and town by enabling the worker to live far from his work. The gain to the health of the nation arising from more even distribution of population would be inestimable.

A world’s tour is among the latest projects in automobilism. On April 29, 1902, Dr. Lehwess and nine friends started from Hyde Park Corner for a nine months’ tour on three vehicles, the largest of them a luxuriously appointed 24 horse-power caravan, built to accommodate four persons. Their route lies through France, Germany, Russia, Siberia, China, Japan, and the United States.

[HIGH-SPEED RAILWAYS.]

A century ago a long journey was considered an exploit, and an exploit to be carried through as quickly as possible on account of the dangers of the road and the generally uncomfortable conditions of travel. To-day, though our express speed is many times greater than that of the lumbering coaches, our carriages comparatively luxurious, the risk practically nil, the same wish lurks in the breast of ninety-nine out of a hundred railway passengers—to spend the shortest time in the train that the time-table permits of. Time differences that to our grandfathers would have appeared trifling are now matters of sufficient importance to make rival railway companies anxious to clip a few minutes off a 100-mile “run” simply because their passengers appreciate a few minutes’ less confinement to the cars.

During the last fifty years the highest express speeds have not materially altered. The Great Western Company in its early days ran trains from Paddington to Slough, 18 miles, in 15-1/2 minutes, or at an average pace of 69-1/2 miles an hour.

On turning to the present regular express services of the world we find America heading the list with a 50-mile run between Atlantic City and Camden, covered at the average speed of 68 miles an hour; Britain second with a 33-mile run between Forfar and Perth at 59 miles; and France a good third with an hourly average of rather more than 58 miles between Les Aubrais and S. Pierre des Corps. These runs are longer than that on the Great Western Railway referred to above (which now occupies twenty-four minutes), but their average velocity is less. What is the cause of this decrease of speed? Not want of power in modern engines; at times our trains attain a rate of 80 miles an hour, and in America a mile has been turned off in the astonishing time of thirty-two seconds. We should rather seek it in the need for economy and in the physical limitations imposed by the present system of plate-laying and railroad engineering. An average speed of ninety miles an hour would, as things now stand, be too wasteful of coal and too injurious to the rolling-stock to yield profit to the proprietors of a line; and, except in certain districts, would prove perilous for the passengers. Before our services can be much improved the steam locomotive must be supplanted by some other application of motive power, and the metals be laid in a manner which will make special provision for extreme speed.

Since rapid transit is as much a matter of commercial importance as of mere personal convenience it must not be supposed that an average of 50 miles an hour will continue to meet the needs of travellers. Already practical experiments have been made with two systems that promise us an ordinary speed of 100 miles an hour and an express speed considerably higher.

One of these, the monorail or single-rail system, will be employed on a railroad projected between Manchester and Liverpool. At present passengers between these two cities—the first to be connected by a railroad of any kind—enjoy the choice of three rival services covering 34-1/2 miles in three-quarters of an hour. An eminent engineer, Mr. F. B. Behr, now wishes to add a fourth of unprecedented swiftness. Parliamentary powers have been secured for a line starting from Deansgate, Manchester, and terminating behind the pro-Cathedral in Liverpool, on which single cars will run every ten minutes at a velocity of 110 miles an hour.

A monorail track presents a rather curious appearance. The ordinary parallel metals are replaced by a single rail carried on the summit of A-shaped trestles, the legs of which are firmly bolted to sleepers. A monorail car is divided lengthwise by a gap that allows it to hang half on either side of the trestles and clear them as it moves. The double flanged wheels to carry and drive the car are placed at the apex of the gap. As the “centre of gravity” is below the rail the car cannot turn over, even when travelling round a sharp curve.

The first railway built on this system was constructed by M. Charles Lartigue, a French engineer, in Algeria, a district where an ordinary two-rail track is often blocked by severe sand-storms. He derived the idea of balancing trucks over an elevated rail from caravans of camels laden on each flank with large bags. The camel, or rather its legs, was transformed by the engineer’s eye into iron trestles, while its burden became a car. A line built as a result of this observation, and supplied with mules as tractive power, has for many years played an important part in the esparto-grass trade of Algeria.

In 1886 Mr. Behr decided that by applying steam to M. Lartigue’s system he could make it successful as a means of transporting passengers and goods. He accordingly set up in Tothill Fields, Westminster, on the site of the new Roman Catholic Cathedral, a miniature railway which during nine months of use showed that the monorail would be practical for heavy traffic, safe, and more cheaply maintained than the ordinary double-metal railway. The train travelled easily round very sharp curves and climbed unusually steep gradients without slipping.

Mr. Behr was encouraged to construct a monorail in Kerry, between Listowel, a country town famous for its butter, and Ballybunion, a seaside resort of increasing popularity. The line, opened on the 28th of February 1888, has worked most satisfactorily ever since, without injury to a single employé or passenger.

On each side of the trestles, two feet below the apex, run two guide-rails, against which press small wheels attached to the carriages to prevent undue oscillation and “tipping” round curves. At the three stations there are, instead of points, turn-tables or switches on to which the train runs for transference to sidings.

Road traffic crosses the rail on drawbridges, which are very easily worked, and which automatically set signals against the train. The bridges are in two portions and act on the principle of the Tower Bridge, each half falling from a perpendicular position towards the centre, where the ends rest on the rail, specially strengthened at that spot to carry the extra weight. The locomotive is a twin affair; has two boilers, two funnels, two fireboxes; can draw 240 tons on the level at fifteen miles an hour, and when running light travels a mile in two minutes. The carriages, 18 feet long and carrying twelve passengers on each side, are divided longitudinally into two parts. Trucks too are used, mainly for the transport of sand—of which each carries three tons—from Ballybunion to Listowel: and in the centre of each train is a queer-looking vehicle serving as a bridge for any one who may wish to cross from one side of the rail to the other.

Several lines on the pattern of the Ballybunion-Listowel have been erected in different countries. Mr. Behr was not satisfied with his first success, however, and determined to develop the monorail in the direction of fast travelling, which he thought would be most easily attained on a trestle-track. In 1893 he startled engineers by proposing a Lightning-Express service, to transport passengers at a velocity of 120 miles an hour. But the project seemed too ideal to tempt money from the pockets of financiers, and Mr. Behr soon saw that if a high-speed railway after his own heart were constructed it must be at his own expense. He had sufficient faith in his scheme to spend £40,000 on an experimental track at the Brussels Exhibition of 1897. The exhibition was in two parts, connected by an electric railway, the one at the capital, the other at Tervueren, seven miles away. Mr. Behr built his line at Tervueren.

The greatest difficulty he encountered in its construction arose from the opposition of landowners, mostly small peasant proprietors, who were anxious to make advantageous terms before they would hear of the rail passing through their lands. Until he had concluded two hundred separate contracts, by most of which the peasants benefited, his platelayers could not get to work. Apart from this opposition the conditions were not favourable. He was obliged to bridge no less than ten roads; and the contour of the country necessitated steep gradients, sharp curves, long cuttings and embankments, the last of which, owing to a wet summer, could not be trusted to stand quite firm. The track was doubled for three miles, passing at each end round a curve of 1600 feet radius.

The rail ran about four feet above the track on trestles bolted down to steel sleepers resting on ordinary ballast. The carriage—Mr. Behr used but one on this line—weighed 68 tons, was 59 feet long and 11 feet wide, and could accommodate one hundred persons. It was handsomely fitted up, and had specially-shaped seats which neutralised the effect of rounding curves, and ended fore and aft in a point, to overcome the wind-resistance in front and the air-suction behind. Sixteen pairs of wheels on the under side of the carriage engaged with the two pairs of guide rails flanking the trestles, and eight large double-flanged wheels, 4-1/2 feet in diameter, carried the weight of the vehicle. The inner four of these wheels were driven by as many powerful electric motors contained, along with the guiding mechanism, in the lower part of the car. The motors picked up current from the centre rail and from another steel rail laid along the sleepers on porcelain insulators.

The top speed attained was about ninety miles an hour. On the close of the Exhibition special experiments were made at the request of the Belgian, French, and Russian Governments, with results that proved that the Behr system deserved a trial on a much larger scale.

The engineer accordingly approached the British Government with a Bill for the construction of a high-speed line between Liverpool and Manchester. A Committee of the House of Commons rejected the Bill on representations of the Salford Corporation. The Committee had to admit, nevertheless, that the evidence called was mainly in favour of the system; and, the plans of the rail having been altered to meet certain objections, Parliamentary consent was obtained to commence operations when the necessary capital had been subscribed. In a few years the great seaport and the great cotton town will probably be within a few minutes’ run of each other.

A question that naturally arises in the mind of the reader is this: could the cars, when travelling at 110 miles an hour, be arrested quickly enough to avoid an accident if anything got on the line?

The Westinghouse air-brake has a retarding force of three miles a second. It would therefore arrest a train travelling at 110 miles per hour in 37 seconds, or 995 yards. Mr. Behr proposes to reinforce the Westinghouse with an electric brake, composed of magnets 18 inches long, exerting on the guide rails by means of current generated by the reversed motors an attractive force of 200 lbs. per square inch. One great advantage of this brake is that its efficiency is greatest when the speed of the train is highest and when it is most needed. The united brakes are expected to stop the car in half the distance of the Westinghouse alone; but they would not both be applied except in emergencies. Under ordinary conditions the slowing of a car would take place only at the termini, where the line ascends gradients into the stations. There would, however, be small chance of collisions, the railway being securely fenced off throughout its entire length, and free from level crossings, drawbridges and points. Furthermore, each train would be its own signalman. Suppose the total 34-1/2 miles divided into “block” lengths of 7 miles. On leaving a terminus the train sets a danger signal behind it; at 7 miles it sets another, and at 14 miles releases the first signal. So that the driver of a car would have at least 7 miles to slow down in after seeing the signals against him. In case of fog he would consult a miniature signal in his cabin working electrically in unison with the large semaphores.

The Manchester-Liverpool rail will be reserved for express traffic only. Mr. Behr does not believe in mixing speeds, and considers it one of the advantages of his system that slow cars and waggons of the ordinary two-rail type cannot be run on the monorail; because if they could managers might be tempted to place them there.

A train will consist of a single vehicle for forty, fifty, or seventy passengers, as the occasion requires. It is calculated that an average of twelve passengers at one penny per mile would pay all the expenses of running a car.

Mr. Behr maintains that monorails can be constructed far more cheaply than the two-rail, because they permit sharper curves, and thereby save a lot of cutting and embankment; and also because the monorail itself, when trestles and rail are specially strengthened, can serve as its own bridge across roads, valleys and rivers.

Though the single-rail has come to the front of late, it must not be supposed that the two-rail track is for ever doomed to moderate speeds only. German engineers have built an electric two-rail military line between Berlin and Zossen, seventeen miles long, over which cars have been run at a hundred miles an hour. The line has very gradual curves, and in this respect is inferior to the more sinuous monorail. Its chief virtue is the method of applying motive power—a method common to both systems.

The steam locomotive creates its own motive force, and as long as it has fuel and water can act independently. The electric locomotive, on the other hand, receives its power through metallic conductors from some central station. Should the current fail all the traffic on the line is suspended. So far the advantage rests with the steamer. But as regards economy the superiority of the current is obvious. In the electric systems under consideration—the monorail and Berlin-Zossen—there is less weight per passenger to be shifted, since a comparatively light motor supersedes the heavy locomotive. The cars running singly, bridges and track are subjected to less strain, and cost less to keep in repair. But the greatest saving of all is made in fuel. A steam locomotive uses coal wastefully, sending a lot of latent power up the funnel in the shape of half-expanded steam. Want of space prevents the designer from fitting to a moving engine the more economical machinery to be found in the central power-station of an electric railway, which may be so situated—by the water-side or near a pit’s mouth—that fuel can be brought to it at a trifling cost. Not only is the expense of distributing coal over the system avoided, but the coal itself, by the help of triple and quadruple expansion engines should yield two or three times as much energy per ton as is developed in a locomotive furnace.

Many schemes are afoot for the construction of high-speed railways. The South-Eastern plans a monorail between Cannon Street and Charing Cross to avoid the delay that at present occurs in passing from one station to the other. We hear also of a projected railway from London to Brighton, which will reduce the journey to half-an-hour; and of another to connect Dover and London. It has even been suggested to establish monorails on existing tracks for fast passenger traffic, the expresses passing overhead, the slow and goods trains plodding along the double metals below.

But the most ambitious programme of all comes from the land of the Czar. M. Hippolyte Romanoff, a Russian engineer, proposes to unite St. Petersburg and Moscow by a line that shall cover the intervening 600 miles in three hours—an improvement of ten hours on the present time-tables. He will use T-shaped supports to carry two rails, one on each arm, from which the cars are to hang. The line being thus double will permit the cars—some four hundred in number—to run to and fro continuously, urged on their way by current picked up from overhead wires. Each car is to have twelve wheels, four drivers arranged vertically and eight horizontally, to prevent derailment by gripping the rail on either side. The stoppage or breakdown of any car will automatically stop those following by cutting off the current.

In the early days of railway history lines were projected in all directions, regardless of the fact whether they would be of any use or not. Many of these lines began, where they ended, on paper. And now that the high-speed question has cropped up, we must not believe that every projected electric railway will be built, though of the ultimate prevalence of far higher speeds than we now enjoy there can be no doubt.

The following is a time-table drawn up on the two-mile-per-minute basis.

A man leaving London at 10 a.m. would reach—

DestinationMiles AwayArrival Time
Brighton5010.25 a.m.
Portsmouth6010.30 a.m.
Birmingham11310.57 a.m.
Leeds18811.34 a.m.
Liverpool20211.41 a.m.
Holyhead26212.11 p.m.
Edinburgh4001.20 p.m.
Aberdeen5402.30 p.m.

What would become of the records established in the “Race to the North” and by American “fliers”?

And what about continental travel?

Assuming that the Channel Tunnel is built—perhaps a rather large assumption—Paris will be at our very doors. A commercial traveller will step into the lightning express at London, sleep for two hours and twenty-four minutes and wake, refreshed, to find the blue-smocked Paris porters bawling in his ear. Or even if we prefer to keep the “little silver streak” free from subterranean burrows, he will be able to catch the swift turbine steamers—of which more anon—at Dover, slip across to Calais in half-an-hour, and be at the French capital within four hours of quitting London. And if M. Romanoff’s standard be reached, the latest thing in hats despatched from Paris at noon may be worn in Regent Street before two o’clock.

Such speeds would indeed produce a revolution in travelling comparable to the substitution of the steam locomotive for the stage coach. As has been pithily said, the effect of steam was to make the bulk of population travel, whereas they had never travelled before, but the effect of the electric railway will be to make those who travel travel much further and much oftener.

[SEA EXPRESSES.]

In the year 1836 the Sirius, a paddle-wheel vessel, crossed the Atlantic from Cork Harbour to New York in nineteen days. Contrast with the first steam-passage from the Old World to the New a return journey of the Deutschland, a North German liner, which in 1900 averaged over twenty-seven miles an hour between Sandy Hook and Plymouth, accomplishing the whole distance in the record time of five days seven hours thirty-eight minutes.

This growth of speed is even more remarkable than might appear from the mere comparison of figures. A body moving through water is so retarded by the inertia and friction of the fluid that to quicken its pace a force quite out of proportion to the increase of velocity must be exerted. The proportion cannot be reduced to an exact formula, but under certain conditions the speed and the power required advance in the ratio of their cubes; that is, to double a given rate of progress eight times the driving-power is needed; to treble it, twenty-seven times.

The mechanism of our fast modern vessels is in every way as superior to that which moved the Sirius, as the beautifully-adjusted safety cycle is to the clumsy “boneshaker” which passed for a wonder among our grandfathers. A great improvement has also taken place in the art of building ships on lines calculated to offer least resistance to the water, and at the same time afford a good carrying capacity. The big liner, with its knife-edged bow and tapering hull, is by its shape alone eloquent of the high speed which has earned it the title of Ocean Greyhound; and as for the fastest craft of all, torpedo-destroyers, their designers seem to have kept in mind Euclid’s definition of a line—length without breadth. But whatever its shape, boat or ship may not shake itself free of Nature’s laws. Her restraining hand lies heavy upon it. A single man paddles his weight-carrying dinghy along easily at four miles an hour; eight men in the pink of condition, after arduous training, cannot urge their light, slender, racing shell more than twelve miles in the same time.

To understand how mail boats and “destroyers” attain, despite the enormous resistance of water, velocities that would shame many a train-service, we have only to visit the stokeholds and engine-rooms of our sea expresses and note the many devices of marine engineers by which fuel is converted into speed.

We enter the stokehold through air-locks, closing one door before we can open the other, and find ourselves among sweating, grimy men, stripped to the waist. As though life itself depended upon it they shovel coal into the rapacious maws of furnaces glowing with a dazzling glare under the “forced-draught” sent down into the hold by the fans whirling overhead. The ignited furnace gases on their way to the outer air surrender a portion of their heat to the water from which they are separated by a skin of steel. Two kinds of marine boiler are used—the fire-tube and the water-tube. In fire-tube boilers the fire passes inside the tubes and the water outside; in water-tube boilers the reverse is the case, the crown and sides of the furnace being composed of sheaves of small parallel pipes through which water circulates. The latter type, as generating steam very quickly, and being able to bear very high pressures, is most often found in war vessels of all kinds. The quality sought in boiler construction is that the heating surface should be very large in proportion to the quantity of water to be heated. Special coal, anthracite or Welsh, is used in the navy on account of its great heating power and freedom from smoke; experiments have also been made with crude petroleum, or liquid fuel, which can be more quickly put on board than coal, requires the services of fewer stokers, and may be stored in odd corners unavailable as coal bunkers.

From the boiler the steam passes to the engine-room, whither we will follow it. We are now in a bewildering maze of clanking, whirling machinery; our noses offended by the reek of oil, our ears deafened by the uproar of the moving metal, our eyes wearied by the efforts to follow the motions of the cranks and rods.

On either side of us is ranged a series of three or perhaps even four cylinders, of increasing size. The smallest, known as the high-pressure cylinder, receives steam direct from the boiler. It takes in through a slide-valve a supply for a stroke; its piston is driven from end to end; the piston-rod flies through the cylinder-end and transmits a rotary motion to a crank by means of a connecting-rod. The half-expanded steam is then ejected, not into the air as would happen on a locomotive, but into the next cylinder, which has a larger piston to compensate the reduction of pressure. Number two served, the steam does duty a third time in number three, and perhaps yet a fourth time before it reaches the condensers, where its sudden conversion into water by cold produces a vacuum suction in the last cylinder of the series. The secret of a marine engine’s strength and economy lies then in its treatment of the steam, which, like clothes in a numerous family, is not thought to have served its purpose till it has been used over and over again.

Reciprocating (i.e. cylinder) engines, though brought to a high pitch of efficiency, have grave disadvantages, the greatest among which is the annoyance caused by their intense vibration to all persons in the vessel. A revolving body that is not exactly balanced runs unequally, and transmits a tremor to anything with which it may be in contact. Turn a cycle upside down and revolve the driving-wheel rapidly by means of the pedal. The whole machine soon begins to tremble violently, and dance up and down on the saddle springs, because one part of the wheel is heavier than the rest, the mere weight of the air-valve being sufficient to disturb the balance. Now consider what happens in the engine-room of high-powered vessels. On destroyers the screws make 400 revolutions a minute. That is to say, all the momentum of the pistons, cranks, rods, and valves (weighing tons), has to be arrested thirteen or fourteen times every second. However well the moving parts may be balanced, the vibration is felt from stem to stern of the vessel. Even on luxuriously-appointed liners, with engines running at a far slower speed, the throbbing of the screw (i.e. engines) is only too noticeable and productive of discomfort.

We shall be told, perhaps, that vibration is a necessary consequence of speed. This is true enough of all vehicles, such as railway trains, motor-cars, cycles, which are shaken by the irregularities of the unyielding surface over which they run, but does not apply universally to ships and boats. A sail or oar-propelled craft may be entirely free from vibration, whatever its speed, as the motions arising from water are usually slow and deliberate. In fact, water in its calmer moods is an ideal medium to travel on, and the trouble begins only with the introduction of steam as motive force.

But even steam may be robbed of its power to annoy us. The steam-turbine has arrived. It works a screw propeller as smoothly as a dynamo, and at a speed that no cylinder engine could maintain for a minute without shaking itself to pieces.

The steam-turbine is most closely connected with the name of the Hon. Charles Parsons, son of Lord Rosse, the famous astronomer. He was the first to show, in his speedy little Turbinia, the possibilities of the turbine when applied to steam navigation. The results have been such as to attract the attention of the whole shipbuilding world.

The principle of the turbine is seen in the ordinary windmill. To an axle revolving in a stationary bearing are attached vanes which oppose a current of air, water, or steam, at an angle to its course, and by it are moved sideways through a circular path. Mr. Parsons’ turbine has of course been specially adapted for the action of steam. It consists of a cylindrical, air-tight chest, inside which rotates a drum, fitted round its circumference with rows of curved vanes. The chest itself has fixed immovably to its inner side a corresponding number of vane rings, alternating with those on the drum, and so arranged as to deflect the steam on to the latter at the most efficient angle. The diameter of the chest and drum is not constant, but increases towards the exhaust end, in order to give the expanding and weakening steam a larger leverage as it proceeds.

The steam entering the chest from the boiler at a pressure of some hundreds of pounds to the square inch strikes the first set of vanes on the drum, passes them and meets the first set of chest-vanes, is turned from its course on to the second set of drum-vanes, and so on to the other end of the chest. Its power arises entirely from its expansive velocity, which, rather than turn a number of sharp corners, will, if possible, compel the obstruction to move out of its way. If that obstruction be from any cause difficult to stir, the steam must pass round it until its pressure overcomes the inertia. Consequently the turbine differs from the cylinder engine in this respect, that steam can pass through and be wasted without doing any work at all, whereas, unless the gear of a cylinder moves, and power is exerted, all steam ways are closed, and there is no waste. In practice, therefore, it is found that a turbine is most effective when running at high speed.

The first steam-turbines were used to drive dynamos. In 1884 Mr. Parsons made a turbine in which fifteen wheels of increasing size moved at the astonishing rate of 300 revolutions per second, and developed 10 horse-power. In 1888 followed a 120 horse-power turbine, and in 1892 one of 2000 horse-power, provided with a condenser to produce suction. So successful were these steam fans for electrical work, pumping water and ventilating mines, that Mr. Parsons determined to test them as a means of propelling ships. A small vessel 100 feet long and 9 feet in beam was fitted with three turbines—high, medium, and low pressure, of a total 2000 horse-power—a proportion of motive force to tonnage hitherto not approached. Yet when tried over the test course the Turbinia, as the boat was fitly named, ran in a most disappointing fashion. The screws revolved too fast, producing what is known as cavitation, or the scooping out of the water by the screws, so that they moved in a partial vacuum and utilised only a fraction of their force, from lack of anything to “bite” on. This defect was remedied by employing screws of coarser pitch and larger blade area, three of which were attached to each of the three propeller shafts. On a second trial the Turbinia attained 32-3/4 knots over the “measured mile,” and later the astonishing speed of forty miles an hour, or double that of the fast Channel packets. At the Spithead Review in 1897 one of the most interesting sights was the little nimble Turbinia rushing up and down the rows of majestic warships at the rate of an express train.

H.M.S. Torpedo Destroyer “Viper.” This vessel was the fastest afloat, attaining the enormous speed of 41 miles an hour. The screws were worked by turbines, giving 11,000 horse-power. She was wrecked on Alderney during the Naval Manœuvres of 1901.

After this success Mr. Parsons erected works at Wallsend-on-Tyne for the special manufacture of turbines. The Admiralty soon placed with him an order for a torpedo-destroyer—the Viper—of 350 tons; which on its trial trip exceeded forty-one miles an hour at an estimated horse-power (11,000) equalling that of our largest battleships. A sister vessel, the Cobra, of like size, proved as speedy. Misfortune, however, overtook both destroyers. The Viper was wrecked August 3, 1901, on the coast of Alderney during the autumn naval manœuvres, and the Cobra foundered in a severe storm on September 12 of the same year in the North Sea. This double disaster casts no reflections on the turbine engines; being attributed to fog in the one case and to structural weakness in the other. The Admiralty has since ordered another turbine destroyer, and before many years are past we shall probably see all the great naval powers providing themselves with like craft to act as the “eyes of the fleet,” and travel at even higher speeds than those of the Viper and Cobra.

The turbine has been applied to mercantile as well as warlike purposes. There is at the present time a turbine-propelled steamer, the King Edward, running in the Clyde on the Fairlie-Campbelltown route. This vessel, 250 feet long, 30 broad, 18 deep, contains three turbines. In each the steam is expanded fivefold, so that by the time it passes into the condensers it occupies 125 times its boiler volume. (On the Viper the steam entered the turbine through an inlet eight inches in diameter, and left them by an outlet four feet square.) In cylinder engines thirty-fold expansion is considered a high ratio; hence the turbine extracts a great deal more power in proportion from its steam. As a turbine cannot be reversed, special turbines are attached to the two outside of the three propeller shafts to drive the vessel astern. The steamer attained 20-1/2 knots over the “Skelmorlie mile” in fair and calm weather, with 3500 horse-power produced at the turbines. The King Edward is thus the fastest by two or three knots of all the Clyde steamers, as she is the most comfortable. We are assured that as far as the turbines are concerned it is impossible by placing the hand upon the steam-chest to tell whether the drum inside is revolving or not!

Every marine engine is judged by its economy in the consumption of coal. Except in times of national peril extra speed produced by an extravagant use of fuel would be severely avoided by all owners and captains of ships. At low speeds the turbine develops less power than cylinders from the same amount of steam, but when working at high velocity it gives at least equal results. A careful record kept by the managers of the Caledonian Steamship Company compares the King Edward with the Duchess of Hamilton, a paddle steamer of equal tonnage used on the same route and built by the same firm. The record shows that though the paddle-boat ran a fraction of a mile further for every ton of coal burnt in the furnaces, the King Edward averaged two knots an hour faster, a superiority of speed quite out of proportion to the slight excess of fuel. Were the Duchess driven at 18-1/2 knots instead of 16-1/2 her coal bill would far exceed that of the turbine.

As an outcome of these first trials the Caledonian Company are launching a second turbine vessel. Three high-speed turbine yachts are also on the stocks; one of 700 tons, another of 1500 tons, and a third of 170 tons. The last, the property of Colonel M’Calmont, is designed for a speed of twenty-four knots.

Mr. Parsons claims for his system the following advantages: Greatly increased speed; increased carrying power of coal; economy in coal consumption; increased facilities for navigating shallow waters; greater stability of vessels; reduced weight of machinery (the turbines of the King Edward weigh but one-half of cylinders required to give the same power); cheapness of attending the machinery; absence of vibration, lessening wear and tear of the ship’s hull and assisting the accurate training of guns; lowered centre of gravity in the vessel, and consequent greater safety during times of war.

The inventor has suggested a cruiser of 2800 tons, engined up to 80,000 horse-power, to yield a speed of forty-four knots (about fifty miles) an hour. Figures such as these suggest that we may be on the eve of a revolution of ocean travel comparable to that made by the substitution of steam for wind power. Whether the steam-turbine will make for increased speed all round, or for greater economy, remains to be seen; but we may be assured of a higher degree of comfort. We can easily believe that improvements will follow in this as in other mechanical contrivances, and that the turbine’s efficiency has not yet reached a maximum; and even if our ocean expresses, naval and mercantile, do not attain the one-mile-a-minute standard, which is still regarded as creditable to the fastest methods of land locomotion, we look forward to a time in the near future when much higher speeds will prevail, and the tedium of long voyages be greatly shortened. Already there is talk of a service which shall reduce the trans-Atlantic journey to three-and-a-half days. The means are at hand to make it a fact.

Note.—In the recently-launched turbine destroyer Velox a novel feature is the introduction of ordinary reciprocating engines fitted in conjunction with the steam turbines. These engines are of triple-compound type, and are coupled direct to the main turbines. They take steam from the boilers direct and exhaust into the high-pressure turbine. These reciprocating engines are for use at cruising speeds. When higher power is needed the steam will be admitted to the turbines direct from the boilers, and the cylinders be thrown out of gear.

[MECHANICAL FLIGHT.]

Few, if any, problems have so strongly influenced the imagination and exercised the ingenuity of mankind as that of aërial navigation. There is something in our nature that rebels against being condemned to the condition of “featherless bipeds” when birds, bats, and even minute insects have the whole realm of air and the wide heavens open to them. Who has not, like Solomon, pondered upon “the way of a bird in the air” with feelings of envy and regret that he is chained to earth by his gross body; contrasting our laboured movements from point to point of the earth’s surface with the easy gliding of the feathered traveller? The unrealised wish has found expression in legends of Dædalus, Pegasus, in the “flying carpet” of the fairy tale, and in the pages of Jules Verne, in which last the adventurous Robur on his “Clipper of the Clouds” anticipates the future in a most startling fashion.

Aeromobilism—to use its most modern title—is regarded by the crowd as the mechanical counterpart of the Philosopher’s Stone or the Elixir of Life; a highly desirable but unattainable thing. At times this incredulity is transformed by highly-coloured press reports into an equally unreasonable readiness to believe that the conquest of the air is completed, followed by a feeling of irritation that facts are not as they were represented in print.

The proper attitude is of course half-way between these extremes. Reflection will show us that money, time, and life itself would not have been freely and ungrudgingly given or risked by many men—hard-headed, practical men among them—in pursuit of a Will-o’-the-Wisp, especially in a century when scientific calculation tends always to calm down any too imaginative scheme. The existing state of the aërial problem may be compared to that of a railway truck which an insufficient number of men are trying to move. Ten men may make no impression on it, though they are putting out all their strength. Yet the arrival of an eleventh may enable them to overcome the truck’s inertia and move it at an increasing pace.

Every new discovery of the scientific application of power brings us nearer to the day when the truck will move. We have metals of wonderful strength in proportion to their weight; pigmy motors containing the force of giants; a huge fund of mechanical experience to draw upon; in fact, to paraphrase the Jingo song, “We’ve got the things, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too”—but we haven’t as yet got the machine that can mock the bird like the flying express mocks the strength and speed of horses.

The reason of this is not far to seek. The difficulties attending the creation of a successful flying-machine are immense, some unique, not being found in aquatic and terrestrial locomotion.

In the first place, the airship, flying-machine, aerostat, or whatever we please to call it, must not merely move, but also lift itself. Neither a ship nor a locomotive is called upon to do this. Its ability to lift itself must depend upon either the employment of large balloons or upon sheer power. In the first case the balloon will, by reason of its size, be unmanageable in a high wind; in the second case, a breakdown in the machinery would probably prove fatal.

Even supposing that our aerostat can lift itself successfully, we encounter the difficulties connected with steering in a medium traversed by ever-shifting currents of air, which demands of the helmsman a caution and capacity seldom required on land or water. Add to these the difficulties of leaving the ground and alighting safely upon it; and, what is more serious than all, the fact that though success can be attained only by experiment, experiment is in this case extremely expensive and risky, any failure often resulting in total ruin of the machine, and sometimes in loss of life. The list of those who have perished in the search for the power of flight is a very long one.

Yet in spite of these obstacles determined attempts have been and are being made to conquer the air. Men in a position to judge are confident that the day of conquest is not very far distant, and that the next generation may be as familiar with aerostats as we with motor-cars. Speculation as to the future is, however, here less profitable than a consideration of what has been already done in the direction of collecting forces for the final victory.

To begin at the beginning, we see that experimenters must be divided into two great classes: those who pin their faith to airships lighter than air, e.g. Santos Dumont, Zeppelin, Roze; and those who have small respect for balloons, and see the ideal air-craft in a machine lifted entirely by means of power and surfaces pressing the air after the manner of a kite. Sir Hiram Maxim and Professor S. P. Langley, Mr. Lawrence Hargrave, and Mr. Sydney Hollands are eminent members of the latter cult.

As soon as we get on the topic of steerable balloons the name of Mr. Santos Dumont looms large. But before dealing with his exploits we may notice the airship of Count Zeppelin, an ingenious and costly structure that was tested over Lake Constance in 1900.

The balloon was built in a large wooden shed, 450 by 78 by 66 feet, that floated on the lake on ninety pontoons. The shed alone cost over £10,000.

The balloon itself was nearly 400 feet long, with a cylindrical diameter of 39 feet, except at its ends, which were conical, to offer as little resistance as possible to the air. Externally it afforded the appearance of a single-compartment bag, but in reality it was divided into seventeen parts, each gas-tight, so that an accident to one part of the fabric should not imperil the whole.

A framework of aluminium rods and rings gave the bag a partial rigidity.

Its capacity was 12,000 cubic yards of hydrogen gas, which, as our readers doubtless know, is much lighter though more expensive than ordinary coal-gas; each inflation costing several hundreds of pounds.

Under the balloon hung two cars of aluminium, the motors and the screws; and also a great sliding weight of 600 lbs. for altering the “tip” of the airship; and rudders to steer its course.

On June 30 a great number of scientific men and experts assembled to witness the behaviour of a balloon which had cost £20,000. For two days wind prevented a start, but on July 2, at 7.30 p.m., the balloon emerged from its shed, and at eight o’clock commenced its first journey, with and against a light easterly wind for a distance of three and a half miles. A mishap to the steering-gear occurred early in the trip, and prevented the airship appearing to advantage, but a landing was effected easily and safely. In the following October the Count made a second attempt, returning against a wind blowing at three yards a second, or rather more than six miles an hour.

The air-ship of M. Santos-Dumont rounding the Eiffel Tower during its successful run for the Henri Deutsch Prize.

Owing to lack of funds the fate of the “Great Eastern” has overtaken the Zeppelin airship—to be broken up, and the parts sold.

The aged Count had demonstrated that a petroleum motor could be used in the neighbourhood of gas without danger. It was, however, reserved for a younger man to give a more decided proof of the steerableness of a balloon.

In 1900 M. Henri Deutsch, a member of the French Aero Club, founded a prize of £4000, to win which a competitor must start from the Aero Club Park, near the Seine in Paris, sail to and round the Eiffel Tower, and be back at the starting-point within a time-limit of half-an-hour.

M. Santos Dumont, a wealthy and plucky young Brazilian, had, previously to this offer, made several successful journeys in motor balloons in the neighbourhood of the Eiffel Tower. He therefore determined to make a bid for the prize with a specially constructed balloon “Santos Dumont V.” The third unsuccessful attempt ended in disaster to the airship, which fell on to the houses, but fortunately without injuring its occupant.

Another balloon—“Santos Dumont VI.”—was then built. On Saturday, October 19th, M. Dumont reached the Tower in nine minutes and recrossed the starting line in 20-1/2 more minutes, thus complying with the conditions of the prize with half-a-minute to spare. A dispute, however, arose as to whether the prize had been actually won, some of the committee contending that the balloon should have come to earth within the half-hour, instead of merely passing overhead; but finally the well-merited prize was awarded to the determined young aeronaut.

The successful airship was of moderate proportions as compared with that of Count Zeppelin. The cigar-shaped bag was 112 feet long and 20 feet in diameter, holding 715 cubic yards of gas. M. Dumont showed originality in furnishing it with a smaller balloon inside, which could be pumped full of air so as to counteract any leakage in the external bag and keep it taut. The motor, on which everything depended, was a four-cylinder petrol-driven engine, furnished with “water-jackets” to prevent over-heating. The motor turned a large screw—made of silk and stretched over light frames—200 times a minute, giving a driving force of 175 lbs. Behind, a rudder directed the airship, and in front hung down a long rope suspended by one end that could be drawn towards the centre of the frame to alter the trim of the ship. The aeronaut stood in a large wicker basket flanked on either side by bags of sand ballast. The fact that the motor, once stopped, could only be restarted by coming to earth again added an element of great uncertainty to all his trips; and on one occasion the mis-firing of one of the cylinders almost brought about a collision with the Eiffel Tower.

From Paris M. Dumont went to Monaco at the invitation of the prince of that principality, and cruised about over the bay in his balloon. His fresh scheme was to cross to Corsica, but it was brought to an abrupt conclusion by a leakage of gas, which precipitated balloon and balloonist into the sea. Dumont was rescued, and at once set about new projects, including a visit to the Crystal Palace, where he would have made a series of ascents this summer (1902) but for damage done to the silk of the gas-bag by its immersion in salt water and the other vicissitudes it had passed through. Dumont’s most important achievement has been, like that of Count Zeppelin, the application of the gasolene motor to aeromobilism. In proportion to its size this form of motor develops a large amount of energy, and its mechanism is comparatively simple—a matter of great moment to the aeronaut. He has also shown that under favourable conditions a balloon may be steered against a head-wind, though not with the certainty that is desirable before air travel can be pronounced an even moderately simple undertaking. The fact that many inventors, such as Dr. Barton, M. Roze, Henri Deutsch, are fitting motors to balloons in the hopes of solving the aërial problem shows that the airship has still a strong hold on the minds of men. But on reviewing the successes of such combinations of lifting and driving power it must be confessed, with all due respect to M. Dumont, that they are somewhat meagre, and do not show any great advance.

The question is whether these men are not working on wrong lines, and whether their utmost endeavours and those of their successors will ever produce anything more than a very semi-successful craft. Their efforts appear foredoomed to failure. As Sir Hiram Maxim has observed, a balloon by its very nature is light and fragile, it is a mere bubble. If it were possible to construct a motor to develop 100 horse-power for every pound of its weight, it would still be impossible to navigate a balloon against a wind of more than a certain strength. The mere energy of the motor would crush the gas-bag against the pressure of the wind, deform it, and render it unmanageable. Balloons therefore must be at the mercy of the wind, and obliged to submit to it under conditions not always in accordance with the wish of the aeronaut.

Sir Hiram in condemning the airship was ready with a substitute. On looking round on the patterns of Nature, he concluded that, inasmuch as all things that fly are heavier than air, the problem of aërial navigation must be solved by a machine whose natural tendency is to fall to the ground, and which can be sustained only by the exertion of great force. Its very weight would enable it to withstand, at least to a far greater extent than the airship, the varying currents of the air.

The lifting principle must be analogous to that by which a kite is suspended. A kite is prevented from rising beyond a certain height by a string, and the pressure of the wind working against it at an angle tends to lift it, like a soft wedge continuously driven under it. In practice it makes no difference whether the kite be stationary in a wind or towed rapidly through a dead calm; the wedge-like action of the air remains the same.

Maxim decided upon constructing what was practically a huge compound kite driven by very powerful motors.

But before setting to work on the machine itself he made some useful experiments to determine the necessary size of his kites or aeroplanes, and the force requisite to move them.

He accordingly built a “whirling-table,” consisting of a long arm mounted on a strong pivot at one end, and driven by a 10 horse-power engine. To the free end, which described a circle of 200 feet in circumference, he attached small aeroplanes, and by means of delicate balances discovered that at 40 miles an hour the aeroplane would lift 133 lbs. per horse-power, and at 60 miles per hour every square foot of surface sustained 8 lbs. weight. He, in common with other experimenters on the same lines, became aware of the fact that if it took a certain strain to suspend a stationary weight in the air, to advance it rapidly as well as to suspend it took a smaller strain. Now, as on sea and land, increased speed means a very rapid increase in the force required, this is a point in favour of the flying-machine. Professor Langley found that a brass plate weighing a pound, when whirled at great speed, was supported in the air by a pulling pressure of less than one ounce. And, of course, as the speed increased the plate became more nearly horizontal, offering less resistance to the air.

It is on this behaviour of the aeroplane that the hopes of Maxim and others have been based. The swiftly moving aeroplane, coming constantly on to fresh air, the inertia of which had not been disturbed, would resemble the skater who can at high speed traverse ice that would not bear him at rest.

Maxim next turned his attention to the construction of the aeroplanes and engines. He made a special machine for testing fabrics, to decide which would be most suitable for stretching over strong frames to form the planes. The fabric must be light, very strong, and offer small frictional resistance to the air. The testing-machine was fitted with a nozzle, through which air was forced at a known pace on to the substance under trial, which met the air current at a certain angle and by means of indicators showed the strength of its “lift” or tendency to rise, and that of its “drift” or tendency to move horizontally in the direction of the air-current. A piece of tin, mounted at an angle of one in ten to the air-current, showed a “lift” of ten times its “drift.” This proportion was made the standard. Experiments conducted on velvet, plush, silk, cotton and woollen goods proved that the drift of crape was several times that of its lift, but that fine linen had a lift equal to nine times its drift; while a sample of Spencer’s balloon fabric was as good as tin.

Accordingly he selected this balloon fabric to stretch over light but strong frames. The stretching of the material was no easy matter, as uneven tension distorted it; but eventually the aeroplanes were completed, tight as drumheads.

The large or central plane was 50 feet wide and 40 long; on either side were auxiliary planes, five pairs; giving a total area of 5400 square feet.

The steam-engine built to give the motive power was perhaps the most interesting feature of the whole construction. Maxim employed steam in preference to any other power as being one with which he was most familiar, and yielding most force in proportion to the weight of the apparatus. He designed and constructed a pair of high-pressure compound engines, the high-pressure cylinders 5 inches in diameter, the low-pressure 8 inches, and both 1 foot stroke. Steam was supplied to the high-pressure cylinders at 320 lbs. per square inch from a tubular boiler heated by a gasolene burner so powerful in its action as to raise the pressure from 100 to 200 lbs. in a minute. The total weight of the boiler, burner, and engines developing 350 horse-power was 2000 lbs., or about 6 lbs. per horse-power.

The two screw-propellers driven by the engine measured 17 feet 11 inches in diameter.

The completed flying-machine, weighing 7500 lbs., was mounted on a railway-truck of 9-foot gauge, in Baldwyn’s Park, Kent, not far from the gun-factories for which Sir Hiram is famous. Outside and parallel to the 9-foot track was a second track, 35 feet across, with a reversed rail, so that as soon as the machine should rise from the inner track long spars furnished with flanged wheels at their extremities should press against the under side of the outer track and prevent the machine from rising too far. Dynamometers, or instruments for measuring strains, were fitted to decide the driving and lifting power of the screws. Experiments proved that with the engines working at full power the screw-thrust against the air was 2200 lbs., and the lifting force of the aeroplanes 10,000 lbs., or 1500 in excess of the machine’s weight.

Everything being ready the machine was fastened to a dynamometer and steam run up until it strained at its tether with maximum power; when the moorings were suddenly released and it bounded forward at a terrific pace, so suddenly that some of the crew were flung violently down on to the platform. When a speed of 42 miles was reached the inner wheels left their track, and the outer wheels came into play. Unfortunately, the long 35-foot axletrees were too weak to bear the strain, and one of them broke. The upper track gave way, and for the first time in the history of the world a flying-machine actually left the ground fully equipped with engines, boiler, fuel, and a crew. The journey, however, was a short one, for part of the broken track fouled the screws, snapped a propeller blade and necessitated the shutting off of the steam, which done, the machine settled to earth, the wheels sinking into the sward and showing by the absence of any marks that it had come directly downwards and not run along the surface.

The inventor was prevented by other business, and by the want of a sufficiently large open space, from continuing his experiments, which had demonstrated that a large machine heavier than air could be made to lift itself and move at high speed. Misfortune alone prevented its true capacities being shown.

Another experimenter on similar lines, but on a less heroic scale than Sir Hiram Maxim, is Professor S. P. Langley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington. For sixteen years he has devoted himself to a persevering course of study of the flying-machine, and after oft-repeated failures has scored a decided success in his Aerodrome, which, though only a model, has made considerable flights. His researches have proved beyond doubt that the amount of energy required for flight is but one-fiftieth of what was formerly regarded as a minimum. A French mathematician had proved by figures that a swallow must develop the power of a horse to maintain its rapid flight! Professor Langley’s aerodrome has told a very different tale, affording another instance of the truth of the saying that an ounce of practice is worth a pound of theory.

A bird is nearly one thousand times heavier than the air it displaces. As a motor it develops huge power for its weight, and consumes a very large amount of fuel in doing so. An observant naturalist has calculated that the homely robin devours per diem, in proportion to its size, what would be to a man a sausage two hundred feet long and three inches thick! Any one who has watched birds pulling worms out of the garden lawn and swallowing them wholesale can readily credit this.

Professor Langley therefore concentrated himself on the production of an extremely light and at the same time powerful machine. Like Maxim, he turned to steam for motive-power, and by rigid economy of weight constructed an engine with boilers weighing 5 lbs., cylinders of 26 ozs., and an energy of 1 to 1-1/2 horse-power! Surely a masterpiece of mechanical workmanship! This he enclosed in a boat-shaped cover which hung from two pairs of aeroplanes 12-1/2 feet from tip to tip. The whole apparatus weighed nearly 30 lbs., of which one quarter represented the machinery. Experiments with smaller aerodromes warned the Professor that rigidity and balance were the two most difficult things to attain; also that the starting of the machine on its aerial course was far from an easy matter.

A soaring bird does not rise straight from the ground, but opens its wings and runs along the ground until the pressure of the air raises it sufficiently to give a full stroke of its pinions. Also it rises against the wind to get the full benefit of its lifting force. Professor Langley hired a houseboat on the Potomac River, and on the top of it built an apparatus from which the aerodrome could be launched into space at high velocity.

On May 6, 1896, after a long wait for propitious weather, the aerodrome was despatched on a trial trip. It rose in the face of the wind and travelled for over half a mile at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour. The water and fuel being then exhausted it settled lightly on the water and was again launched. Its flight on both occasions was steady, and limited only by the rapid consumption of its power-producing elements. The Professor believes that larger machines would remain in the air for a long period and travel at speeds hitherto unknown to us.

In both the machines that we have considered the propulsive power was a screw. No counterpart of it is seen in Nature. This is not a valid argument against its employment, since no animal is furnished with driving-wheels, nor does any fish carry a revolving propeller in its tail. But some inventors are strongly in favour of copying Nature as regards the employment of wings. Mr. Sydney H. Hollands, an enthusiastic aeromobilist, has devised an ingenious cylinder-motor so arranged as to flap a pair of long wings, giving them a much stronger impulse on the down than on the up stroke. The pectoral muscles of a bird are reproduced by two strong springs which are extended by the upward motion of the wings and store up energy for the down-stroke. Close attention is also being paid to the actual shape of a bird’s wing, which is not flat but hollow on its under side, and at the front has a slightly downward dip. “Aerocurves” are therefore likely to supersede the “aeroplane,” for Nature would not have built bird’s wings as they are without an object. The theory of the aerocurve’s action is this: that the front of the wing, on striking the air, gives it a downwards motion, and if the wing were quite flat its rear portion would strike air already in motion, and therefore less buoyant. The curvature of a floating bird’s wings, which becomes more and more pronounced towards the rear, counteracts this yielding of the air by pressing harder upon it as it passes towards their hinder edge.

M. Santos Dumont’s Airship returning to Longchamps after doubling the Eiffel Tower, October 19, 1901.

The aerocurve has been used by a very interesting group of experimenters, those who, putting motors entirely aside, have floated on wings, and learnt some of the secrets of balancing in the air. For a man to propel himself by flapping wings moved by legs or arms is impossible. Sir Hiram Maxim, in addressing the Aeronautical Society, once said that for a man to successfully imitate a bird his lungs must weigh 40 lbs., to consume sufficient oxygen, his breast muscles 75 lbs., and his breast bone be extended in front 21 inches. And unless his total weight were increased his legs must dwindle to the size of broomsticks, his head to that of an apple! So that for the present we shall be content to remain as we are!

Dr. Lilienthal, a German, was the first to try scientific wing-sailing. He became a regular air gymnast, running down the sides of an artificial mound until the wings lifted him up and enabled him to float a considerable distance before reaching earth again. His wings had an area of 160 square feet, or about a foot to every pound weight. He was killed by the wings collapsing in mid-air. A similar fate also overtook Mr. Percy Pilcher, who abandoned the initial run down a sloping surface in favour of being towed on a rope attached to a fast-moving vehicle. At present Mr. Octave Chanute, of Chicago, is the most distinguished member of the “gliding” school. He employs, instead of wings, a species of kite made up of a number of small aerocurves placed one on the top of another a small distance apart. These box kites are said to give a great lifting force for their weight.

These and many other experimenters have had the same object in view—to learn the laws of equilibrium in the air. Until these are fully understood the construction of large flying-machines must be regarded as somewhat premature. Man must walk before he can run, and balance himself before he can fly.

There is no falling off in the number of aërial machines and schemes brought from time to time into public notice. We may assure ourselves that if patient work and experiment can do it the problem of “how to fly” is not very far from solution at the present moment.

As a sign of the times, the War Office, not usually very ready to take up a new idea, has interested itself in the airship, and commissioned Dr. F. A. Barton to construct a dirigible balloon which combines the two systems of aerostation. Propulsion is effected by six sets of triple propellers, three on each side. Ascent is brought about partly by a balloon 180 feet long, containing 156,000 cubic feet of hydrogen, partly by nine aeroplanes having a total superficial area of nearly 2000 square feet. The utilisation of these aeroplanes obviates the necessity to throw out ballast to rise, or to let out gas for a descent. The airship, being just heavier than air, is raised by the 135 horse-power motors pressing the aeroplanes against the air at the proper angle. In descent they act as parachutes.

The most original feature of this war balloon is the automatic water-balance. At each end of the “deck” is a tank holding forty gallons of water. Two pumps circulate water through these tanks, the amount sent into a tank being regulated by a heavy pendulum which turns on the cock leading to the end which may be highest in proportion as it turns off that leading to the lower end. The idea is very ingenious, and should work successfully when the time of trial comes.

Valuable money prizes will be competed for by aeronauts at the coming World’s Fair at St. Louis in 1903. Sir Hiram Maxim has expressed an intention of spending £20,000 in further experiments and prizes. In this country, too, certain journals have offered large rewards to any aeronaut who shall make prescribed journeys in a given time. It has also been suggested that aeronautical research should be endowed by the state, since England has nothing to fear more than the flying machine and the submarine boat, each of which tends to rob her of the advantages of being an island by exposing her to unexpected and unseen attacks.

Tennyson, in a fine passage in “Locksley Hall,” turns a poetical eye towards the future. This is what he sees—

“For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see,

Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be,

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sail,

Pilots of the purple twilight dropping down with costly bales,

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, then there rained a ghostly dew,

From the nations’ airy navies, grappling in the central blue.”

Expressed in more prosaic language, the flying-machine will primarily be used for military purposes. A country cannot spread a metal umbrella over itself to protect its towns from explosives dropped from the clouds.

Mail services will be revolutionised. The pleasure aerodrome will take the place of the yacht and motor-car, affording grand opportunities for the mountaineer and explorer (if the latter could find anything new to explore). Then there will also be a direct route to the North Pole over the top of those terrible icefields that have cost civilisation so many gallant lives. And possibly the ease of transit will bring the nations closer together, and produce good-fellowship and concord among them. It is pleasanter to regard the flying-machine of the future as a bringer of peace than as a novel means of spreading death and destruction.

[TYPE-SETTING BY MACHINERY.]

To the Assyrian brickmakers who, thousands of years ago, used blocks wherewith to impress on their unbaked bricks hieroglyphics and symbolical characters, must be attributed the first hesitating step towards that most marvellous and revolutionary of human discoveries—the art of printing. Not, however, till the early part of the fifteenth century did Gutenberg and Coster conceive the brilliant but simple idea of printing from separate types, which could be set in different orders and combinations to represent different ideas. For Englishmen, 1474 deserves to rank with 1815, as in that year a very Waterloo was won on English soil against the forces of ignorance and oppression, though the effects of the victory were not at once evident. Considering the stir made at the time by the appearance of Caxton’s first book at Westminster, it seems strange that an invention of such importance as the printing-press should have been frowned upon by those in power, and so discouraged that for nearly two centuries printing remained an ill-used and unprogressive art, a giant half strangled in his cradle. Yet as soon as prejudice gave it an open field, improved methods followed close on one another’s heels. To-day we have in the place of Caxton’s rude hand-made press great cylinder machines capable of absorbing paper by the mile, and grinding out 20,000 impressions an hour as easily as a child can unwind a reel of cotton.

Side by side with the problem how to produce the greatest possible number of copies in a given time from one machine, has arisen another:—how to set up type with a proportionate rapidity. A press without type is as useless as a chaff-cutter without hay or straw. The type once assembled, as many casts or stereotypes can be made from it as there are machines to be worked. But to arrange a large body of type in a short time brings the printer face to face with the need of employing the expensive services of a small army of compositors—unless he can attain his end by some equally efficient and less costly means. For the last century a struggle has been in progress between the machine compositor and the human compositor, mechanical ingenuity against eye and brains. In the last five years the battle has turned most decidedly in favour of the machine. To-day there are in existence two wonderful contrivances which enable a man to set up type six times as fast as he could by hand from a box of type, with an ease that reminds one of the mythical machine for the conversion of live pigs into strings of sausages by an uninterrupted series of movements.

These machines are called respectively the Linotype and Monotype. Roughly described, they are to the compositor what a typewriter is to a clerk—forming words in obedience to the depression of keys on a keyboard. But whereas the typewriter merely imprints a single character on paper, the linotype and monotype cast, deliver, and set up type from which an indefinite number of impressions can be taken. They meet the compositor more than half-way, and simplify his labour while hugely increasing his productiveness.

As far back as 1842 periodicals were mechanically composed by a machine which is now practically forgotten. Since that time hundreds of other inventions have been patented, and some scores of different machines tried, though with small success in most cases; as it was found that quality of composition was sacrificed to quantity, and that what at first appeared a short cut to the printing-press was after all the longest way round, when corrections had all been attended to. A really economical type-setter must be accurate as well as prolific. Slipshod work will not pay in the long run.

Such a machine was perfected a few years ago by Ottmar Mergenthaler of Baltimore, who devised the plan of casting a whole line of type. The Linotype Composing Machine, to give it its full title, produces type all ready for the presses in “slugs” or lines—hence the name, Lin’ o’ type. It deserves at least a short description.

The Linotype occupies about six square feet of floor space, weighs one ton, and is entirely operated by one man. Its most prominent features are a sloping magazine at the top to hold the brass matrices, or dies from which the type is cast, a keyboard controlling the machinery to drop and collect the dies, and a long lever which restores the dies to the magazine when done with.

By kind permission of The Linotype Co.
The Linotype Machine. By pressing keys on the key-board the operator causes lines of type to be set up, cast, and arranged on the “galley” ready for the printers.

The operator sits facing the keyboard, in which are ninety keys, variously coloured to distinguish the different kinds of letters. His hands twinkle over the keys, and the brass dies fly into place. When a key is depressed a die shoots from the magazine on to a travelling belt and is whirled off to the assembling-box. Each die is a flat, oblong brass plate, of a thickness varying with the letter, having a large V-shaped notch in the top, and the letter cut half-way down on one of the longer sides. A corresponding letter is stamped on the side nearest to the operator so that he may see what he is doing and make needful corrections.

As soon as a word is complete, he touches the “spacing” lever at the side of the keyboard. The action causes a “space” to be placed against the last die to separate it from the following word. The operations are repeated until the tinkle of a bell warns him that, though there may be room for one or two more letters, the line will not admit another whole syllable. The line must therefore be “justified,” that is, the spaces between the words increased till the vacant room is filled in. In hand composition this takes a considerable time, and is irksome; but at the linotype the operator merely twists a handle and the wedge-shaped “spaces,” placed thin end upwards, are driven up simultaneously, giving the lateral expansion required to make the line of the right measure.

A word about the “spaces,” or space-bands. Were each a single wedge the pressure would be on the bottom only of the dies, and their tops, being able to move slightly, would admit lead between them. To obviate this a small second wedge, thin end downwards, is arranged to slide on the larger wedge, so that in all positions parallelism is secured. This smaller wedge is of the same shape as the dies and remains stationary in line with them, the larger one only moving.

The line of dies being now complete, it is automatically borne off and pressed into contact with the casting wheel. This wheel, revolving on its centre, has a slit in it corresponding in length and width to the size of line required. At first the slit is horizontal, and the dies fit against it so that the row of sunk letters on the faces are in the exact position to receive the molten lead, which is squirted through the slit from behind by an automatic pump, supplied from a metal-pot. The pot is kept at a proper heat of 550° Fahrenheit by the flames of a Bunsen burner.

The lead solidifies in an instant, and the “slug” of type is ready for removal, after its back has been carefully trimmed by a knife. The wheel revolves for a quarter-turn, bringing the slit into a vertical position; a punch drives out the “slug,” which is slid into the galley to join its predecessors. The wheel then resumes its former horizontal position in readiness for another cast.

The assembled dies have for the time done their work and must be returned to the magazine. The mechanism used to effect this is peculiarly ingenious.

An arm carrying a ribbed bar descends. The dies are pushed up, leaving the “spaces” behind to be restored to their proper compartment, till on a level with the ribbed bar, on to which they are slid by a lateral movement, the notches of the V-shaped opening in the top side of each die engaging with the ribs on the bar. The bar then ascends till it is in line with a longer bar of like section passing over the open top of the entire magazine. A set of horizontal screw-bars, rotating at high speed, transfer the dies from the short to the long bar, along which they move till, as a die comes above its proper division of the magazine, the arrangement of the teeth allows it to drop. While all this has been going on, the operator has composed another line of moulds, which will in turn be transferred to the casting wheel, and then back to the magazine. So that the three operations of composing, casting, and sorting moulds are in progress simultaneously in different parts of the machine; with the result that as many as 20,000 letters can be formed by an expert in the space of an hour, against the 1500 letters of a skilled hand compositor.

How about corrections? Even a comma too few or too many needs the whole line cast over again. It is a convincing proof of the difference in speed between the two methods that a column of type can be corrected much faster by the machine, handicapped as it is by its solid “slugs,” than by hand. No wonder then that more than 1000 linotypes are to be found in the printing offices of Great Britain.

The Monotype, like the Linotype, aims at speed in composition, but in its mechanism it differs essentially from the linotype. In the first place, the apparatus is constructed in two quite separate parts. There is a keyboard, which may be on the third floor of the printing offices, and the casting machine, which ceaselessly casts and sets type in the basement. Yet they are but one whole. The connecting link is the long strip of paper punched by the keyboard mechanism, and then transferred to the casting machine to bring about the formation of type. The keyboard is the servant of man; the casting machine is the slave of the keyboard.

Secondly, the Monotype casts type, not in blocks or a whole line, but in separate letters. It is thus a complete type-foundry. Order it to cast G’s and it will turn them out by the thousand till another letter is required.

Thirdly, by means of the punched paper roll, the same type can be set up time after time without a second recourse to the keyboard, just as a tune is ground repeatedly out of a barrel organ.

The keyboard has a formidable appearance. It contains 225 keys, providing as many characters; also thirty keys to regulate the spacing of the words. At the back of the machine a roll of paper runs over rollers and above a row of thirty little punches worked by the keys. A key being depressed, an opened valve admits air into two cylinders, each driving a punch. The punches fly up and cut two neat little holes in the paper. The roll then moves forward for the next letter. At the end of the word a special lever is used to register a space, and so on to the end of the line. The operator then consults an automatic indicator which tells him exactly how much space is left, and how much too long or too short the line would be if the spaces were of the normal size. Supposing, for instance, that there are ten spaces, and that there is one-tenth of an inch to spare. It is obvious that by extending each space one-hundredth of an inch the vacant room will be exactly filled. Similarly, if the ten normal spaces would make the line one-tenth of an inch too long, by decreasing the spaces each one-hundredth inch the line will also be “justified.”

By kind permission of The Monotype Co.
The Monotype Casting Machine. A punched paper roll fed through the top of the machine automatically casts and sets up type in separate letters.

But the operator need not trouble his head about calculations of this kind. His indicator, a vertical cylinder covered with tiny squares, in each of which are printed two figures, tell him exactly what he has to do. On pressing a certain key the cylinder revolves and comes to rest with the tip of a pointer over a square. The operator at once presses down the keys bearing the numbers printed on that square, confident that the line will be of the proper length.

As soon as the roll is finished, it is detached from the keyboard and introduced to the casting machine. Hitherto passive, it now becomes active. Having been placed in position on the rollers it is slowly unwound by the machinery. The paper passes over a hollow bar in which there are as many holes as there were punches in the keyboard, and in precisely the same position. When a hole in the paper comes over a hole in the hollow bar air rushes in, and passing through a tube actuates the type-setting machinery in a certain manner, so as to bring the desired die into contact with molten lead. The dies are, in the monotype, all carried in a magazine about three inches square, which moves backwards or forwards, to right or left, in obedience to orders from the perforated roll. The dies are arranged in exactly the same way as the keys on the keyboard. So that, supposing A to have been stamped on the roll, one of the perforations causes the magazine to slide one way, while the other shoves it another, until the combined motions bring the matrix engraved with the A underneath the small hole through which molten lead is forced. The letter is ejected and moves sideways through a narrow channel, pushing preceding letters before it, and the magazine is free for other movements.

At the end of each word a “space” or blank lead is cast, its size exactly determined by the “justifying” hole belonging to that line. Word follows word till the line is complete; then a knife-like lever rises, and the type is propelled into the “galley.” Though a slave the casting machine will not tolerate injustice. Needles Hotel to SwanShould the compositor have made a mistake, so that the line is too long or too short, automatic machinery at once comes into play, and slips the driving belt from the fixed to the loose pulley, thus stopping the machine till some one can attend to it. But if the punching has been correctly done, the machine will work away unattended till, a whole column of type having been set up, it comes to a standstill.

The advantages of the Monotype are easily seen. In order to save money a man need not possess the complete apparatus. If he has the keyboard only he becomes to a certain extent his own compositor, able to set up the type, as it were by proxy, at any convenient time. He can give his undivided attention to the keyboard, stop work whenever he likes without keeping a casting-machine idle, and as soon as his roll is complete forward it to a central establishment where type is set. There a single man can superintend the completion of half-a-dozen men’s labours at the keyboard. That means a great reduction of expense.

In due time he receives back his copy in the shape of set-up type, all ready to be corrected and transferred to the printing machines. The type done with, he can melt it down without fear of future regret, for he knows that the paper roll locked up in his cupboard will do its work a second time as well as it did the first. Should he need the same matter re-setting, he has only to send the roll through the post to the central establishment.

Thanks to Mr. Lanston’s invention we may hope for the day when every parish will be able to do its own printing, or at least set up its own magazine. The only thing needful will be a monotype keyboard supplied by an enlightened Parish Council—as soon as the expense appears justifiable—and kept in the Post Office or Village Institute. The payment of a small fee will entitle the Squire to punch out his speech on behalf of the Conservative Candidate, the Schoolmaster to compose special information for his pupils, the Rector to reduce to print pamphlets and appeals to charity. And if those of humbler degree think they can strike eloquence from the keys, they too will of course be allowed to turn out their ideas literally by the yard.

[PHOTOGRAPHY IN COLOURS.]

While photography was still in its infancy many people believed that, a means having been found of impressing the representation of an object on a sensitised surface, a short time only would have to elapse before the discovery of some method of registering the colours as well as the forms of nature.

Photography has during the last forty years passed through some startling developments, especially as regards speed. Experts, such as M. Marey, have proved the superiority of the camera over the human eye in its power to grasp the various phases of animal motion. Even rifle bullets have been arrested in their lightning flight by the sensitised plate. But while the camera is a valuable aid to the eye in the matter of form, the eye still has the advantage so far as colour is concerned. It is still impossible for a photographer by a simple process similar to that of making an ordinary black-and-white negative, to affect a plate in such a manner that from it prints may be made by a single operation showing objects in their natural colours. Nor, for the matter of that, does colour photography direct from nature seem any nearer attainment now than it was in the time of Daguerre.

There are, however, extant several methods of making colour photographs in an indirect or roundabout way. These various “dodges” are, apart from their beautiful results, so extremely ingenious and interesting that we propose to here examine three of the best known.

The reader must be careful to banish from his mind those coloured photographs so often to be seen in railway carriages and shop windows, which are purely the result of hand-work and mechanical printing, and therefore not colour photographs at all.

Before embarking on an explanation of these three methods it will be necessary to examine briefly the nature of those phenomena on which all are based—light and colour. The two are really identical, light is colour and colour is light.

Scientists now agree that the sensation of light arises from the wave-like movements of that mysterious fluid, the omnipresent ether. In a beam of white light several rates of wave vibrations exist side by side. Pass the beam through a prism and the various rapidities are sorted out into violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red, which are called the pure colours, since if any of them be passed again through a prism the result is still that colour. Crimson, brown, &c., the composite colours, would, if subjected to the prism, at once split up into their component pure colours.

There are several points to be noticed about the relationship of the seven pure colours. In the first place, though they are all allies in the task of making white light, there is hostility among them, each being jealous of the others, and only waiting a chance to show it. Thus, suppose that we have on a strip of paper squares of the seven colours, and look at the strip through a piece of red glass we see only one square—the red—in its natural colour, since that square is in harmony only with red rays. (Compare the sympathy of a piano with a note struck on another instrument; if C is struck, say on a violin, the piano strings producing the corresponding note will sound, but the other strings will be silent.) The orange square suggests orange, but the green and blue and violet appear black. Red glass has arrested their ether vibrations and said “no way here.” Green and violet would serve just the same trick on red or on each other. It is from this readiness to absorb or stop dissimilar rays that we have the different colours in a landscape flooded by a common white sunlight. The trees and grass absorb all but the green rays, which they reflect. The dandelions and buttercups capture and hold fast all but the yellow rays. The poppies in the corn send us back red only, and the cornflowers only blue; but the daisy is more generous and gives up all the seven. Colour therefore is not a thing that can be touched, any more than sound, but merely the capacity to affect the retina of the eye with a certain number of ether vibrations per second, and it makes no difference whether light is reflected from a substance or refracted through a substance; a red brick and a piece of red glass have similar effects on the eye.

This then is the first thing to be clearly grasped, that whenever a colour has a chance to make prisoners of other colours it will do so.

The second point is rather more intricate, viz. that this imprisonment is going on even when friendly concord appears to be the order of the day. Let us endeavour to present this clearly to the reader. Of the pure colours, violet, green and red—the extremes and the centre—are sufficient to produce white, because each contains an element of its neighbours. Violet has a certain amount of indigo, green some yellow, red some orange; in fact every colour of the spectrum contains a greater or less degree of several of the others, but not enough to destroy its own identity. Now, suppose that we have three lanterns projecting their rays on to the same portion of a white sheet, and that in front of the first is placed a violet glass, in front of the second a green glass, in front of the third a red glass. What is the result? A white light. Why? Because they meet on equal terms, and as no one of them is in a point of advantage no prisoners can be made and they must work in harmony. Next, turn down the violet lantern, and green and red produce a yellow, half-way between them; turn down red and turn up violet, indigo-blue results. All the way through a compromise is effected.

But supposing that the red and green glasses are put in front of the same lantern and the white light sent through them—where has the yellow gone to? only a brownish-black light reaches the screen. The same thing happens with red and violet or green and violet.

Prisoners have been taken, because one colour has had to demand passage from the other. Red says to green, “You want your rays to pass through me, but they shall not.” Green retorts, “Very well; but I myself have already cut off all but green rays, and if they don’t pass you, nothing shall.” And the consequence of the quarrel is practical darkness.

The same phenomenon may be illustrated with blue and yellow. Lights of these two colours projected simultaneously on to a sheet yield white; but white light sent through blue and yellow glass in succession produces a green light. Also, blue paint mixed with yellow gives green. In neither case is there darkness or entire cutting-off of colour, as in the case of Red + Violet or Green + Red.

The reason is easy to see.

Blue light is a compromise of violet and green; yellow of green and red. Hence the two coloured lights falling on the screen make a combination which can be expressed as an addition sum.

Blue = green + violet.

Yellow = green + red.

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green + violet + red = white.

But when light is passed through two coloured glasses in succession, or reflected from two layers of coloured paints, there are prisoners to be made.

Blue passes green and violet only.

Yellow passes green and red only.

So violet is captured by yellow, and red by blue, green being free to pass on its way.

There is, then, a great difference between the mixing of colours, which evokes any tendency to antagonism, and the adding of colours under such conditions that they meet on equal terms. The first process happens, as we have seen, when a ray of light is passed through colours in succession; the second, when lights stream simultaneously on to an object. A white screen, being capable of reflecting any colour that falls on to it, will with equal readiness show green, red, violet, or a combination; but a substance that is in white light red, or green, or violet will capture any other colour. So that if for the white screen we substituted a red one, violet or green falling simultaneously, would yield blackness, because red takes both prisoners; if it were violet, green would be captured, and so on.

From this follows another phenomenon: that whereas projection of two or more lights may yield white, white cannot result from any mixture of pigments. A person with a whole boxful of paints could not get white were he to mix them in an infinitude of different ways; but with the aid of his lanterns and as many differently coloured glasses the feat is easy enough.

Any two colours which meet on equal terms to make white are called complementary colours.

Thus yellow (= red + green lights) is complementary of violet.

Thus pink (= red + violet lights) is complementary of green.

Thus blue (= violet + green lights) is complementary of red.

This does not of course apply to mixture of paints, for complementary colours must act together, not in antagonism.

If the reader has mastered these preliminary considerations he will have no difficulty in following out the following processes.

(a) The Joly Process, invented by Professor Joly of Dublin. A glass plate is ruled across with fine parallel lines—350 to the inch, we believe. These lines are filled in alternately with violet, green, and red matter, every third being violet, green or red as the case may be. The colour-screen is placed in the camera in front of the sensitised plate. Upon an exposure being made, all light reflected from a red object (to select a colour) is allowed to pass through the red lines, but blocked by all the green and violet lines. So that on development that part of the negative corresponding to the position of the red object will be covered with dark lines separated by transparent belts of twice the breadth. From the negative a positive is printed, which of course shows transparent lines separated by opaque belts of twice their breadth. Now, suppose that we take the colour-screen and place it again in front of the plate in the position it occupied when the negative was taken, the red lines being opposite the transparent parts of the positive will be visible, but the green and violet being blocked by the black deposit behind them will not be noticeable. So that the object is represented by a number of red lines, which at a small distance appear to blend into a continuous whole.

The violet and green affect the plate in a corresponding manner; and composite colours will affect two sets of lines in varying degrees, the lights from the two sets blending in the eye. Thus yellow will obtain passage from both green and red, and when the screen is held up against the positive, the light streaming through the green and red lines will blend into yellow in the same manner as they would make yellow if projected by lanterns on to a screen. The same applies to all the colours.

The advantage of the Joly process is that in it only one negative has to be made.

(b) The Ives Process.—Mr. Frederic Eugene Ives, of Philadelphia, arrives at the same result as Professor Joly, but by an entirely different means. He takes three negatives of the same object, one through a violet-blue, another through a green, and a third through a red screen placed in front of the lens. The red negative is affected by red rays only; the green by green rays only, and the violet-blue by violet-blue rays only, in the proper gradations. That is to say, each negative will have opaque patches wherever the rays of a certain kind strike it; and the positive printed off will be by consequence transparent at the same places. By holding the positive made from the red-screen negative against a piece of red glass, we should see light only in those parts of the positive which were transparent. Similarly with the green and violet positives if viewed through glasses of proper colour. The most ingenious part of Mr. Ives’ method is the apparatus for presenting all three positives (lighted through their coloured glasses) to the eye simultaneously. When properly adjusted, so that their various parts exactly coincide, the eye blends the three together, seeing green, red, or violet separately, or blended in correct proportions. The Kromoscope, as the viewing apparatus is termed, contains three mirrors, projecting the reflections from the positives in a single line. As the three slides are taken stereoscopically the result gives the impression of solidity as well as of colour, and is most realistic.

(c) The Sanger Shepherd Process.—This is employed mostly for lantern transparencies. As in the Ives process, three negatives and three transparent positives are made. But instead of coloured glasses being used to give effect to the positives the positives themselves are dyed, and placed one on the top of another in close contact, so that the light from the lantern passes through them in succession. We have therefore now quitted the realms of harmony for that of discord, in which prisoners are made; and Mr. Shepherd has had to so arrange matters that in every case the capture of prisoners does not interfere with the final result, but conduces to it.

In the first place, three negatives are secured through violet, green, and red screens. Positives are printed by the carbon process on thin celluloid films. The carbon film contains gelatine and bichromate of potassium. The light acts on the bichromate in such a way as to render the gelatine insoluble. The result is that, though in the positives there is at first no colour, patches of gelatine are left which will absorb dyes of various colours. The dyeing process requires a large amount of care and patience.

Now, it would be a mistake to suppose that each positive is dyed in the colour of the screen through which its negative was taken. A moment’s consideration will show us why.

Let us assume that we are photographing a red object, a flower-pot for instance. The red negative represents the pot by a dark deposit. The positive printed off will consequently show clear glass at that spot, the unaffected gelatine being soluble. So that to dye the plate would be to make all red except the very part which we require red; and on holding it up to the light the flower-pot would appear as a white transparent patch.

How then is the problem to be solved?

Mr. Shepherd’s process is based upon an ordered system of prisoner-taking. Thus, as red in this particular case is wanted it will be attained by the other two positives (which are placed in contact with the red positive, so that all three coincide exactly), robbing white light of all but its red rays.

Now if the other positives were dyed green and violet, what would happen? They would not produce red, but by robbing white light between them of red, green, and violet, would produce blackness, and we should be as far as ever from our object.

The positives are therefore dyed, not in the same colours as the screens used when the negatives were made, but in their complementary colours, i.e. as explained above, those colours which added to the colour of the screen would make white.

The red screen negative is therefore dyed (violet + green) = blue. The green negative (red + violet) = pink. The violet negative (red + green) = yellow.

To return to our flower-pot. The red-screen positive (dyed blue) is, as we saw, quite transparent where the pot should be. But behind the transparent gap are the pink and yellow positives.

White light (= violet + green + red) passes through pink (= violet + red), and has to surrender all its green rays. The violet and red pass on and encounter yellow (= green + red), and violet falls a victim to green, leaving red unmolested.

If the flower-pot had been white all three positives would have contained clear patches unaffected by the three dyes, and the white light would have been unobstructed. The gradations and mixtures of colours are obtained by two of the screens being influenced by the colour of the object. Thus, if it were crimson, both violet and red-screen negatives would be affected by the rays reflected by it, and the green screen negative not at all. Hence the pink positive would be pink, the yellow clear, and the blue clear.

White light passing through is robbed by pink of green, leaving red + violet = crimson.