NAPOLEON’S FATAL ERROR.
Napoleon was advised not to listen to Fulton’s plan of the steamboat—a certain cause of his downfall, for had he accepted Fulton’s radical and previously unheard of ideas he would presently have a fleet of steamships. He would thus be Emperor of the Ocean, for with his fleet of steamships he would surely have conquered Britain’s old-fashioned sailing navy.
Ten years ago all the scientific men to whom Bangerter presented his plans for an airship, gravely shook their heads. They said:—
“Your principle is right—it shows the most practical device we have yet seen, and if there were such proposition as a ‘heavier-than-air’ possibility you would have the best chance of success.”
Very well, the “heavier-than-air” possibility has become a certainty. To-day scientific men see the weight of a man’s body (increased by a heavy framework and many mechanical contrivances) soar lightly and majestically between the blue sky and the earth below. The dream of the pitied and sneered at inventor of a decade ago is exemplified to-day all over the civilized world!
All this the scientists a few years ago did not see.
The new born force—insignificant in size and appearance, but giant-like in actual force—now known as the gasolene engine, did not then make an appearance. But now hundreds of machines are flying all over the world—propelled by the pygmy gasolene engine.
In other words, as the force of a man is mechanically figured to 1-7 of one H. P., some gasolene engines of the weight and size of a man develop 700 times more power.
This enormous force may soon bring about a revolution in warfare by displacing powder as a force to expel bullets from guns.
Tests made last year with a small model gun have demonstrated great possibilities by shooting small 3-8 inch round ball-bearing at so terrific a speed that they pierced a 1½-inch pine target at 60 feet distance, and in such enormous quantities that inside of a few seconds five targets were riddled to atoms.