No serious attempt has been made to surpass the altitude flight of Professor Berson and Dr. Süring; for though it is easily possible to carry human beings to a greater height than seven miles, the results seem hardly to justify the cost. To ascend very much higher would require an enormous and costly balloon, and to ensure the comfort of the passenger might require an air-tight car, or armor supplied continuously with fresh air, or oxygen. Such a suit, or car, however, can be made very light, since its pressure must naturally be internal; and it would admit of an extremely rapid change of elevation without discomfort to the passenger. A steel bottle weighing fifty pounds, and filled with compressed air, or oxygen, would supply a passenger several hours, and allow him to breathe under normal pressure. The total weight of a bottle and air-tight car, or suit, need not exceed the weight of a man. Moreover, the ballast could be largely dispensed with, thus admitting of a very rapid ascent from the earth. A celluloid car would have the advantage of transparency, though it might become too brittle at very low temperatures. A suit, or car, with glass portholes would serve in lieu of a celluloid car for transparency. The usual balloon and basket, carrying a steel bottle, furnishing air at normal pressure to a man in a rubberized silk suit is a sufficiently simple and practicable device; the air entering the suit near his mouth and leaving below through a check valve regulated to maintain the desired internal pressure. An air-tight silk fabric capable of enduring safely a tensile stress of 150 pounds per running inch would answer the purposes. But at present there seems to be no incentive to attempt a balloon trip exceeding the heights already attained, unless it be that of notoriety or sentiment.
The French meteorologists have devised a much simpler and cheaper method of exploring the upper atmosphere, by use of small balloons carrying recording instruments. An ordinary silk or gold-beater skin balloon, partly inflated, ascends to a great height with the instruments, drifts away losing gas, and on landing is found by some one who returns it according to written directions accompanying the craft. Another method, introduced by Professor Assman, is to employ closed rubber balloons which at great altitudes burst by the expansion of the hydrogen within them, and allow the instruments to descend in parachutes softly to the ground. Instrument-carrying balloons of the above type are called “sounding balloons,” or balloons sondes, whereas if they carry no instruments, but merely show the course of the wind, they may be called “pilot balloons.” Such sounding balloons have been used to explore the temperature of the atmosphere to an altitude of 18 miles.
In the preceding pages some extended balloon voyages have been described. These were considered very long in their day, but in recent years have been surpassed frequently, first by the professional aëronauts, then by the amateurs and members of various aëronautic clubs practicing aërostation as a sport, and stimulated by attractive prizes. But the man who achieved the longest balloon flight during the first century of the art, seems to have been Mr. John Wise, America’s foremost pioneer balloonist.
Mr. Wise was a rare composite of showman, scientist, sport and dare-devil, who during the four decades succeeding his first ascension at Philadelphia in 1835, made no fewer than 440 voyages. At first the aërial art captivated him by the beauty and sublimity of the natural panoramas witnessed from on high; then he amused himself by dropping things from the basket and hearing them whistle through space; and finally he coquetted with the balloon itself, in various ways to observe the result. On one occasion the neck was choked and the valve could not be operated, so that when the hydrogen expanded with increasing altitude, it overstretched the cover and started a rent in the side of the bag. The balloon descended rapidly, but landed without injurious shock.
The audacious aëronaut then decided to make an ascension and deliberately burst the balloon, by confining the gas in it and throwing out ballast. But first he tried the experiment on a dog, taking him up 4,000 feet, dropping him in a small collapsed balloon and watching him settle slowly to earth. Then rising to an altitude of 13,000 feet he stood debating whether to follow the example of the dog. The balloon quickly ended the question by exploding at the top. The hydrogen rushed out with a tempestuous sound, and the great vessel sank swiftly with a moaning noise of the wind in her rigging. In a few seconds the bag was empty and collapsed on the top of the net thus forming an effective parachute. After an exciting fall of more than two miles, Mr. Wise landed on a farm, with a lively thump, which overturned the basket, and threw him sprawling on the ground. It was fine sport; he decided at once to advertise a repetition of it, and thus was led by degrees to the invention of the ripping panel.[7]
Mr. Wise firmly believed that a steady wind from west to east prevails at a height of two miles. He wished to use this for long voyages, and even contemplated crossing the Atlantic; for he trusted his varnish to hold hydrogen a fortnight if need be. Accordingly in 1873 the New York Daily Graphic paid the cost of a balloon to carry him and two others on that hazardous voyage. The bag had a capacity of 400,000 cubic feet, but was too frail in construction to receive Mr. Wise’s approval, and actually burst during inflation when slightly more than three fourths full. Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Wise, he never had an opportunity to attempt the trans-Atlantic voyage; but on one occasion he enjoyed a memorable cruise in the great west wind which so took his fancy. Rising from St. Louis on June 23, 1859, he sailed northeastwardly for twenty hours, and landed at Henderson, N. Y., having traversed a distance of 809 miles, measured directly. But in attempting another long voyage with two companions, in September, 1879, he passed over Lake Michigan, where all were drowned.
In recent years Mr. Wise’s long voyage has been exceeded several times. In 1897 M. Godard sailed from Leipsic to Wilna, a distance of 1,032 miles in 24½ hours; but this was not an official flight nor in a direct course as the crow flies. In October, 1900, M. Balsan voyaged from Vincennes, France, to Rodom, Russia, a distance of 843 miles in 27 hours and 25 minutes, and De la Vaulx starting from the same point landed at Korosticheff, Russia, having traversed 1,193 miles in 35¾ hours. This latter is the longest balloon flight thus far recorded. A close second to this record was made by A. R. Hawley in his spherical balloon America, aided by Augustus Post, in the Gordon Bennett International Balloon Race of 1910. Sailing from St. Louis, October 17th, they drifted 1,172.9 miles from their starting point, and landed in a great forest at Peribonka River, North Lake Chilogoma, Canada, where they were lost for several days.
Fig. 12.—Diagram of a Modern Spherical Balloon with Ripping Panel.
Quite as eventful was the ocean voyage of Walter Wellman, who left Atlantic City October 15, 1910, for Europe in a motor balloon with a drag rope, or equilibrator, voyaged with favorable wind to a point 140 miles northeast of Nantucket Island, then was driven by adverse wind toward Bermuda, and finally rescued by a passing steamer, after 69 hours in the air and a journey of about one thousand miles. A full account of this strange voyage is given in the New York Times of October 19, 1910, and in the Scientific American of subsequent date.