START OF "No. 3," NOVEMBER 13, 1899
[CHAPTER XI]
THE EXPOSITION SUMMER
The Exposition of 1900, with its learned congresses, was now approaching. Its International Congress of Aeronautics being set for the month of September I resolved that the new air-ship should be ready to be shown to it.
This was my "No. 4," finished 1st August 1900, and by far the most familiar to the world at large of all my air-ships. This is due to the fact that when I won the Deutsch prize, nearly eighteen months later and in quite a different construction, the newspapers of the world came out with old cuts of this "No. 4," which they had kept on file.
It was the air-ship with the bicycle saddle. In it the 10-metre (33-foot) bamboo pole of my "No. 3" came nearer to being a real keel in that it no longer hung above my head, but, amplified by vertical and horizontal cross pieces and a system of tightly-stretched cords, sustained within itself motor, propeller, and connecting machinery, petroleum reservoir, ballast, and navigator in a kind of spider web without a basket (see photograph, page 135).
I was obliged to sit in the midst of the spider web below the balloon on the saddle of a bicycle frame which I had incorporated into it. Thus the absence of the traditional balloon basket appeared to leave me astride a pole in the midst of a confusion of ropes, tubes, and machinery. Nevertheless, the device was very handy, because round this bicycle frame I had united cords for controlling the shifting weights, for striking the motor's electric spark, for opening and shutting the balloon's valves, for turning on and off the water-ballast spigots and certain other functions of the air-ship. Under my feet I had the starting pedals of a new 7 horse-power petroleum motor, driving a propeller with two wings 4 metres (13 feet) across each. They were of silk, stretched over steel plates, and very strong. For steering, my hands reposed on the bicycle handle-bars connected with my rudder.
