For river navigation or calm sea-steaming the Nina is admirably adapted, and any one who can be stoker, steersman, and engineer, as well as passenger and crew, will enjoy a trip in such a boat. Such a steamer costs about £250, but it might be less. It may be added that the Nina has uniformly behaved well, and was built by Fordham of New York.
A Mechanical Carriage.
A distinguished savant of the seventeenth century, Ozanam by name, a member of the Academy of Science, gave in 1693 a curious description of a mechanical carriage, which may perhaps be regarded as the parent of the velocipede and the bicycle. We here reproduce the engravings from Ozanam’s work and his words.
“Some years ago,” wrote the philosopher in 1693, “there may have been seen in Paris a chaise,” as in the picture, “and which a servant, by pressing alternately upon treadles” (as in the detail), “caused to progress by turning two small wheels hidden in a frame between the hinder pair of wheels of the chaise. The description I give as I received it from M. Richard, the doctor of Rochelle.
“A A is a roller attached to the box behind the vehicle, B is a pulley, over which the cord that works with the treadles passes; C and D are the treadles, with pedals, F F. The wheels, H H, being thus put in motion, the large wheels are moved, and when the hind wheels move forward, the foremost ones must advance also, and the sitter has only to guide the machine by the reins he holds attached to the guiding axle.”
Fig. 906.—The movement.