If it is supposed that the use of skin is a new adaptation, I can remove any false impression of that sort by stating that half a century since, I saw and handled a huge balloon composed of similar animal substance, which was called Egg’s folly. The gunmaker had built an enormous fish shaped affair, and it had, fish like, an air bladder to assist it in rising and descending. I was asked to buy the lot which had been laid by for some years, but it was not to my taste; later on, however, after Mr. Barnum had brought over the dwarf, Tom Thumb, to this country, an exhibition was got up at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, and Mr. C. Green was asked to provide a suitable balloon to take up Tom Thumb for a captive ascent.
The air bladder then cropped up, as it would lift fifty or sixty pounds when filled with ordinary gas, and I well remember witnessing the ascent, and shaking hands with the occupant of the little car.
I was informed afterwards by the veteran himself, that Captain Currie, who was a frequent voyager at that time, wished to train and lose weight, so that the skin balloon would take him up, if filled with hydrogen instead of coal gas.
I do not think the trial came off, but I can vouch for it, that the so-called bullock’s skin is by no means a novel departure.
We thus learn that history repeats itself, even in an art which is practically little more than a century old.
If we turn from the balloon force at home, and direct a glance towards the continent, as much difference is to be observed in their aërostatic pretensions, as there is between our small and compact army, when compared with the millions of bayonets (and good ones no doubt) that are ready to do battle whenever the dogs of war shall be let loose for slaughter.
In England, preference is shown for exceedingly small bullock’s skin balloons.
In France they are cigar or cannon shaped, with steering power and propelling machinery attached. I am referring, now, to the war balloons at Meudon.
Germany inclines to medium sized spherical balloons, composed of silk by preference—and I think they are right—to the calico or muslin balloons in store at Chatham or Lidsing.
Russia, if we may believe newspaper accounts, is provided with an air torpedo, besides Montgolfier, and gas balloons. The torpedo air ship can take up eight hundredweight of dynamite, the application of which I have already pictured.