ISBN: 9781458977120

Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Paperback, English-language edition, Pub by General Books LLC Books The-conquest-of-the-air-or-The-advent-of-a-rial-navigation~~Abbott-Lawrence-Rotch General Books… Plus…

Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Paperback, English-language edition, Pub by General Books LLC Books The-conquest-of-the-air-or-The-advent-of-a-rial-navigation~~Abbott-Lawrence-Rotch General Books LLC Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE HISTORY OF AEROSTATION From the earliest times the vast realms which extend above us have tempted man's ambition and efforts. In the 4th century B.c., Archytas of Tarentum, a Pythagorean philosopher, invented a wooden dove which is said to have risen into the air and really flown. During the subsequent centuries there were obscure legends of men who attempted to fly, but not until the i3th century do we find anything so definite as the proposition of the English friar, Roger Bacon, " to fill a large, hollow globe of copper, wrought extremely thin, with ethereal air or liquid fire, and to launch it from some elevated point into the atmosphere where it will float like a vessel on the water." Bacon also wrote: " there may be made some flying instrument, so that a man sitting in the middle of the instrument and turning some mecha- 38 nism may put in motion some artificial wings which may beat the air like a bird flying." Leonardo da Vinci in the i6th century revived Bacon's last idea and his knowledge of human anatomy appears in the drawings which he left of a flying machine with jointed wings, which contracted on the upward stroke and expanded on the downward, and were intended to be driven by a man's legs and arms. Both these schemes were proposed in a somewhat more definite form at the end of the 17th century. In 1670 the Jesuit, Francis Lana, conceived that a vessel exhausted of air would weigh less than when full. He therefore proposed to construct four globes of copper each 20 feet in diameter and so thin that they would weigh less than an equal bulk of atmosphere when they were exhausted of air. To these globes a boat was attached, having also a mast and sail with which Lana supposed the aeronaut could direct his course. The apparatus is represente...<

ISBN: 9781458977120

Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Paperback, English-language edition, Pub by General Books LLC Books, , The-conquest-of-the-air-or-The-advent-of-a-rial-navigation~~Abbott-Lawrence-Rotch, 999999999,… Plus…

Abbott Lawrence Rotch, Paperback, English-language edition, Pub by General Books LLC Books, , The-conquest-of-the-air-or-The-advent-of-a-rial-navigation~~Abbott-Lawrence-Rotch, 999999999, The Conquest of the Air; Or, the Advent of a Rial Navigation, Abbott Lawrence Rotch, 1458977129, General Books LLC, , , , , General Books LLC<

ISBN: 9781458977120

The Conquest of the Air: Or, the Advent of Aerial Navigation Paperback New Books, Textstream