Such a project is as futile
as can well be imagined; no known substance would begin to resist
the necessary pressure. Our aerial ship must be filled with some
substance lighter than air. Whether heated air would answer the
purpose, or whether we should have to use a gas, is a question for
the designer.
To return to our main theme, all should admit that if any hope for
the flying-machine can be entertained, it must be based more on
general faith in what mankind is going to do than upon either
reasoning or experience. We have solved the problem of talking
between two widely separated cities, and of telegraphing from
continent to continent and island to island under all the oceans--
therefore we shall solve the problem of flying. But, as I have
already intimated, there is another great fact of progress which
should limit this hope. As an almost universal rule we have never
solved a problem at which our predecessors have worked in vain,
unless through the discovery of some agency of which they have had
no conception. The demonstration that no possible combination of
known substances, known forms of machinery, and known forms of
force can be united in a practicable machine by which men shall
fly long distances through the air, seems to the writer as
complete as it is possible for the demonstration of any physical
fact to be.
Pages:
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445