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Show The Maxim Airship. In a conversation with H. J. W. Dam, reported in McClure's Magazine, Hiram S. Maxim, inventor of the Maxim airship, air-ship, said: "The principle I have worked on, generally gen-erally speaking, is that of the kite. That large cloth frame at the top of the model mod-el is the aeroplane, or main kite surface. The lesser aeroplane above the platform or car, the side aeroplanes or wings and the flat pointed rudders fore and aft are designed to furnish additional kite surface. sur-face. It is necessary to make it, however, howev-er, so that we can run it in a calm against the air, thus making our own wind, as it were, and for this purpose I have a railway track, and instead of cords to hold the kite against the wind I employ a pair of powerful 6crew propellers propel-lers driven by a steam engine. "In this manner I can drive the machine ma-chine exactly as I please, can ascertain exactly how much the push of the screws is, and at the same time find out exactly how much the machine lifts at different speeds. The machine is, in fact, a big kite. Should I fly it in the air with a cord during a strong gale and then run my engines, I should be able to find out how fast they would have to run in order to take all the pull off the cord. As soon as the cord became slack, the machine would be flying with its own engine power." |