OCR Text |
Show The Airship WE none of us must say that no airship will ever cross the Atlantic, for in this age it is not safe to predict what mechanics and Invention may not accomplish. We do not believe in dirigibles, for they present so much surface for the winds to play upon, that the risk is too great; they must always be like a ship with no sufficient ballast The fluid that airships must float in, we call "light as air," but when a tornado sets that fluid in motion it mows down a forest even as a reaper does a wheat field, and were a dirigible made really steerable, a few hours gale would beat it to pieces. But it required several thousand years for men to make ships comparatively safe against everything except the dangers that creep upon them through a fog. So the conquest of the air has only just begun; the toys after a while may become real ships, for man's dominion was given no bounds. |