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Show Coming of the Aeroplane T F THE weather is propitious, the people of J this city will see some of the preliminary achievements towards making a conquest r of the air. The centuries past have witnessed many triumphs, but they have been on the land "k or the sea. The unstable, elastic air lias held its !jj domain undisturbed save as it itself has called up , its forces and waged upon the sea or the land its fury. We mean undisturbed by man. It has not quite had its way. The electric currents have brought down their forces from the sun, have rent the air with their lightnings, and convulsed it with their thunders, and the sunbeams caressing I and warming the ocean have called up its waters I and loaded them on clouds and compelled the air vL to bear them landward and unload them upon the E plains in rain and the mountain tops in snow, r at the glacier might be builded and finally set flow, to make channels for rivers, to make 1 F oil that was eventually to raise food for the men and animls that infinite wisdom and mercy, p ages before, had planned should find homes on the planet. But in the last days of theNineteenth century W an inspired man took up the idea that as electric currents traversed the air, as in a limited way L those currents had been brought under the do- minion of man, his rule might be further extend-f extend-f ed, and that they might be disciplined to carry I messages at the sovereign will of man, even as man directed, and that neither the air nor roar-H roar-H ing oceans, nor interposing mountain tops could r-' have the power to arrest or divert them from " their designated path. That man worked his j.. idea to a successful conclusion, and now, from re-' re-' mote lands, from laboring ships far out at sea, l these messages come with absolute precision, j bringing whispers of love; telling of disabled w ships, or of contending parties in other lands. About the same time another genius, noting 1 hat all the elements of nature were doing the T work assigned them, that even the stars and the seasons had their regular processions; that all "these elements that touched the earth had their f' duties to perform and that all were in the service Cv o,f man, from the sunbeam to the rivulet that i f goes singing and babbling on its way back to , the sea; that even the ocean was forced to set 5 aside the laws of gravitation and supply the earth with moisture, took up the idea that maybe, too, the air, notwithstanding its elasticity and its erratic ways, might likewise be conquered and become a help to mortals in a material way. He remembered, too, that the promise had been given 6 man that he should have dominion over the earth ! and all therein. He saw, too, that while iron will instantly sink in water, still when it is rolled thin enough it will float, as notice the mighty ships 1 It,,-. on which modern ocean commerce is carried, and Mfolr further that if force enough is behind a projectile, j so long as that force remains, the thunderbolts of ; P war skim the air like birds. Out of all these 1 cts, there came to him the belief that as the iteelt is made to carry the monstrous ship with its cargo, and the cannon ball is made to cleave the air, so if he could get the right material in , theright form and the proper impetus to drive ".$haj mHterlal, man might challenge the condor S anae erf&fe- in their flight. The same thought eVjdjntly bpgan to haunt the minds of many men 'in mafaycounfeies. at the same time. And the 'work, in ifsrelimmary stages, at least, has been "accomplished, and an exhibition of it is promised ; the people here & It is altogether wonderful, but as we JTit, what has so far been done is but prel.uiinary. The engine that Watt made, side by side with a modern great engine, would look most crude and poor. But the principle was there; tlie first week respiration of that little machine was a notice that a new power, which was destined to add a thousand fold to the world's working forces, had been born, and looking upon the aeroplane of today, and remembering re-membering that first little steam engine, there comes a picture to the mind of the possibilities of the near future, when regular lines of aeroplanes aero-planes shall do the world's passenger carrying, and when men may imitate the swallows; fly south in the autumn to warmer lands and in the spring made their summer residences In Labrador or on the shores above Behring sea. |