. The railroad and engineering journal . r required, he placed only the engine onthe bird, and connected it by a hose with a boiler on theground. Upon trial, as sooif as the steam was turned onthe wings beat violently, and the apparatus rose with tieinventor aboard. He grew nervous for fear that he wouldget beyond the length of his hose, and shut off steam sud-denly, upon which the bird fell and smashed one of itswings. It is still in existence, and the inventor is await-ing the development of a very light motor in order toresume his experiments with this great bird, which issome 50 ft. across
. The railroad and engineering journal . r required, he placed only the engine onthe bird, and connected it by a hose with a boiler on theground. Upon trial, as sooif as the steam was turned onthe wings beat violently, and the apparatus rose with tieinventor aboard. He grew nervous for fear that he wouldget beyond the length of his hose, and shut off steam sud-denly, upon which the bird fell and smashed one of itswings. It is still in existence, and the inventor is await-ing the development of a very light motor in order toresume his experiments with this great bird, which issome 50 ft. across. In 1872 Joberi brought out his second mechanicalbird, shown in fig. 19. This is driven by twisted rubber,as being more manageable than rubber in tension, andconsists of four wings beating alternately in pairs—as ahorse trots--in order to produce continuous and uniformsupport and equilibrium, instead ot the jerking motionobservable in other apparatus. This flew fairly well, buta measurement of the foot-pounds developed and of the. ing motion similar to that of the bird. His apparatusflew some 65 ft., with rather less weight of rubber. In 1889 Pichancourt carried the matter still further inthe mechanical bird shown in fig. 20, in which there is atriple eccentric, eachone actuatinga lever fastened to a dif-ferent point in the wings. His larger models, measuring17J in. from tip to tip of wings, and weighing \\ oz., aresaid to have flown up to a height of 25 ft. and to a dis-tance of 70 ft. against a slightly adverse wind. Noiv here ar- no less than six artificial birds, each witha somewhat different wing-motion, and they all fly, whenurged by the energy stored in twisted rubber. The ques-tion, therefore, occurs why practicable machines, to carrypassengers, cannot be built by substituting some primemover for the rubber ; and the answer is that all thesemodels are so wasteful of power that there is no mqtorknown sufficiently light, in proportion to its energy, totake the plac
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectrailroa, bookyear1887
