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[[handwritten]] Favor of J. Hoskins Coal Gazette Mauch Chunk August 22nd 1843 [[/handwritten]] The Coal Gazette Twenty Years Ago on Trans-Atlantic Ballooning. A correspondent of the Montrose Independent Republican, reproduces, from a bound copy of The Mauch Chunk Gazette of 1853, the following article from the pen of Mr. S.H. Taylor, who will be remembered as the editor of this paper at that time, on a proposed trip across the Atlantic by Prof. Wise in a balloon. The subject has a peculiar interest just at this time, when the Professor, after years of waiting, is about to attempt his long-projected experiment, and we print it entire: [From the Mauch Chunk Gazette, 1853] TO EUROPE IN A BALLOON. We see by the papers that Prof. Wise, the celebrated aeronaut, is once more endeavoring to obtain the necessary funds to effect a balloon trip to Europe. Mr. Wise is a man of great practical experience. He is cool and self-possessed, and possesses all the necessary enthusiasm to "put the things through." The idea that the Atlantic can be crossed, and that successfully, by balloons, has long been entertained. Some four years since he petitioned Congress for some aid, but that illustrious body preferred wasting the government funds on Page's Electrical Engines. Wise says that the distance between New York and Liverpool can be done in forty- eight hours, and we believe the statement. It can not only be done in that time, but done with a certainty that no other mode of traveling ever approximates to. Mr. Wise has made nearly one hundred ascensions, and from experiments made during these ascensions, he has demonstrated that there is within two miles of the earth a current of air constantly blowing from west to east at a rate of speed varying from forty to seventy miles an hour. At this speed the distance between New York and Liverpool would be done in a little over forty hours! Mr. Wise does not suppose that balloons will ever play a very prominent part in commercial matters, although he thinks they will prove an invaluable auxiliary to our Postoffice department. The European mails, he thinks, could be as well carried above water as through it--in a balloon as in a steamship. For less than one-half the money which Congress gives Mr. Collins, he agrees to put on a line of balloons between the United States and Europe that will do the distance in one- fourth the time consumed by the Baltic or Arabia. All Mr. Wise asks to test his experiment is $10,000. With this amount loaned to him he would immediately construct a balloon whose buoyancy would be equal to one hundred tons. Wise's plan in eminently practical. He does not intend to fight the winds by steam, as some of our visionaries do, but to take advantage of the winds. If he should start from New York with a southwest wind, he would confine himself, by means of a drag rope, to the surface of the ocean. Should the wind change, he would up with his drag and seek a region where a fair wind is always blowing. Wise has the right idea of things, and if ever the ocean is crossed at the rate of seventy miles an hour, he will be the man to do it. There is one advantage about a balloon trip that will commend itself to everybody; there will be no sea-sickness nor any bad weather. Should a storm set in, all you have to do is to throw over a little ballast and rise to the regions of eternal sunshine. We hope some enterprising man will give the idea a chance to develop itself. The man who brings London within two days of New York will not only deserve but make a fortune. The carrying of the mails alone would insure this. [[Second Column]] CYCLONES AND THEIR PHENOMENA. ------- Read Before the Meteorological Section of the Franklin Institute, by Prof. John Wise, April, 1874. |Reported expressly for the Phila. Evening Bulletin.| Every effect has its cause, but the cause itself is only the effect of a previous motion. The phenomena of storms, whether of rain, hail or snow, or merely wind, are the results of a disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium. For a rational explanation of their occurrence and movements it is not necessary to look beyond the realms of our planet's atmosphere to interpret their developments and characteristics. The moon theory of weather prognoses has vanished before the light of electro-telegraphy, and "Old Probabilities" is now more relied on for his accuracy in weather predictions than rhe old Dutch almanac. The weather-waves are constantly thrown out and over the two hemispheres from the equatorial zone. This inter-tropical belt of atmosphere has very little wind motion in itself, and if it were not for the peculiar configuration of the continents it would be next to impossible for a purely sailing ship to cross the equatorial calm belt. Old navigators know the limited wind paths of this equivocal zone as well as the fox does his stamping-ground over the hills and dales of his native territory. This inter-tropical belt is constantly overhung with a band of clouds, produced by the inflow of the surface trade-winds, blowing from the northeast in the northern hemisphere and from the southeast in the opposite one. If the surface of the earth was of a uniform level and substance there would be a constant similarity of conditions of the weather-waves. The rotation of the earth on its axis and the difference of temperature between the torrid zone and the polar areas, causes a constant vortical action--rolling out from the inter-tropical belt of the atmosphere northward and southward. This vortical action of the air is interestingly exemplified at the head-race of a water-wheel. When the flood-gate is opened to let the water on an undershot-wheel large and small whirlpools develop themselves in the agitated water as it seeks its egress, gyrating in circles as they pass along. A similar action is often to be seen in out streets, upon the approach of a storm, in the little whirl-winds that carry up the dust in the form of inverted cones. This law of vortices pervades all moving fluids and vapors. It is even depicted in the "Spiral Nebulæ." The great central aerstrohm of our planet, constantly in action from the whirling motion of the earth, gives rise to the innumerable cyclones that are thrown out from it north and south in weather waves. There is not a cloud in the atmosphere passes over us that is not the subject of a vortical feeder. In certain conditions of the atmosphere, with regard to its quantity of moisture, clouds may be seen to dissolve at the top while they are being fed at the base by these vortical elevators with saturated air. This peculiar action of the cloud may be plainly seen by the attentive observer on the earth as the cumulus passes overhead. Our equatorial cloud belt is a constant, neverceasing crop of these growths of atmospheric formations. Niagara Falls produces this same phenonmenon on a more limited scale. Upon this brief review of the rise and condition of aerial vortices let us take a glance at THE WEATHER WAVE that brings up to us our cyclones, hurricanes, rain, hail and snow. Let it be remembered that a cyclone is always the offspring of one of the ever-recurring atmospheric waves that are thrown outward from the tropics towards the poles by the centrifugal action round the equatorial belt, in connection with its immense heating and vaporizing power. These weather waves are as constant as the vibrations of our lungs, and may be appropriately termed the breath of the world. These rhythmical movements are subject to disturbances from local conditions over which they have to pass in their circulatory functions. These cyclonic waves do not necessarily bring about depositons of water in their course; that depends altogether upon local causes--of being fed with moist air that is sucked up by them in their mission of irrigation. Atmosphere is in this regard like a sponge--it absorbs water to the amount of complete saturation. When fully saturated the least reduction of its temperature causes it to give out its moisture in the form of cloud and rain. Now bear in mind that a mixture of cold and warm air has its capacity of holding water lessened--a phenomenon well understood in science. Now a weather wave, charged with tropical vapor, and capable of carrying along its watery treasure, does not give out unless it is assailed by an elemental demand for it. How is this demand made? [[Third Column]] By mountain ridges, by heated plains, by heat- reflecting valleys, by moist forests, and by lakes and rivers. Any of these may present a condition for the deliverance of water from this invisible sea above our heads. How? First, the cyclonic wave passing up the slope of a mountain is projected up into colder air than itself, causes a condensation of the compound air, produces a rarefaction which in turn causes an upward suction like a pump; this in turn causes an inflow of air below, and this inflow assumes a vortical motion under necessary mechanical action, and thus the aerial engine is built up and moves onward and eastward in the latitude of the temperate zone, until it becomes exhausted of the water supply that keeps it in action. The extent and power of a cyclone ever depends upon the above mentioned conditions it encounters. In the temperate latitude the rain is always more copious to the leeward of mountains, lakes and forests. The westward plains of our mountain ranges suffer most from drought. Extended prairies also suffer, because the dry atmosphere, sucked up from the parched earth, acts as an absorbent in the cyclone, and may even dissipate the aerial engine into a dry wind storm, causing it to "work a vacuum," as the steam engineer says when his pump fails to deliver him water for his boiler. The equatorial heat and cloud belt is our planet's great pumping and irrigation engine, sending out to the uttermost ends of the earth the fructifying principles of animal and vegetable life. It is a trite as it is a true saying that "All signs for rain fail in dry weather." This is one of the proverbs, that finds its origin in fact, and now explainable in our knowledge of meteorological science. We want moist air on the surface of the earth to put a weather wave into cyclonic action. Compensation is the order for an extended rain storm. A great storm passing over an extensive area of parched soil may hold out until it reaches a lake, or forest, or river valley, where it will be replenished with wet vapor, and thus enabled to go on. Storms may be exhausted by limitation alone at the point where their centrifugal and centripetal forces become balanced by the frictional resistance of the surface of the earth. Such are the main conditions and mechanical elements that govern the action of the storms great and small. THE ISOBAROMETRIC LINES that govern the weather signal service in their forecasting of the weather by "probabilities" are the immediate result of the atmospheric action just described. The encircling line of the storm, as indicated between the points of high and low barometer, is an inevitable result of the disturbance of atmospheric equilibrium, by the vortex in the centre of the meteor producing rarefaction and low barometer and the outside resistance around the periphery producing high barometer. The great cyclonic storms generate within themselves smaller storms, such as hail-storms and tornados, and these are not designated in the generalizations of "probabilities, "but they may be forecasted to a very limited amount of time by the station observer, or any person who has learned the law of storms and paid attention to the thermal and barometrical conditions that precede them. Hail storms are the direct result of a sudden projecture of warm, humid air into the upper cold air from a local area of compressed air, which can only find its outlet upwards, where it is suddenly expanded and produces a degree of cold sufficient to freeze the condensing drops of water into hail stones. They are as limited in their areas as they are sudden of formation. I entered one but a few minutes after its first appearance in the form of a dark small cloud, and in less than fifteen minutes thereafter it was making rain, hail and snow very copiously, and my body became covered with a bushy coat of hoar-frost. Its spiral gyratory motion produced "sea sickness." These nervous snarling meteors exhaust themselves as soon as the local central pressure below is relieved. They are atmospheric geysers--spasmodic meteors. SNOW STORMS. Winter storms are generally of great dimensions, as much as fifteen hundred miles in diameter, which is about the maximum extent. The two conditions for a regular northeast snow storm are the blowing of an east wind for several days, super-induced by the drawing action of a cyclone over the plateau of the Rocky Mountains or the Apalachian chain. The pumping enginery of these great winter meteors is slower of motion than in the summer storms. Hence they are of greater extent and slower of motion. The deposition of a northeaster always begins in its western side, to the windward of the observer. These meteors find their supply of moisture in the northeast surface currents, sweeping the Atlantic from east to west. They are the result of very cold saturated air, pumped up by cyclonic action into the warmer upper air, pushed out from the tropics into the temperate zone. This forced up air, combining with its upper stratum, gives up its moisture in the form of very fine spiculæ of ice and