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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