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SCIENTIFIC BALLOONING.

Official Report to the Meteorological Section of the Franklin Institute, at its September Meeting, of the Two [[Ascensions]] Made by its Corresponding [[Secretary]], Prof. John Wise.

  The two balloon ascensions made under the auspices of the meteorological section of the Institute were not entirely barren of useful scientific results. The first one, made on the 30th of July, 1874, revealed a very decided abnormal condition of the atmosphere, in temperature as related to height, and in the striated appearance of the air. I was provided with a good aneroid barometer, a sensitive thermometer, a magnetic needle, and ozone test paper, and accompanied by two assistants. The day was clear and warm, and the air at the surface of the earth was somewhat blustery. We left the ground one minute past four o'clock P.M., and ascended rapidly. Expecting, as is usually the case, to meet with cool, refreshing air as we raised, we found precisely the reverse, the air growing warmer as we ascended. The sensation was like that of approaching a conflagration, and decidedly novel to my long experience in balloon ascensions. We started with the thermometer marking 72 degs. in the shade. We rose 5,400 feet in the first eight minutes, and the temperature increased 9 degs., and we entered a stratum of attenuated mist, the balloon becoming stationary for several minutes. From 5,500 to 5,600 feet the temperature ranged 82 degs. and the gas began to overflow, from which we lowered 200 feet, the balloon sinking with a singularly tremulous motion, and the thermometer sunk to 79 degs., and then the balloon began to oscillate to and fro for several minutes. Its behavior was quite novel, and the temperature rose to 86 degs. There the effect of the sun became painful, of a pungent, stinging nature. A little ballast was thrown out and the balloon rose 300 feet, when the temperature fell to 82 degs. Here the air felt more comfortable. A peculiar haziness surrounded us, and the air was striated with distinct lines and the sun's rays became painful.

  We had now passed through various strata of cool and hot air, so marked in their anomalous conditions and effects as to render it self-evident that some extraordinary phenomenon was prevalent in the air at the time. We were stationary for nearly ten minutes, and immediately over the confluence of the rivers Delaware and Schuylkill, and in full view of the city. There was stretched across the city a band of shadow, from northwest to southeast, that looked like a pall. It was in reality a phenomenous beam, and so marked in its character as to attract the attention of the ordinary observer. What can it be? The mind naturally seeks for causes, and, in this case, it could find no better one than that Coggia's comet was producing disturbances in our atmosphere.

  It is to be regretted that a balloon ascension had not been made when the comet entered into the conjunctive territory between the sun and the earth, and another when it occupied the central region, as then, with the one made on the 30th of July, when it was emerging from its conjunctive field, the three observations could have been co-ordinated as to give a more definite expression of cometic influence on the atmosphere, and thus pave the way to a scientific explanation of the causes that frequently produce meteoric phenomena as mysterious to us as is the origin of our planet.

  To say that the phenomenal character of the atmosphere as I found it on the 30th of July was nothing more that a refractive condition of air, leaves the matter as occult and mysterious as with no explanation, since refraction is ever the result of interfering media.

  Surely, if a mass of vapor, constituted as we are taught that of a comet is, dense in its nucleus and gradually more attenuated towards its surface, it would produce the highest order of refraction, and disturb the atmosphere, and inevitably bring about the conditions of air as we found it. Even the clouds in the norma[[normal]] condition of the atmosphere produce variable temperatures within and around them. The sun's rays passing through a comet on to our earth would bring about meteoric phenomena on a large scale, and such we have experienced over our continent during the transit or perihelion passage of Coggia's comet. The ordinary indications governing the weather signal service led to prognose the floods that proved so [[disastrous]] in various parts of the country during the comet's proximity to our world.


Our ascent was so rapid that we had no specific observations in passing up through a mile thickness of air, but we felt the different temperatures as we passed through them, and hence I lowered the balloon as gradually as I could in order to get instrumental indications. The annexed table will show more comprehensively the location of the differently heated strata, or beams, as we lowered the balloon through them. It must not be forgotten that the atmosphere around us was clear of clouds during our flight, and none visible except a bank of cumulo-stratus on the extreme western horizon, and that had a red-hot appearance. The thirty observations made within the time of two hours, and within the distance of forty miles horizontal and 6,000 feet perpendicular range, cannot fail to claim the attention of meteorologists, and to impress the learned with the importance to science and human welfare of a better knowledge of our atmosphere and its phenomenal evolutions. The sun's effect upon the earth is tempered by and through the atmosphere. The minutest change in the density of the air is productive of prodigous convulsions. It is at times hot on the surface of the earth, and at the same time, and in a few minutes, a snow cloud will form, two or three thousand above, that fills the air with snowflakes, that we little dream of here below in the sweltering heat of July.

[[Five Columned Table]]
|Obs.|Time P.M.|Bar. ft.|Ther.|Appearance.|
|---|---|---|---|---|

|1|4.01|00|72 deg.|   |
|2|4.09|5400|81|Balloon stationary.|
|3|4.12|5500|81|Haze.|
|4|4.15|5600|82|   |
|5|4.20|5400|79|Balloon agitated- tremulous.|
|6|4.25|5600|86|   |
|7|4.27|5900|82|Air hazy and striated|
|8|4.31|5500|83|   |
|9|4.34|5250|82|   |
|10|4.42|5400|83|Mist and excessive stinging temp'ture.|
|11|4.50|5000|85|   |
|12|4.55|4400|82|   |
|13|5.00|3450|82|   |
|14|5.02|2250|90|   |
|15|5.05|1450|90|This hot stratum was 600 feet thick, and it was torturing|
|16|5.08|1250|85|   |
|17|5.15|1100|85|   |
|18|5.18|1400|89|   |
|19|5.22|2050|83|   |
|20|5.24|2450|82|   |
|21|5.25|3150|81|   |
|22|5.32|4300|70|   |
|23|5.35|4900|70|   |
|24|5.40|5750|70|Cool mist.|
|25|5.45|5500|70|Objects below distinctly visible; ocean and Delaw'e river in full view,& loomed up.
|26|5.58|5800|69|   |
|27|5.50|5300|70|   |
|28|6.00|3500|71|   |
|29|6.05|1900|71|   |
|30|6.16|1400|73|A minute later struck the earth in Vineland, N.J.|
[[/table]]

  An hour after landing I reascended, and to the height of 4,500 feet, but found nothing but a subdued warm air all the way up and down. Just at sunset the Delaware and the ocean seemed to be much higher than my level of 4,500 feet altitude, and had the appearance of being but a few miles off. As we lowered, the distance expanded and the looming-up increased. It showed that the air was not in its ordinary temper and tension.

On the 20th of August a second experiment was made, and in this I was accompanied by W.H. Wahl, Ph.D., Secretary of the Franklin Institute, who had specially provided himself with means for the purpose of ascertaining the amount of solid matter contained in the air at different altitudes, as well as to learn whether living animalcular organisms live in the air at great heights above the surface of the earth. Of this he will render an account in due course of time, and as soon as the proper analysis shall have been made.

  The 20th of August was excessively hot-the thermometer ranged up to 97 degrees in the shade on the surface of the earth. We ascended very slowly, as we swept over the city in a north to east course, and in the meantime Dr. Whal was deliberately at work pumping air through his flasks of collodian and distilled water. I kept watch and noted the ranges of thermometer and barometer. We had two sets of these instruments, and both of us kept record, in order to be more accurate in our observations.
 
  While on this occasion the day was hot and the atmosphere, as viewed from the earth, precisely like that of the 30th of July, we had reasons to anticipate the same conditions of air as on the former occasion, provided no extraordinary disturbing cause was prevailing in either case. We found it quite different. The atmosphere was in its normal condition, and in wedging up through a thickness of 9,000 feet, we found a regular graduation of height and temperature, in accordance with the law accepted by science, as the tabulated record shows. In all my experience of 449 aerial voyages it has been confirmed, and only in the 30th of July voyage was there a total departure of this rule.
  While the cosmos must be a unitary mechanism, it has, not doubt, its incidents of perturbation, or what we call perturbation, because we don not  understand its legitimate action in the play of the universe. In nothing do we see these phenomenal exhibitions more marked than in the comets, meteors and auroras. The passage of a comet between the earth and sun would necessarily produce phenomena of the kind experienced in the July exploration,

[[Right Column]]

and in which there is no room left for the absence of a superinducing cause to account for the air growing hotter as we ascend higher up in it, and for the bands and streams of differently tempered air.
  It is worthy of remark regarding second ascension, that, while our programme for the experiment has not laid down as of particular investigation anything beyond the observations of heights as related to temperature, and the "purves experiment" upon the particles of matter that float in the air, Doctor Whal's attention was inadvertently draw to two things often referred to in my narratives of aerial experience. I mean the transparency of the eater of turbid streams and the pulsatory movement of the balloon at heights in which it finds what may be fairly termed "the normal motion of the atmosphere from west to east." While he had noticed the outlines of sand-bars and depths and shallows of the Delaware as we crossed it, sufficient to convince him that height increased the power of the organs of vision, he seemed more remarkably struck with the motion of the balloon as it slightly struggled, swaying gracefully to and fro, while accommodating its movement to the rhythmical motion of the atmosphere. After watching it for a few moments, and sighting down over the edge of the car, to which I directed his attention, in order to distinguish more clearly the jumping movement eastward of our bark, he remarked, "It seems to me that the motion of the earth has something to do with this." I think so myself, and have thought so for thirty years past, because it is always present when the balloon moves in this normal current, and I believe, with Herbert Spencer, that all motion, all nature, is rhythmical, because I find it so in every department of physics-natural and artificial-in the sea and in the air.
  We moved eastward in this current at the rate of not less than 50 miles per hour, and in twenty minutes after we struck it were crossing the Delaware. The great city, with all its beautiful environs, had faded out of sight under the western horizon. Seeing a lovely looking village nestled in the plain beneath, we lowered for it as rapidly as was prudent, but on nearing it we encountered the local current, which drifted us a mile or more out of our intended point of landing, i.e., the town of Medford, N. J.

[[Five Columned Table]]
|Obs.|Time, P.M.|Height Feet|Temp. Fahr.|   |
|1|5.35|00|97|   |
|2|5.38|1293|97|   |
|3|5.40|2093|96|   |
|4|5.45|3800|85|Light mist.|
|5|5.50|4862|82|Light mist.|
|6|5.55|6875|79|Light mist.|
|7|6.00|8443|69|Struck the eastern current.|
|8|6.05|8650|69|   |
|9|6.10|8743|68|   |
|10|6.15|6875|74|   |
|11|6.20|4569|77|   |
|12|6.25|2958|80|   |
|13|6.27|landed|90|   |
  The altitudes stand as corrected for temperature by Dr. Wahl.
[[/table]]

AERIAL PHENOMENA.
To the Editor of the Mail.
  SIR- In the interests of science, and more especially in order to corroborate the fact of the existence of an "Eastern Current" over this entire continent, Professor John Wise, of the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania, purposes making a Balloon Campaign in the various cities in this Province.
  An advertisement has appeared for several days announcing that the Professor would make an ascension for London on Thursday, the 27th inst., and although I sent a communication to a London paper stating that the Professor had wired me that "He had made no engagement for London or Canada, emphatically not," the public have still been led to believe that he was really to be there to morrow.
  In troubling you with this, it is simply to do justice to the good name and reputation of a man who always fulfils his public and private engagements, and as the announcement was made without his knowledge, consent or concurrence, in his absence from the country, allow me through your columns the privilege of saying so.
Truly yours,
STANLEY DAY.
Stratford, Aug. 26, 1874.

Transcription Notes:
some words in the left column were cut off. Perhaps "turchering" should be torturing.