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250 TON AIRSHIP

Raphael J. Moses Plans Vessel of 1,250-Horse Power for Aerial Navigation. 

DRIVEN BY EXPLOSIONS

Machine Will Have Myriad of Trumpets, Through Which Shocks Will Be Discharged. 

SPEED 100 MILES AN HOUR

Steel Clad Craft Intended to Carry Thirty Days' Supplies for Crew and Passengers. 

  "Every other man in America seems to have a plan for an airship," said Courtlandt Field Bishop, president of the Aero Club, the other night, at the club's annual dinner, and as an illustration of the wide-spread interest in aeronautics he said that hardly a day passed without one or more persons asking the Aero Club to finance some invention. 
  Most of those who are working on the problem are pinning their faith to aero-planes nowadays, though there are still many adherents of the gas bag principle, and Edgar B. Bronson is working out a mysterious motive power said to have been discovered by a Perth Amboy inventor half a century ago. 
  But now comes Raphael J. Moses, of No. 46 West Ninety-seventh street, with an entirely new idea, both for lifting and propelling power. He proposes a steel clad ship weighing 250 tons, which he believes can be carried through the air by means of the explosions of gas. 
  According to plans he has drafted, the airship will be equipped with 1,000 or more air chambers, with trumpets attached. By turning all of the trumpets downward Mr. Moses expects, by means of the explosions, to obtain a direct lifting force sufficient to elevate his ship, and, by turning
the trumpets at an angle, to obtain both the lifting and propulsive force.
ALL DEPENDS ON SPEED.
  "My contention is that the whole question is one of speed," he said yesterday. "Togo's fleet would have been powerless against the Russians had the latter had a speed advantage of a mile an hour, as they would have kept out of the range of his guns. The amount of power that will be 
developed by the discharge from the trumpets is proportionable to the square of the velocity of discharge. 
  "I estimate the weight of the ship when fully equipped for a month's voyage to be 250 tons, or 500,000 pounds. This would require 1,000-horse power to overcome the attraction of gravity, so that we would need to supply the ship with 1,250-horse power. 
  "I conceive it to be useless to attempt to obtain this power by the ordinary engine revolving wheels, paddles or wings, as the viscosity of air is so great that it would require so rapid a revolution of such
heavy bearings as to tear the machinery to pieces. I therefore intend to use the engine in the ship for subsidiary purposes only, and to obtain the propulsive and lifting force by explosions in the numerous separate chambers with trumpets attached. 
  "These can be geared to move through an angle of 180 degrees, so that the force may be directed either backward, upward or downward; and some of them to be so geared as to work downward, forward and upward to act as air brakes for the ship. Of course, nothing of this kind can be perfected at once, but I am earnestly convinced that our field of action should be 
in the study of the gases and not machinery for air propulsion. 
THIRTY DAYS' SUPPLIES.
  "My plan calls for a steel ship 150 feet long and 50 feet across, to be raised from the earth and propelled through the air, controlling equilibrium and direction, at a rate of one hundred miles an hour, preserving communication with land, and within an enclosed portion maintaining an even barometric and thermometric pressure; carrying provisions and fuel and machinery for thirty days. 
  "The even barometric pressure and temperature are preserved by enclosing the habitable portion with double doors like the air locks of a caisson. It is not particularly important what fuel, gas, coal or oil be used on the ship. The principle on which she is constructed is that the heat
necessary to heat one pound of water shall be distributed to 3,431 air spaces containing approximately 27.7 cubic inches."
  Mr. Moses has named his airship the Abaris, after a mythological character to whom Apollo gave an arrow with which he flew around the world.

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