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IN 20 HOURS

Perfection of Airship Near, Says Dr. Bell

PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED

Inventor of Telephone Predicts That America Will Lead in Construction of Aerial Battleships.

New York, April 29.—A London despatch to the "times" quotes Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, as saying last night that it is only a question of a brief period when the progress of aerial navigation will make it possible to have dinner in America and breakfast the next morning in Europe, covering the distance across the Atlantic in considerably less than twenty hours.

"My expectation," said Dr. Bell, "is that an airship will be perfected capable of making 150 to 200 miles an hour. My opinion, however, is that the next step in aerial flight will take the form of such improvements as will make possible the creation of aerial battleships.

"The actual problem of the navigation of the air has already been solved by the Wright brothers. Naturally there will be development along commercial lines, a feature of which will be a great increase in the speed, but the most attention will be paid to adapting ships to the purposes of war. My belief is that America will be the first country to perfect aerial battleships. This belief is based on inside information and from the same source I get reliable statements on which I base my prediction of the early production of an airship of enormous speed.

"I hope to be able to add much to what is known of aerial flight by experiments at Cape Breton Island this summer. My problem this year will be to propel my kites with a specially constructed engine of fifteen horse power, weighing 120 pounds. I hope to get a machine of the heavier-than-air variety that will support a man and the necessary equipment to operate it at low, rather than high velocity. Last December I constructed a vehicle that supported itself and a man in a ten-mile breeze. I now want to fly a machine carrying an engine at ten or fifteen miles an hour. If I can accomplish this there is hope that the aviators, or the men who are trying to solve flight on the bird plan, will be able to avoid fatal accidents long enough to learn how to fly. Even a bird has to learn to fly, and, as with the bird, one of the first considerations is safety, so man must learn to go slow before he goes fast.

"I am confident that it will not be long before flying machines will be everywhere. The developments of the next few months will be unprecedented, but the most interesting point is that only very few know how near America is right now in solving a question which willl revolutionize warfare throughout the world—I mean the construction of a practical aerial battleship."
Dr. Bell is in London to receive the degree of doctor of science from Oxford on