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They were soon in the tight-fitting suits which were customarily used by fliers who climbed above the air levels at which it was impossible for a human being to breathe without a supply of oxygen in a container. Their suits were sealed against cold. Set in their backs were oxygen tanks capable of holding enough oxygen for several hours. Over all this they fastened their parachutes.
"The time-honored story of Solomon's carpet on which he mounted and was wafted away to any place, with his retinue, had a good deal of foundation in fact; for Solomon was an exceedingly ingenious man, and not only constructed parachutes by which people could safely descend from great heights, but he made some attempts in the direction of ballooning.
The little lizards of the genus Draco, which glide through the air on their rib- supported parachutes, and which in the beauty of their colours baffle description, are furnished with skinny appendages to the throat "like the wattles of gallinaceous birds." These become erected when the animal is excited.
Parachutes, however, are not so absolutely incapable of being directed as are balloons. Monsieur Nadar writes on this point as follows: "Let us consider the action of the parachute.
Late in the afternoon a shell cut our cable, and almost before we knew it we had been carried behind the German lines. "The fight was still commanding the attention of almost everyone, and after descending a little by permitting some of the gas to escape, we jumped over the side of the basket and came down on our parachutes.
It should be mentioned, however, that if a careful study is made of the course of many descending parachutes it will be found that their behaviour is too uncertain to be relied upon for such a purpose as the above.
The autumn seeds are sailing too the pitching parachutes of thistle and fall dandelion and wild lettuce, like fleets of tiny yachts under sail a breeze from a cut-over ridge in the woods blowing almost cottony with the soft down of the tall lettuce that has come up thick in the clearing. As I watch the strowing of the winds, my melancholy slips away.
A hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned thence in a quick perpendicular one.
"I don't suppose you'll hang back after that; will you, Mr. Sharp?" asked the lad, with a laugh. "I don't dare to, for the sake of my reputation," was the reply, for the balloonist who had made many ascensions, and dropped thousands of feet in parachutes, was naturally a brave man. So he and Mr.
Ponton d'Amecourt and his steam helicopter, La Landelle and his system of combining screws with inclined planes and parachutes, Louvrie and his aeroscape, Esterno and his mechanical bird, Groof and his apparatus with wings worked by levers. The impetus was given, inventors invented, calculators calculated all that could render aerial locomotion practicable.
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