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Updated: May 13, 2025
Too deeply absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the little cries and ejaculations which came from the brothers, he caused the aerostat to rise higher, slowly sweeping that extended field with his glasses.
A lack of public support has crippled the attempts of experimentalists in this country, but abroad this method of aerial exploration continues to gain favour. Distinct from, and supplementing, the records obtained by free balloons, manned or unmanned, are those to be gathered from an aerostat moored to earth.
A more important trial was made on the 12th of the following month, and was witnessed by M. Tissandier, according to whom the aerostat conveying the inventors ascended gently and steadily, drifting with an appreciable breeze until the screw was set in motion and the helm put down, when the vessel was brought round to the wind and held its own until the motor, by an accident, ceased working.
Although the "Go-Ahead" might not claim the first place among aerial locomotives, they would have nothing to say about the inventions of other aviators. They believed, and would always believe, that the true atmospheric vehicle was the aerostat, and that to it alone belonged the future. Besides, he on whom they had been so terribly and in their idea so justly avenged, existed no longer.
And then Uncle Prudent, resuming his speech amid a silence up to then unknown in the meetings of the Weldon Institute, said, "Gentlemen, it now only remains for us to finish the aerostat 'Go-Ahead. It is left to her to effect the conquest of the air! The meeting is at an end!"
The aerostat maneuvered without encountering any resistance, seeming very small owing to the distance, much as if she were being looked at through the wrong end of a telescope. Suddenly there was a shout among the crowd, a shout followed by a hundred thousand more. All hands were stretched towards a point on the horizon. That point was the northwest.
In 1783, before the Montgolfier brothers had built their fire-balloon, and Charles, the physician, had devised his first aerostat, a few adventurous spirits had dreamt of the conquest of space by mechanical means. The first inventors did not think of apparatus lighter than air, for that the science of their time did not allow them to imagine.
Yet his face was fairly glowing with glad exultation as he brought the aerostat to a lower strata of air, shutting off all view from yonder valley, as it lay amid its encircling hills. "Hurrah!" he cried, snatching off his cap and waving it enthusiastically, as the air-ship floated onward at ease. "At last! Found we've discovered it at last! And all is true, all is true!"
As usual, however, Waldo was first to rally, and, after silently moving around the aerostat, upon which the professor was already busily at work by the last gleams of the vanished sun, he paused, legs separated, and hands thrust deep into pockets, head perking on one side as he spoke, drawlingly: "I say, uncle Phaeton?" "What is it, Waldo?"
Doubtless the spectators would have seen the "Go-Ahead" unhesitatingly execute all the movements of a sailing-vessel in beating to windward, or of a steamer driving in the wind's eye. At this moment the aerostat rose a few hundred yards. The maneuver was understood below. Uncle Prudent and his companions were going in search of a breeze in the higher zones, so as to complete the experiment.
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