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A good type of the non-rigid air-ship is that built by Major Von Parseval, which is named after its inventor. The Parseval has been described as "a marvel of modern aeronautical construction", and also as "one of the most perfect expressions of modern aeronautics, not only on account of its design, but owing to its striking efficiency."
This was due chiefly to the wonderful progress which had been made in aeronautics, the full story of which will not be told until the end of the war has come. Not only have aeroplanes, since the beginning of the war, become safer, but they have also become marvelously swifter and more powerful.
It was supposed he must have fallen from his seat, but as to how that had happened, how it was that no fragment of his body or his clothing was ever found, above all, how it was that his aeroplane had returned, the engine cut off, the planes secured in correct position, no even moderately plausible explanation was ever put forward. The loss to aeronautics was felt to be severe.
The following extract from a private letter written by him in 1876, after an aëronautical career of forty years, comprising nearly five hundred ascensions, illustrates this enthusiasm and his views on the sanitary aspect of aëronautics: "I claim that the balloon is the best sanitarium within the grasp of enervated humanity.
Its library, its bureau of advice and information, and its meetings, all assist in forwarding the study of aeronautics, and its twenty-three early Annual Reports are of considerable value, containing as they do a large amount of useful information on aeronautical subjects, and forming practically the basis of aeronautical science.
We were rather surprised at the silence of the public, considering the very remarkable and interesting feat in aeronautics thus successfully performed. The Princess was taking her usual drive to the Bois de Boulogne, when, observing an unusual movement in the neighbourhood of the Invalides, and having inquired the cause; she ordered her coach man to drive to the Champ de Mars.
However that may be, what may be termed the mathematising of aeronautics has rendered the type itself evanescent; your pilot of to-day knows his craft, once he is trained, much in the manner that a driver of a motor-lorry knows his vehicle; design has been systematised, capabilities have been tabulated; camber, dihedral angle, aspect ratio, engine power, and plane surface, are business items of drawing office and machine shop; there is room for enterprise, for genius, and for skill; once and again there is room for daring, as in the first Atlantic flight.
Even into the serious business of war Pégoud carried his freak aeronautics, though it must be added that his remarkable skill in that direction had enabled him to escape from many a perilous situation. A few days before he fell Pégoud carried out a flight of 186 miles over German territory. He returned unscathed, while the planes of his machine were riddled with bullet holes.
Nor did we only manufacture planes and train men for ourselves. "The Government of the United States," says the Air Service Report, "has paid a striking tribute to the British Air Service by adopting our system of training. The first 500 American officer cadets to be trained went through the School of Military Aeronautics at Oxford, afterwards graduating at various aerodromes in England.
In a letter which he wrote to his guardian, Chevalier Gherardo Compagni, he alludes to the stolid indifference of the English people and philosophers to the brilliant achievements in aeronautics which had been made and so much belauded on the Continent.
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