Balloon Jumps Across Country
Balloon Jumps Across Country is an article including a letter written by Sir Arthur Conan Doylepublished in the Daily Express on 1 march 1927.
Balloon Jumps Across Country
SIR A. CONAN DOYLE'S SUGGESTIONS.
AID TO PEDESTRIANS.
Tests with the first "jumping balloon" ever constructed in England, which are to be made by the "Daily Express" at Stag-lane Aerodrome, Edgware, at the end of the week, have aroused the interest of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
"Some years ago,"
writes Sir Arthur in a letter to the "Daily Express." "I conceived the idea of the use of small balloons or hydrogen knapsacks as an aid to the pedestrian. I never hoped to see it in practice.
"There are, however, one or two conclusions which I reached, and they may be of some use. The chief was that too much should not be attempted.
LIFTING POWER.
"If, as has been lately suggested, the margin between the man's weight and the lifting power was only a few pounds, and if huge leaps were the result, it would mean a loss of control and be the cause of many accidents. What is needed is to turn the fifteen-stone man into a five-stone man, so that he can go on his way swiftly and without fatigue. Better thirty-foot strides under control than 100-yard springs where one may be the sport of puffs of wind or unseen obstacles.
"It should not be necessary in such a case to release the hydrogen, and though, I presume, some safety valve must be provided to meet the expansion from changes of temperature, it should still be possible to make the one charge of hydrogen last for a considerable time."
The "Daily Express" experiments will be as exhaustive as possible to test balloon jumping under various conditions. The "Daily Express" balloon is eighteen feet in diameter, and has a "lift" of something over ten stone.
