last updated and validated May 4, 1999. SHD
"These German airships [...] were capable of ninety miles an hour in a calm, so that they could face and make headway against nearly everything except the fiercest tornado. They varied in length from eight hundred to two thousand feet, and they had a carrying power of from seventy to two hundred tons."
- HG Wells, The War in the Air
The hydrogen-filled Airships that proliferated at the beginning of the twentieth century were true leviathans of the air. The German airships were held together by skeletons of steel and aluminium and a strong canvas outer skin, within which was a rubber gas-bag, divided into between fifty and a hundred gas tight compartments filled with hydrogen. By means of pumping air into a long sac within the gas bag, the bouyancy of the whole craft could be controlled, allowing its pilots to compensate for changes in weight resulting from the consumption of fuel or the dropping of bombs. The engine and propellor were located at the aft end of the long steel spine that ran the length of the airship. and the men and magazines were forward in a series of cabins under the expanded headlike forepart.
The engine was a supreme triumph of German invention, of the extraordinarily powerful Pforzheim type, and was controlled by wires from the cabin at the front of the airship, which was indeed the only habitable part of the ship. In case of malfunction the engineers would clamber along the airship on a rope ladder. The lateral instabilityof the craft was partly corrected by a horizontal fin on either side, and steering was accomplished by means of two vertical fins, which normally lay back like gill-flaps on either side of the head. A striking feature was the apparatus for wireless telegraphy that dangled from the forward cabin.
"People talk glibly enough of epoch-making events; this was an epoch-making event. It was the unanticipated and entirely successful flight of Mr. Alfred Butteridge from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back in a small businesslike-looking machine heavier than air--an entirely manageable and controllable machine that could fly as well as a pigeon.
"It wasn't, one felt, a fresh step forward in the matter so much as a giant stride, a leap. Mr. Butteridge remained in the air altogether for about nine hours, and during that time he flew with the ease and assurance of a bird. His machine was, however neither bird-like nor butterfly-like, nor had it the wide, lateral expansion of the ordinary aeroplane. The effect upon the observer was rather something in the nature of a bee or wasp. Parts of the apparatus were spinning very rapidly, and gave one a hazy effect of transparent wings; but parts, including two peculiarly curved "wing-cases"--if one may borrow a figure from the flying beetles--remained expanded stiffly. In the middle was a long rounded body like the body of a moth, and on this Mr. Butteridge could be seen sitting astride, much as a man bestrides a horse. The wasp-like resemblance was increased by the fact that the apparatus flew with a deep booming hum, exactly the sound made by a wasp at a windowpane."
- HG Wells, The War in the Air
The remarkable apparatus designed and built by Mr. Alfred Butteridge was the most advanced flying machine of its time, far more so than the flimsy, butterfly-like devices of Asia, or the dangerously unstable Drachenflieger of Germany. Carried aloft by laterally spinning horizontal planes, the Butteridge machine could travel at speeds of up to 40 mph or hover over a point with equal ease. In manoueverability and ease of control it was unparalleled.
The two sets of spinning planes which contrive to lift the machine are similar to the airscrews used to provide the horizontal motion to certain models of aeroplane. However, they are oriented at ninety degrees to the usual direction, usually spinning in the horizontal plane, and the blades are considerably longer. By working the control pedals and levers, the pilot can alter the angle and the speed at which the blades spin, allowing him to bank the machine left or right, and change the altitude of flight. By inclining the blades forward, some of the generated lift is transferred to forward movement. A skilled pilot with a Butteridge Flying Machine can easily outmanoevre any other model of Flying Machine, a fact that has been repeatedly and vocally pointed out by Mr. Butteridge. The original model of the Butteridge Flying Machine was only capable of carrying a single pilot, but plans are being made to build larger versions.
"The object of Mr. Cavor's search was a substance that should be 'opaque' - he used some other word I have forgotten, but 'opaque' conveys the idea - to "all forms of radiant energy." 'Radiant energy,' he made me understand, was anything like light or heat, or those Roentgen Rays there was so much talk about a year or so ago, or the electric waves of Marconi, or gravitation. All these things, he said, radiate out from centres, and act on bodies at a distance, whence comes the term 'radiant energy.'
" [...] Now all known substances are 'transparent' to gravitation. You can use screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat, or electrical influence of the sun, or the warmth of the earth from anything; you can screen things by sheets of metal from Marconi's rays, but nothing will cut off the gravitational attraction of the sun or the gravitational attraction of the earth. Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say. Cavor did not see why such a substance should not exist, and certainly I could not tell him. I had never thought of such a possibility before. [...] Suffice it for this story that he believed he might be able to manufacture this possible substance opaque to gravitation out of a complicated alloy of metals and something new - a new element, I fancy - called, I believe, helium, which was sent to him from London in sealed stone jars."
- H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon
The unusual metal alloy dubbed "Cavorite" was invented by the equally unusual Mr. Cavor, a scientific researcher whose forte was molecular physics. First manufactured on the 14th of October, 1899, Cavorite has the effect of shielding objects from the effects of gravitational attraction, making anything shielded by the Cavorite in this way effectively weightless. Cavorite is also completely opaque to light, heat and electric waves. The practical applications of this remarkable substance are almost limitless, from flying machines to interplanetary craft.
"Where strength was needed there was the new Charlottenburg alloy, German steel as it was called, the toughest and most resistant metal in the world."
- HG Wells, The War in the Air
Following extensive analysis of Martian materials technology, which was far in advance of our own, German metallurgists in Charlottenburg, Germany, developed this alloy. It is one of the strongest materials known to man, and has been extensively used in the construction of such structures as the League of Nations Tower in London, England, which rises 150 floors above the surrounding landscape, and the Channel Bridge which provides a monorail link between Dover and Calais. Its great strength to weight ratio has led to its utilisation in a variety of applications in which weight is critical, especially in aeronautics. The armaments on the new generation of airships are constructed almost exclusively of German steel, as are the frameworks and plating of the latest Land Ironclads (qv).
"It will be obtainable of all chemists and druggists, in small green bottles, at a high but, considering its extraordinary qualities, by no means excessive price. Gibberne's Nervous Accelerator it will be called, and he hopes to be able to supply it in three strengths: one in 200, one in 900, and one in 2000, distinguished by yellow, pink, and white labels respectively."
- H. G. Wells, The New Accelerator
First developed by Professor Gibberne of Folkestone, this remarkable drug vastly speeds the functioning of the human nervous system, increasing the activity possible by hundreds, even thousands of times. While under the influence of sufficient quantities of this substance, the user can become to all effects invisible to the general populace, moving many times faster than the eye can follow. To the user, all those around him are frozen almost motionless, or moving incredibly slowly.
"There had been talk of mono-rails for several years. But the real mischief began when Brennan sprang his gyroscopic mono-rail car upon the Royal Society. It was the leading sensation of the 1907 soirees; that celebrated demonstration-room was all too small for its exhibition. [...] Inaudible, but convincing, the great inventor expounded his discovery, and sent his obedient little model of the trains of the future up gradients, round curves, and across a sagging wire. It ran along its single rail, on its single wheels, simple and sufficient; it stopped, reversed stood still, balancing perfectly. It maintained its astounding equilibrium amidst a thunder of applause. The audience dispersed at last, discussing how far they would enjoy crossing an abyss on a wire cable. "Suppose the gyroscope stopped!" Few of them anticipated a tithe of what the Brennan mono-rail would do for their railway securities and the face of the world.
"In a few years they realised better. In a little while no one thought anything of crossing an abyss on a wire, and the mono-rail was superseding the tram-lines, railways: and indeed every form of track for mechanical locomotion. Where land was cheap the rail ran along the ground, where it was dear the rail lifted up on iron standards and passed overhead; its swift, convenient cars went everywhere and did everything that had once been done along made tracks upon the ground."
- HG Wells, The War in the Air
Recent years have seen a revolution in transport across the globe. Never before has it been easier and more comfortable to travel from place to place. Mono-rail tracks span our countryside, allowing us to travel quickly, efficiently and safely. The English Channel has been bridged by a series of great Eiffel Tower pillars carrying mono-rail cables at a height of a hundred and fifty feet above the water, except near the middle, where they rise higher to allow the passage of shipping. The ill-made roads of the past, muddy in winter, dusty in summer, have been superseded by this masterpiece of modern engineering.
"It was his first experience of an oxygen-containing bullet. A great flame spurted from the middle of the Prince, a blinding flare, and there came a thud like the firing of a gun. Something hot and wet struck Bert's face. Then through a whirl of blinding smoke and steam he saw limbs and a collapsing, burst body fling themselves to earth."
- HG Wells, The War in the Air
Explosive bullets loaded with oxygen were first developed as an effective weapon against the hydrogen-filled Airships that proliferated at the beginning of the twentieth century. Intended to start fires within the gas bags that formed the main body of these Airships, they were also found to be extremely effective against human targets. Their explosive properties, combined with the pressurised oxygen within, combine with devastating consequences, easily sufficient to kill, or destroy a limb at the very least. These large cartridges, fired from a short-barelled rifle, were only accurate at limited range. That said, the enormous size of the early Airships meant that it was quite hard to miss one's target.
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last updated and validated
May 4, 1999. SHD