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points its nose upward, and Knabenshue. tips his hat to the wildly yelling crowd as the ship lightly clears the Stadium wall and continues its flight onward and upward. Higher and higher it sailseasily, majestically. All the Fair grounds are in a wild turmoil of hurrying, applauding people. They rush from the main buildings and the Pike and the State buildings, out into the plazas and avenues. They run to follow the flight of the ship, which wheels and turns in air as gracefully as a sea gull. Knabenshue waves his hat at the throngs below; and they in response send up to greet him a mighty din of cheers, such as the World's Fair has never heard before. Still higher and higher he soars, the people's cheers becoming fainter and fainter, until at length he is beyond the hearing of them, and he sails in the quiet and peaceful ethereal regions between earth and sky which it has been the happiness of few men to invade. Two thousand feet above earth he soars. The people below look to him like moping insects, while his ship to them resembles a huge bird without wings. The report has reached the city, and people rush to their porches and into the streets, and climb to the roofs of their homes and to the top of the sky-scrapers to see.

Knabenshue sails first to the northeast

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THOMAS S. BALDWIN, OF SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. Designer and Constructor of the "Arrow."

restless and anxious to begin its upward flight. In the meantime, Baldwin, as his own navigator, had attempted to sail the machine and had failed. Knabenshue now seats himself on the narrow wooden seat. He tests the engine and tries the steering apparatus.

"Let her go!" he shouts. Baldwin orders the guy ropes cut. Like a racehorse when the line is lowered, the airship plunges forward. It rises above the heads of the crowd, its prow toward the west. Knabenshue turns the rudder; and the craft, answering to its helm, turns toward the south. It is going fast, and is flying too low to clear the fence which it is rapidly nearing. The people hold their breath. "It will be dashed to pieces!" they exclaim. Knabenshue again adjusts the propeller. The balloon now

CAPT. PERCY HUDSON. In Charge of Aeronautics at Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

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and then to the southeast, now making complete turns in his flight, now describing the letter S. He continues in a generally easterly direction until over the Cascades, which are in the center of the Fair grounds and one and a-half miles in a direct line from the point of starting. Now the barely perceptible breeze that had been blowing from the northwest has increased to eight miles an hour. Knabenshue must breast the wind to return.

He tries to turn the airship from before the wind, without success. Will he fail and be wafted on into space? Several times he attempts to turn to the left. Suddenly he swings the rudder sharply in the other direction. The Arrow comes into the wind, staggers a moment, and then, gaining power, comes toward the concourse at a speed that brings new roars of cheering. Without deviation the craft continues in the teeth of the wind, and even gains speed. It has approached to within a few hundred yards of the concourse. Knabenshue moves forward, and the Arrow responds immediately to the downward shift. It sails toward the grounds without diminishing its speed. It is now but 200 feet above the crowd, and the aëronaut again comes into the atmosphere vibrating with the cheers of the multitude. Knabenshue slows the Arrow's speed, and sends the craft directly over the wooden trestles that had supported it before its flight. He misses the trestles, and the airship settles gracefully to the ground within 100 feet from where it had started. The crowds press around, and lifting Knabenshue to their shoulders, carry him about in triumph.

Knabenshue's trip covered 32 miles, not including short circles, in twentyeight minutes; and for nearly half the time the machine had advanced steadily against the eight-mile breeze, at a height of 2,000 feet.

KNABENSHUE ON THE "ARROW" JUST AFTER IT WAS CUT LOOSE.

The daring little aëronaut had now turned his partial failure of a week previous into an unqualified success. The engine this time worked without mishap. From its first lunge into the air, the ship behaved splendidly; and it was only for an instant, at the time of turning into the wind, that she showed any appearance of hesitation in response to the coaxing of her rudder.

The newspapers that were apathetic as to Baldwin's claims before the flight of the Arrow, now rang with praises of his and Knabenshue's achievement.

A second successful flight of the airship was made the next day. Knabenshue maneuvered the Arrow at will above the western part of the Exposition

SEVEN-HORSE-POWER GASOLINE ENGINE USED IN BALDWIN AIRSHIP.

ing flights in all directions, the navigator performed a series of short manoeuvers, shooting in one direction for a short distance, turning quickly, and then shooting off in the opposite direction; traversing a letter S course, dipping, and descending several hundred feet; tilting the prow, and ascending again to the original altitude. He completed the series by turning the airship in so short a space that it seemed as if the vessel swung round on a pivot.

Since this success, the Baldwin ship and others have figured in many sensational escapades at the World's Fair, with all of which the newspaper reading public is familiar. While Captain Baldwin has experienced considerable ill luck,

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The engine is of a type originally designed for an automobile, and is supplied principally because of his

with gasoline from the tank shown near top of picture. There are two speed reductions by means of chain and sprocket wheels, as shown.

grounds, and descended in the Stadium, adjoining the aërial concourse, amid cheering thousands, after a flight of thirty-six minutes. He ascended 1,600 feet, and after directing the course of the aerial vessel in graceful evolutions, descended on the exact spot he had chosen. Lightly as a bird, the airship rose above the heads of the cheering spectators and proceeded due north.

After

reaching an altitude of 300 feet, Knabenshue swept his rudder to veer the Arrow to the south. Almost before the rudder had completed the turn, the Arrow began to respond, and slowly swung around in a circle until its prow pointed to the southwest against the wind. Then Knabenshue tilted the prow upward, and ascended further. He threw out some sand and stood toward the rear of the framework, tilting the prow at a greater angle. Like an arrow the machine sped toward the sky until an altitude of 1,600 feet had been reached. After several long, sweep

motor, nothing has happened to disprove his claims that his airship is perfectly dirigible. This question was settled for all time by Knabenshue in his varied evolutions in the air, both with and against the wind.

Once it was reported that the Arrow was lost in the sky, and there was general regret at the Exposition and throughout the country; but the Arrow was found the next day in a cornfield sixteen miles northwest of the World's Fair grounds. The motor of the ship had failed because of the blowing out of a small metal cap while the craft was high in the air. The crowds could see the silver-colored blades hanging motionless, while the airship was again grasped by the breeze and hurried back over the distance it had won in its duel with the wind. Two accidents of this kind happened on that day. After the first, the airship landed safely about a mile and a-half northeast of the concourse; and after the second, it came to the ground four miles to the westward.

As it was impossible to repair the motor there, an attempt was made to lead the balloon back to the concourse by ropes, while it remained suspended about half full of gas. In attempting to pass the prow of the craft over a trolley wire, the men accidentally loosened their hold simultaneously of the two ropes by which it was being hauled, and the ship bounded off into the atmosphere and was gone. It was soon lost to sight in the darkness; and no attempt was made to recover it until the next morning, when it found and was brought back in a farm wagon. The drag ropes had caught in a tree during the flight of the airship, but the craft had broken loose by wrenching off a limb. This limb proved to be a drag, and probably caused the craft to bump along the ground until it landed in a ravine without sufficient buoyancy to rise above the ridge on either side.

Later tests of the Arrow have further demonstrated its merits. It is these first triumphs, however, that are especially deserving of mention, because of the wonderful interest they have aroused throughout the country, and of the great surprise they have afforded as a result of the earlier repeated failures. They are, however, but an earnest of greater things to come. With American inventive genius exerting itself in this direction, there is reason to hope that a practicable solution of the vexed problem of aërial navigation will soon be reached.

Baldwin's achievement has demonstrated the use to which dirigible balloons might be put in warfare. With the aid of a swinging tube which could be kept perpendicular by force of gravity, an aëronaut could drop explosives with absolute accuracy, on any spot desired. Suppose, then, that the balloon could float several torpedoes - which seems practicable — or

that a whole fleet of balloons were used. In such an event, no fortress could withstand the attack, no army could avoid being totally demoralized, and any city could be reduced to ruins in a few hours.

So impressed was The Hague tribunal with the possibilities which Baldwin now has demonstrated to be probabilities, that that body, prior to its adjournment in July, 1899, entered into an agreement restricting for a period of five years the employment of balloons in warfare. The lack of precision was then the only objection urged against the feasibility of the dynamite balloon in warfare, it being feared that their use might expose noncombatants to indiscriminate danger. Even at that time, however, it was freely predicted that this objection would soon be obviated. The period of inhibition has expired at practically the same time that Baldwin has demonstrated the dirigible balloon to be a success. It should nevertheless be borne in mind that improvements in the art of war are always followed by counter-improvements which prevent them from being decisive. It is the old story of the walled city for protection against the javelin and the dart, the fortress against the battleship, the steel armor-plate against the projectile, and

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A NARROW SHAVE-CLEARING FENCE SURROUNDING ENCLOSURE.

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the torpedo net and the submarine wireless telephone against the submarine torpedo-boat. It is therefore reasonable to expect that if something is not invented. to puncture airships threatening an army or city, then opposing airships will be built and there will be a war of airship against airship, and battles will be fought in the clouds.

Knabenshue, after his second great victory, said:

"It is great sport-sailing an airship. It is the finest of all sports; and once aboard the aërial craft, riding through the air high above the earth, with the vessel answering perfectly every move of the operator, you feel as if you never want to come down.

"It is difficult to describe the sensations of a person when he is thousands of feet in the air riding such a little racer as the Arrow. The only way I can describe mine is to say

that they were feelings of pure gladness to be away up, scudding like the arrow that the ship is. When the aeronaut reaches the height where the cheers of the crowd beneath are unheard, and all below and around him are the vastness and silence, he feels as he never has felt or could feel on land or sea. There is a realization of the immensity of the universe, and of the littleness of man and his possessions. The pompous person of millions, and the proud leader of men, who walk the earth in their greatness amid the gazes of envy and admiration, look as small as any others from that height at which all men appear like moping ants and their abodes like ant-hills. The feeling that possesses you is one of pure pleasure and contentment. You realize why the birds are happy, and comprehend the appropriateness of picturing angels with wings. I guess, without meaning to pun, that it is a feeling of exaltation, and that is about as near as it can be described to one who has never made the trip.'

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