Читать книгу Robur the Conqueror - Jules Verne - Страница 11

CHAPTER

2

In which the members of the Weldon Institute dispute without managing to reach an agreement

“And the first to say otherwise—”

“Oh really! … But people will say otherwise, if ever they need to!”

“Yes, despite all your threats! …”

“Watch your language, Bat Fyn!”

“And yours, Uncle Prudent!”

“I say the propeller must not be in the back!”

“So do we! … So do we! …” replied fifty voices, mingled in common accord.

“No! It must be in the front!” shouted Phil Evans.

“In the front!” replied fifty other voices, with a vigor no less remarkable.

“We’ll never be of the same mind!”

“Never! … Never!”

“Then what good is it to argue?”

“This isn’t an argument, it’s a discussion!”

That was difficult to believe, given the polemics, the insults, the vociferations, that had permeated the hall for a good quarter of an hour at least.

This hall, it is true, was the largest one in the Weldon Institute¹—a club celebrated among all others, situated in Walnut Street, in Philadelphia, state of Pennsylvania, United States of America.

Now the previous evening, in that city, on the subject of the election of a gas lighter, there had been public demonstrations, noisy meetings, punches exchanged between sides. Hence, a wild agitation that had still not abated, and which perhaps explains the overexcited state the members of the Weldon Institute have just displayed. And yet, this was nothing more than a simple gathering of “balloonians,” debating the question—still a gripping one, even in that era—of how to steer balloons.

It was occurring in an American city whose rapid development surpasses even that of New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, or San Francisco—a city that is neither a port, nor a center for mining oil or petroleum, nor an industrial hub, nor a terminus for a group of railroads—a city larger than Berlin, Manchester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, Dublin—a city that possesses a park in which all seven parks in the capital of England could fit together—a city, finally, that currently counts almost twelve hundred thousand souls and calls itself the fourth city in the world, after London, Paris, and New York.

Philadelphia is almost a city of marble, with its grand houses and unrivaled public establishments. The most important of all New World high schools is Girard College, and it is in Philadelphia. The largest iron bridge in the world is the bridge over the Schuylkill River, and it is in Philadelphia. The most beautiful temple of Freemasonry is the Masonic Temple, and it is in Philadelphia. Finally, the biggest club for enthusiasts of aerial navigation is in Philadelphia. And if one wants to pay it a visit during that meeting of June 12, perhaps one will find some amusement in what one sees.

In this great hall bustled, thrashed, gesticulated, talked, discussed, disputed—all with hats on their heads—some hundred balloonians, under the high authority of a president assisted by a secretary and a treasurer. It must not be supposed that these balloonians were professional engineers. No; they were simple aficionados of all that pertained to aerostatics, but rabidly enthusiastic aficionados, and particularly sworn enemies of those who opposed balloons with “heavier-than-air” apparatuses, whether flying machines, aerial ships, or other crafts. That these good people may never find a means of steering balloons is possible. In any case, their president had some difficulty in steering them.

This president, well-known in Philadelphia, was the famous Uncle Prudent—Prudent being his family name. As for the designation Uncle, that is unsurprising in America, where one can be an uncle without having either nephew or niece. People are called Uncle there, as elsewhere people are called Father who have never undertaken a work of paternity.

Uncle Prudent was a distinguished personage, and, despite his name, known for his audacity. Very rich, which does one no harm, even in the United States. And how could he not be rich, given that he owned a large fraction of stock in Niagara Falls? In that era, a society of engineers had been founded at Buffalo for the exploitation of the cataracts. Business boomed. The 7,500 cubic meters that the Niagara discharges per second produced seven million horsepower. This enormous force, distributed to all the factories built within a radius of five hundred kilometers, made for an annual saving of fifteen hundred million francs, part of which came back to the society’s funds, and in particular into Uncle Prudent’s pockets.² Moreover, he was a bachelor, and lived simply, having no domestic staff but his valet Frycollin, who hardly merited serving so daring a master. Such anomalies happen.

That Uncle Prudent had friends, since he was rich, goes without saying; but he also had enemies, since he was the president of the club—among others, all those who envied that position. And among the fiercest of those enemies, one must mention the secretary of the Weldon Institute.

This was Phil Evans, himself very rich, for he directed the Walton Watch Company, an important factory that makes five thousand watch movements each day and delivers products comparable to the best mechanisms in Switzerland. Phil Evans could therefore have passed for one of the happiest men in the world, or even in the United States, were it not for Uncle Prudent’s situation. Like Uncle Prudent, he was forty-five years old; like him, endowed with indestructible health; like him, undeniably daring; like him, largely uninterested in trading the certain advantages of celibacy for the more doubtful ones of marriage. Here were two men well fitted for understanding each other, but that was exactly what they did not do. And both of them, it must be said, were extremely violent in character: Uncle Prudent hotly, and Phil Evans coldly.

And on what grounds had Phil Evans not been appointed club president? The votes were split exactly between him and Uncle Prudent. Twenty times they had been recounted, and twenty times no majority had appeared for either the one or the other. An embarrassing situation, which might outlast even the lives of the two candidates.

Then one of the members of the club proposed a means of breaking the tie. This was Jem Cip, the treasurer of the Weldon Institute. Jem Cip was a devout vegetarian, in other words one of those herbivores who forbid all animal food and all fermented liquor, half-Brahman, half-Muslim, a rival of those Newmans, Pitmans, Wards, and Davies who have won renown for that sect of harmless crackpots.³

On this occasion, Jem Cip was supported by another club member, William T. Forbes, the director of a large factory, where glucose was produced by treating cloth with sulfuric acid—which allows one to make sugar out of old rags.⁴ He was a man of high standing, this William T. Forbes, the father of two charming spinsters, Miss Dorothy, called Doll, and Miss Martha, called Mat, who set the tone in the best circles of Philadelphia society.⁵

And so from Jem Cip’s proposal, seconded by William T. Forbes and several others, the decision was made to appoint the club president using the “midpoint method.”

In truth, this system of election could well be applied to any case where the worthiest candidate must be chosen, and numerous sensible Americans were already thinking of using it to nominate the president of the United States.

On two easel boards entirely white, a black line had been traced. The length of each of these lines was mathematically equal, for they had been determined with as much exactitude as if the problem involved the base of the first triangle in a work of triangulation. That done, the two boards were unveiled on the same day in the middle of the meeting hall, and each of the two competitors armed himself with a fine needle and marched simultaneously to the board allotted him. Whichever of the two rivals planted his needle closer to the middle of the line would be proclaimed president of the Weldon Institute.

Needless to say, the operation had to be done in one go, without points of reference, without trial and error, by sheer accuracy of sight alone. Keep a compass in your eye, as the popular expression goes; all else hung on that.

Uncle Prudent planted his needle, at the same time that Phil Evans planted his. Then they were measured, so as to determine which of the two competitors was closer to the midpoint.

O prodigious event! Such was the precision of the operators that the measures showed no discernible difference at all. Even if they had not marked the exact mathematical center of the line, the distance between the two needles was imperceptible. They appeared to be equally close.

Hence, great embarrassment from the assembly.

Fortunately, one of the members, Truk Milnor, insisted that the measurements be carried out again, using a ruler marked by the process of Monsieur Perreaux’s micrometrical machine, which allows the millimeter to be divided into fifteen hundred parts.⁶ This ruler, with its fifteen-hundredths of a millimeter etched in with a sliver of diamond, served to remeasure; and after reading out the divisions using a microscope, the following results were obtained:

Uncle Prudent had missed the midpoint by six fifteen-hundredths of a millimeter, Phil Evans by nine fifteen-hundredths.

And that was why Phil Evans was merely the secretary of the Weldon Institute, while Uncle Prudent was declared president of the club.

A difference of three fifteen-hundredths of a millimeter: no more was needed for Phil Evans to hate Uncle Prudent with one of those hatreds that, though latent, are no less ferocious.⁷

In that era, since the experiments undertaken in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the question of dirigible balloons had made some progress. Baskets fitted with propulsion propellers, hung in 1852 from elongated aerostats by Henri Giffard, in 1872 by Dupuy de Lôme, in 1883 by the brothers Messrs. Tissandier, in 1884 by Captains Krebs and Renard, had given certain results that should be taken into account.⁸ But if these machines, plunged into a milieu heavier than they were, maneuvered by power from a propeller, tilting with the course of the wind, even changing direction with a contrary breeze and returning to their starting point, can really be said to have been steered, they had only succeeded thanks to extremely favorable circumstances. In vast halls with walls and roofs, perfect! In calm atmospheres, very good! With a light wind of five or six meters a second, still passable! But, all things considered, nothing really practical had yet been achieved. Against enough wind to power a windmill—eight meters per second—these machines remained almost stationary; against a fresh breeze—ten meters per second—they traveled backward; against a storm—twenty-five to thirty meters per second—they were carried off like feathers; in the midst of a hurricane—forty-five meters per sec-ond—they ran the risk of being smashed to pieces; and, in one of those cyclones that surpass a hundred meters per second, they would have disappeared without a trace.

Uncle Prudent planted his needle.

So it remained clear that, even after the groundbreaking experiments by Captains Krebs and Renard, if dirigible balloons had gained a little in speed, they still needed every bit of that speed to hold up against a mere breeze. Hence the impossibility, so far, of putting such means of aerial travel to practical use.

Be that as it may, beyond the problem of steering balloons—that is to say, considering the means used to give them their own speed—much faster progress had been made in the question of motors. Henri Giffard’s steam-powered machines, Dupuy de Lôme’s use of muscular force, had gradually given way to motors run by electricity. Batteries of potassium dichromate, forming storage cells mounted in series, gave the brothers Messrs. Tissandier a speed of four meters per second. Dynamoelectric machines, driven by Captains Krebs and Renard at twelve horsepower, produced a speed of six and a half meters, on average.

And then, in the way of motors, engineers and electricians had tried to come closer and closer to that desideratum one might call “horsepower in a pocket watch.”⁹ So, little by little, the effects of the battery that Captains Krebs and Renard kept secret were surpassed, and aeronauts were able to use motors whose lightness increased with their power.

So there was much to encourage those who believed in the practicality of dirigible balloons. And yet how many bright minds refused to admit that practicality! The fact is, if an aerostat finds a point of support in midair, it belongs to the same milieu in which the whole apparatus is immersed. In such conditions, how could its mass, fighting the currents of the atmosphere, hold up against even moderate winds, no matter how powerful its propeller?

That was still the question; but there was hope of resolving it, by employing apparatuses of large dimension.

The question of balloons

Now it happened that, in this fight between inventors in search of a light and powerful motor, the Americans were the closest to the famous desideratum. A dynamoelectric apparatus, based on the use of a new kind of battery, the composition of which was still a mystery, had been bought from its inventor, a Boston chemist hitherto unknown. Calculations made with the greatest care, diagrams plotted out with the strictest exactitude, demonstrated that with this apparatus, powering a propeller of appropriate dimensions, one could obtain movements of eighteen or twenty meters per second.

In truth, that would be magnificent!

“And it isn’t expensive either!” Uncle Prudent had added, giving the inventor, in exchange for his receipt in due form, the final packet of the hundred thousand paper dollars they were paying for his invention.

The Weldon Institute set to work immediately. When an experiment is proposed that might have some practical utility, cash flows willingly out of American pockets. Funds abounded, without it even becoming necessary to form a stock company. Three hundred thousand dollars—a sum equivalent to fifteen hundred thousand francs—came at the first call and piled itself up in the club coffers. Work began under the direction of the most celebrated aeronaut in the United States, Harry W. Tinder, immortalized by three of his thousand ascensions: one in which he rose to twelve thousand meters, higher than Guy-Lussac, Coxwell, Sivel, Crocé-Spinelli, Tissandier, or Glaisher; another in which he crossed the whole of America from New York to San Francisco, surpassing by several hundred leagues the flights of Nadar, Godard, and so many others, not to mention John Wise, who traveled 1,150 miles from St. Louis to Jefferson County; the third, finally, ending in a horrific fall of fifteen hundred feet, the only injury from which was a mere sprain of the right wrist¹⁰—whereas the less fortunate Pilâtre de Rozier, after falling only seven hundred feet, was killed instantly.

At the moment this story begins, one can already judge how smoothly the Weldon Institute has handled its affairs. In the Turner construction sites in Philadelphia,¹¹ an enormous balloon lay spread out, its sturdiness about to be tested by cramming it with air under high pressure. This, above all others, merited the name of monster-balloon.

How large in fact was Nadar’s Géant? Six thousand cubic meters. And John Wise’s balloon? Twenty thousand cubic meters. And the Giffard balloon at the Exposition of 1878? Twenty-five thousand cubic meters, with a radius of eighteen meters. Compare these three aerostats with the Weldon Institute’s balloon, whose volume figured at forty thousand cubic meters, and you shall see that Uncle Prudent and his colleagues had some right to be puffed up with pride.

The third ascension ended in a horrific fall.

This balloon, not being destined to explore the highest reaches of the atmosphere, was not named Excelsior, a designation a little too much in honor among American citizens. No! It was named simply Go Ahead—and all that remained for it to do was to justify its name by obeying all the steering commands of its captain.

At this point, the dynamoelectric machine was almost entirely completed, built from the patented plans the Weldon Institute had acquired. Before six weeks were out, the Go Ahead could be expected to take flight into space.

However, as we have seen, not all the mechanical difficulties were yet resolved. Meeting upon meeting had been devoted to discussing, not the shape of the propeller nor its dimensions, but whether it would be placed in the back of the apparatus, following the Tissandier brothers, or in the front, following Captains Krebs and Renard. It is unnecessary to add that, in this discussion, the supporters of the two systems were at each other’s throats. The group of “Frontists” was equal in number to that of the “Backists.” Uncle Prudent—whose duty it was to make the casting vote in cases of deadlock—Uncle Prudent no doubt had been a pupil in the school of Professor Buridan, for he had not managed to make up his mind.¹²

So it was impossible to come to terms, impossible to put the propeller in place. This could have gone on a long time, unless the government intervened. But in the United States, as everyone knows, the government does not at all enjoy meddling in private affairs, nor mixing itself up in things that do not pertain to it.

Since that was the state of affairs, the meeting on July 13 threatened to never end, or rather to end in the midst of the most horrific commotion—insults exchanged, punches following insults, stick fights following punches, gunfire following stick fights—when, at 8:37, there was an interruption.

The usher at the Weldon Institute, coolly and calmly, like a policeman amid the thunderstorms of a political meeting, had approached the president’s desk. He presented a card, and awaited whatever orders it would suit Uncle Prudent to give.

Uncle Prudent sounded the steam horn that served him as a presidential bell, for even the bell at the Kremlin would not have been enough for him!¹³ But the tumult only continued to increase. Then the president went so far as to doff his hat, and a half-silence was obtained, thanks to this drastic measure.

“A communication!” said Uncle Prudent, after taking an enormous pinch of snuff from the snuffbox that never left his side.

“Speak! Speak!” replied ninety-nine voices—as chance would have it, all in agreement on this point.

“A stranger, my dear colleagues, asks to be introduced into our meeting hall.”

“Never!” returned all the voices.

“He wishes to prove to us, it seems,” Uncle Prudent went on, “that to believe in the navigability of balloons is to believe in the most absurd utopia.”¹⁴

A groan greeted this declaration.

“Let him enter! … Let him enter!”

“What’s the name of this singular personage?” asked the secretary Phil Evans.

“Robur,” replied Uncle Prudent.¹⁵

“Robur! … Robur! … Robur!” bellowed the whole assembly.

And, if agreement was so rapidly given to this singular name, it was because those in the Weldon Institute had high hopes of unleashing their rage on the man who bore it in an outpouring of exasperation.

So the storm was calmed for an instant—in appearance at least. Besides, how could a storm really be calmed among a people who send two or three of them every month toward Europe, in the form of squalls at sea?