Adventure, December 1914 — page 18: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

16 safely directed machines where and when he © wanted it and could explode it at exactly the moment, when it would do the most damage.” He had risen and was pacing the room in excitement. “Come out here,” he added, you the real thing.” Sinclair led the way to a concrete and sheet-iron hangar down the terrace toward the water’s edge. As he directed, a miechanian wheeled the aeroplane out on the runway in front of the hangar. <7 “This is the gyroscope,” began Sinclair, pointing out a thing encased in an alumi- num sheath which weighed, all told, per- haps fourteen or fifteen pounds. “You understand,” he continued, ‘“‘the gyroscope is really a flywheel mounted on gimbals and can turn on any of its axes so that it can assume any angle in space. When it’s at rest, like this, you can turn it easily. But when it is set revolving, it tends to persist always in the plane in which it was started rotating.” I took hold of it and it did turn readily in any direction that I desired. I could feel, as I turned it, the heavy little flywheel inside. “There is a pretty high vacuum in that aluminum case,” went on Sinclair. ‘“There’s very little friction on that account. The power to rotate the flywheel is obtained from this little dynamo here, run by the gas-engine which also turns the propellers of the aeroplane.” “But, suppose the engine should stop?” I asked sceptically. ‘How about the gyro- scope?” “Tt will go right on for several minutes. You know the Brennan monorail-car will stand up some time after the power is shut off. And I carry a small storage-battery that will run the gyroscope for some time too. That’s all been guarded against.”’ He was the typical inventor, optimistic. Sinclair cranked the engine, a seven-cylin- dered affair, with the cylinders sticking out like the spokes of a wheel without a rim. The propellers turned so fast that I could not see the blades—turned with that strong, steady, fierce, droning buzz that can be heard a long distance and which is a thrill- ing sound to hear, wafted on the Summer breeze as if a hundred giant cicadas had broken loose to predict warm weather. “T’ll show Adventure The inventor reached over and attached the little dynamo, at the same time setting the gyroscope at its proper angle and start- ing it. ‘This is the mechanical brain of my new flyer,’ he remarked, patting the round alu- minum case almost lovingly. ‘You can look in through this little window of glass which I have let into the case, and you can see the flywheel inside revolving—ten thou- sand revolutions a minute. Press down on it,” he shouted to me. As I placed both hands on the case of the apparently frail instrument, he added— “You remember how easily you moved it just a moment ago.” I pressed down with all my strength. Then I literally raised myself off my feet, resting my two hands on the case about the gyroscope. That uncanny little instrument seemed to resent—there is no other word that expresses it quite so well—resent my very touch. It was almost human, petulant with interference. Instead of yielding, it actually rose on the side I was pressing down! Colonel Sinclair laughed at the puzzled look on my face. I took my hands off and the gyroscope leisurely and nonchalantly resumed its original position. “Without going into the theory of the thing,” explained Sinclair, ‘‘those are the properties I use—applied to the rudder and the ailerons—those little flat planes at the ends, between the two large main planes. That gives me automatic stability for the machine. I’m not going to take time to ex- plain how it is done. But it is in the combi- nation of the various parts that I have dis- covered the basic principle.” “How about the wireless control?” asked Kennedy, to whom the gyroscope was in- teresting but not new. “T don’t know whether you are familiar with the theory of wireless telegraphy or not,” began Sinclair, to which Kennedy nodded an affirmative, forgetful of the rest of us. “But it has gone ahead fast during the past few years. The reason? Simple— very simple! In wireless telegraphy they have been able to discard coherers and relays and to use detectors of various kinds and microphones in their places. ‘“‘But in wireless telautomatics it is dif- ferent. There we have been compelled to keep the coherer. ‘That has been the trouble, that has been the thing that has MICLOOOK (© in