AN AERONAUT'S CAREER.

Press, Volume XLVI, Issue 7262, 23 January 1889, Page 5

AN AERONAUT'S CAREER.

INTERVIEW WITH PEOFESSOB

BALDWIN^

[BY OUR SPECIAL REPORTER.} During the course of a long professional career, and particularly as an interviewer, it has fallen to my dot to meet all sorts and conditions of men. I have fraternised with wool kings, me£ star actors, eminent financiers and distinguished visitors of all kinds, but I had never until yesterday met a gentleman who can claim to descend from 4000 or 5000 ft high. ProfessOp Baldwin, whose wonderful performance with the parachute has already been wit* nessed in Dunedin, and who makes his first drop here to-night at the Agricultural and Pastoral Association Grounds, Addington, arrived last night, and in the course of an interview he furnished some interesting particulars. The Professor himself is an athletic-looking young man of middle height with a determined look, as one having a strong nerve. " I commenced my career as an aeronaut," said Professor Baldwin, " in San Francisco in 1887, when I was engaged in going up with captive balloons. The idea struck mc that to jump off the balloon with a parachute and land safely would be a sensation. How to do it was, however, the difficulty. I set to work experimenting, and tried quite a number of times. Up to the time I had conceived the idea the notion of parachuting was that the parachute should be distended before starting, but this proved disastrous to the operators, because the column of air caused by the descent got under the ribs of the parachute, and having no means of escape' caused it to osculate. In fact the danger was that the parachute would get under the man. However, I conceived the idea of taking all the ribs out, and having a hole at the top, in order to allow of the air i escaping. This I found by experiment to j be a success, and I made my first drop with the new parachute about three weeks before my public appearance in San Francisco. The first drop I made was from a balloon one thousand feet high, and the parachute dropped one hundred feet before it opened. The drop was a complete success. I then travelled east. My first experi ments were with a captive balloon, but as you will see to-morrow night I have now made an arrangement whereby I collapse the balloon after I leave it. I travelled through the States giving my performance, and went to England in July 1888, making my first appearance in England at the Alexandra Palace, on July 16th. As I have said I have devised a plan to collapse the balloon, and this took mc more tune to think out and perfect than the jump, as I had never heard of a man collapsing a balloon in the air. It was rather a ticklish thing the first time I did it, as I did not know what was going to happen, and the balloon, as it was, very nearly came on top of mc. I gave thirty* n hie performances altogether in England, thirty of them being at the Alexandra Palace, and one in the country. At one of i my performances I drew 75,000 people. Whilst in Quincey, Illinois, I had two medals presented to mc. One, as you will see, is a large golden model of a balloon with a parachute, and a, model of myself hanging to it, and bears the inscription, 'July4th, 1887. T. S, Baldwin; 4500 feet.' That alludes to the height of my jump whilst there. You will also see a medal from the Knights of Pythias in the same city. The third medal was presented to mc by the Balloon Society of Great Britain, and is considered a great honor for an aeronaut.

After a little conversation about the medals, the Professor went on to describe his parachute and balloon. "The parachute," said he, "is Indian Tussore~silk% and is 22ft in diameter. At the end of the parachute is a ring, to which I hang, and above this again is a hoop. The velocity of my fall distends the parachute, at the top is the hole I referred to, in order to allow of the column of air escaping. The balloon is one of the lightest made, holding some 12,000 ft to 14,000 ft of gas. At the bottom below the neck of the balloon is a rope swing, on which I sit, and above is the parachute. So soon as I have reached the height I require I climb up to the parachute, and jump off, at the same time pulling a cord which opens a seam of the balloon and collapses it. I then come down to the ground, descending gently." As will be seen by advertisement elsewhere Professor Baldwin makes his first ascent in christchurch at a quarter past six o'clock to-night.