CONQUEST OF THE AIR
A BISHOP'S EXPECTATIONS
The annual report on civil aviation,) together with Mr. Hughes's attempt to fly round the world, would hardly have satisfied Dr. John Wilkins, who was Bishop of Chester from 1668 to 1672, says the "Manchester Guardian." He was also .one of the founders of the Royal Society, and a strong advocate of aviation. Indeed, so firm a faith had he in that form of experimental science that he early published his "Discovery of a New World, With a Discourse Concerning the Possibility of a Passage to the Moon." Were he living now the good bishop and brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell (for such he was) must have found our aerial progress rather dilatory. He is extremely practical in his speculations and, estimating that the lunar voyage may be made in six months, proceeds to inquire how the aeronaut can forgo food and sleep. He dismisses Philo the Jew's suggestion that to such adventures the music of the spheres might supply the place of food; but recalls a nation in India mentioned by Plutarch i and Pliny as living on pleasing odours, and thinks the ethereal atmosphere I may be so pure as to vivify, With regard to the machine, he says: "I do seriously, ' and upon good grounds, affirm it possible to make a flying chariot, in which a man may sit and give such motion unto it as shall convey him through the air. And this, perhaps, might be made large enough to carry divers men at the same time, together with food for their viaticum, and commodities for traffic. It is not the bigness of anything in this kind that can hinder its motion, if the motive faculty be answerable thereunto. We see a great ship swims as well as a small cork, and an eagle flies in the air as well as a little gnat. This engine may be contrived from the same principle by which Archytas made a wooden dove, and Regiomontanus a wooden eagle."
These mechanical devices were to be employed if the great roc discovered by Marco Polo in Madagascar could not be requisitioned.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/EP19390616.2.172
Bibliographic details
Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 140, 16 June 1939, Page 18
Word Count
356CONQUEST OF THE AIR Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 140, 16 June 1939, Page 18
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