THE COMING OF THE HYDROPLANE.

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 42, 22 June 1908, Page 7

THE COMING OF THE HYDROPLANE.

The news that M. Santos Dumont has made a bet that in eight months ho will have constructed a hydroplane capable of travelling at a speed of sixty miles an hour, will doubtless come as a surprise to people who have not kept themselves acquainted with the latest developments of science in this direction.

The hydroplane is to the water, of course, what the aeroptlano is to the air. It aims at skimming along the surface of the sea, instead of laboriously plowing' its way through it, as does the ordinary ship or boat. When this aim is a fact accomplished, the whole science of navigation will be at once revolutionised, and new crack liners „pf the type of the "Lusitania" and "Mauretania” will become speedily obsolete. Of course this idea of a gliding craft, or hydroplane, is no new one. Indeed, so long ago as the year 1831 a Frenchman named Gfirpon built a sort of flat-bottomed boat for river navigation which was to all intents and purposes a hydroplane,, in that it drew less than an inch of water. Its means of propulsion were, however, ludicrously feeble, consisting as they did of small, old-fashioned engines working a ridiculous apparatus at the rear that resembled a fishe’s tail and fins combined.

Bazin’s famous hydroplane, launched in 1896 on the Seine, was really a steamer on wheels, each of the six wheels, again, being in effect a revolving keel. The idea was an ingenious one, but it failed lamentably when put 1 to a practical test.

• Since then the massive wheeled hydroplane has been supplanted by something altogether different. Dumont's new mode*, for example, will be cigarshaped, will be bui'lt entirely of aluminium and *wood, the latter reduced to a minimum, .and will be driven by c'ompressed ajr.