Page 3 Advertisements Column 4

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9113, 19 December 1907, Page 3

The great wheel at Earl's Court, London, cost £60,000 to construct, and weighed 1100 tons. Marvellous as are the performances of the up-to-date ah-slup, it seems to be forgotten that similar feats were possible as long ago a 5.1884. On August 9 of that year J$M. Renard and Krebs, the former, being tlje. ofSqer in charge of the official balloon establishment at Chalais Meudon, succeeded for . the first time, in making a circular bal-loon-voya^eV With a cigar-shaped balloon, 150 ft long, propelled by a dynamo of eight-horse power, the aej-on^ijts travelled a distance of seven kilometres in twenty-three minutes, descending at the very spot frc^wlucb they had sthrted at Meudon. Later, on October 28, they made two equally successful voyages in t}ie air, rising and descending at will performing evolutions and travelling' against a fairly strong breeze, thus demonstrating what seems to be hailed as a very recent duKsovery. that, a balloon can be steered through the, air as easily as a ship oyer the seae.— !l ; •* Westminster Gazette. f