A CONVICT’S AERIAL SHIP.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XV, 11 April 1896, Page 401

A CONVICT’S AERIAL SHIP.

In the Kings County penitentary, says the New York Recorder, there is confined a man who claims that he has invented an aerial machine proved by many tests to be perfect in every respect. He has written to President Cleveland and the Secretary of the Interior, Hoke Smith, asking them to see that the Government give it a trial, and, if satisfactory, that the Government purchase the right to manufacture the machine. His ideas concerning its value are inflated. For the right to manufacture he asks the modest sum of / 5,000,000. This man is Victor L. Ochs. He is 35 years old, and he is a prisoner for endeavouring to create a revolution in Mexico about a year ago. He is of medium height, well built, and finely educated, apparently speaking French,ltalian, German, and Spanish with much fluency. By birth he is a Mexican ; but soon after he was born his parents settled in Texas, and he is an American citizen.

The value of the machine to the Government, in the estimation of its inventor, rests in its utility for the purposes of warfare. Heclaims that one of his air ships will be more effective than eighty battle-ships and will travel through the air at the rate of 300 miles an hour which, if possible, would be faster than any gale that ever swept the surface of the earth and fast enough to disrupt the machine itself.