Air ShipIn 1900, John F. Pickering, of Gonaives, Haiti, received a U.S. patent for his design of an air ship or launch (No. 643,975). It combined a "balloon, an attached car carrying a motor and a propeller, fans driven by the motor, air-pipes provided with bent, movable outlets leading both upward and downward from the fans and extending through the balloon and the bottom of the car, and means for shifting the blast of the fan to either upward or downward air-pipes." The operator would also be in control of "the propulsion horizontally or at any desired angle with relation to the horizon ... or the turning of the same to any desired point of the compass." |
