WILL FURNISH POWER
FOR AIRSHIP BY HAND.
J. D. DOUGLASS MACHINE IS
SHAPED LIKE A BAT.
Craft Is Designed to Actually Fly by
Movement of Planes Like
the Wings of a
Bird.
In a sign painter's establishment at 214 West Nineteenth street suspended to the ceiling is a motley array of bamboo poles, cogwheels, chains and strips of fine steel, apparently jumbled in such a way as to have the appearance of several umbrella frames thrown together.
When strips of cloth are attached to the bamboo poles, giving the apparatus twelve planes, it will have the appearance of a multiple winged bat. It will be, according to the inventor, J. D. Douglass, his first successful model of an actual flying machine, not an aeroplane.
For nine years Douglass has worked on flying machines. One after another he has knocked to pieces after he has found fault with parts considered by him to be important. This last machine, he declares, has exemplified every previous idea and it has been built so that these ideas will be carried out and their value easily ascertained.
When the machine is given a trial, which will be in a few weeks, Douglass will furnish the motive power with his hands and feet.
"If I succeed in rising from the ground I will be satisfied," said Mr. Douglass, "for then I will be sure my ideas as to aerial navigation and flight are compact. It will be an easy matter then for me to build a larger machine and to attach an engine which will give me the motive power."
The machine which will have the general sh ape of a bat will be twenty feet wide and about fifteen feet in length. Complete it will weigh less than 150 pounds and it will have twelve planes. These planes are all employed in the duty of raising and propelling the machine.
At the top of the machine will be two propellers which will revolve in opposite directions. These will give the machine the first lifting power. Once in the air, the planes come into motion and with the movements patterned after those of birds in flight, give the craft its propelling power.
Mr. Douglass is a retired farmer. Aviation has been a lifelong study with him. He thinks a great deal of the monoplane as well as the biplane, but also believes that when he has completed his aerial craft that his experiments will mark an epoch in the airship industry.
