5fish
Captain
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Location
- Central Florida
[Q
UOTE="John Hartwell, post: 1971624, member: 5391"]
There a whole story behind Davidson's Artisavis... a con man he was... maybe he is the inventor of steampunk! Its a short artcle and worth a read and laugh... some snippets to wet your imagination...
http://www.beyondthecrater.com/news...-artis-avis-and-a-nineteenth-century-con-man/
Snippets...
By January 1864, Davidson was reduced to appealing to the Quartermaster General’s Office of the Confederate Army, and to the public at large through newspapers. Attempting to capture the imagination of the masses, Davidson published an article in the Richmond Daily Dispatch that Billy Mitchell would have been proud to claim: “let it be supposed that…1,000 of these Birds of Art were stationed at a point five miles distant from a hostile military camp, fortification, or fleet of war vessels; that each Artisavis was supplied with a fifty pound explosive shell, and being started singly, or two or three abreast, going out and dropping those destructive missiles from a point of elevation beyond the reach of the enemy’s guns, then returning to the place of departure and reloading, and thus continuing the movement at the rate of 100 miles per hour. It will be seen that within the period of twelve hours, one hundred and fifty thousand death dealing bombs, could be thus thrown down upon the foe, a force that no defensive art on land, however solid, could withstand even for a single day; while exposed armies and ships would be almost instantly destroyed, without the least chance of escape.”
Snippet...
Davidson had a history as an “aeronautical engineer,” using the terms loosely, a history that far predated the war, a history he avoided. In 1840, he published a Disclosure of the Discovery and Invention, and a Description of the Plan of Construction and Mode of Operation of the Aerostat: or a New Mode of Aerostation. Davidson’s “Aerostat” invention was a “flapping wing machine,” patterned after the American eagle, with an attached hot air balloon. The balloon would lift a “car,” and an operator, seated in the car, would manually flap the attached wings to manage the contraption’s descent.
Snippet...
In response to Davidson’s “invention,” an anonymous “Member of the L.L.B.B.” (Louisville, Kentucky, Literary Brass Band) published a small book, The Great Steam Duck: Or A Concise Description of a Most Useful and Extraordinary Invention for Aerial Navigation. The Steam Duck opened by pointing out an 1833 publication authored by H. Straight, of New York, describing an invention nearly identical to Davidson’s, whose 1840 publication thus represented neither a “discovery” nor anything “new.” The author panned Straight’s/Davidson’s entire concept as impractical, then proceeded to describe a superior flying machine, a “flying duck,” measuring fifteen feet by six feet. The cabin of the Duck would be constructed of a hickory frame, covered in canvas; the wings of whalebone and silk; a steam engine, located in the craw of the beast, powered the wings; and a “scap pipe” was located under the duck’s tail. After describing the design of the “Steam Duck” in explicit detail, the author disavowed the plan and grouped the whole notion with Davidson’s work as impractical fakes. The author had some idea of the many technical advances required before powered, manned flight could be realized.
Snippet...
Wartime descriptions leave little doubt that “Artis Avis” was merely the “Great Steam Duck,” presented as a farce twenty years earlier, with a few cosmetic changes and a trapdoor. Colonel Coward wasn’t the only skeptic; Simms concluded, “I should as soon look for perpetual motion to be invented as for one of Davidson’s birds to rise and fly…I never gave him anything, he received from the Brigade one hundred and twenty seven dollars – pretty liberal patronage for a humbug.” Another soldier’s reminiscence provides insight into the minds of the hundreds of Confederate soldiers who fell prey to Davidson’s presentations: “I didn’t have any money to give, but I was sure anxious to see that man stampede the Yankee army.”