Page:My Airships.djvu/80

 petroleum or other. Even condensing the water, you cannot have less than several kilogrammes per horse-power. Then if one uses coal fuel with the steam-motor there are the burning sparks; while if one uses petroleum with burners you have a great amount of fire. We must do the petroleum motor the justice to admit that it makes neither flame nor burning sparks. At the present moment I have a Clement petroleum motor that weighs but 2 kilogrammes (4$\tfrac{1}{2}$ lbs.) per horse-power. This is my 60 horse-power "No. 7," whose total weight is but 120 kilogrammes (264 lbs.). Compare this with the new steel-and-nickel battery of Mr Edison, which promises to weigh 18 kilogrammes (40 lbs.) per horse-power. The light weight and the simplicity of the little tricycle motor of 1897 are, therefore, responsible for all my trials. I started from this principle: To make any kind of success it would be necessary to economise weight, and so comply with the pecuniary, as well as the mechanical, conditions of the problem. Nowadays I build air-ships in a large way. I am in it as a kind of lifework. Then I was but