Page:My Airships.djvu/81

 a half-decided beginner, unwilling to spend large sums of money in a doubtful project. Therefore I resolved to build an elongated balloon just large enough to raise, along with my own 50 kilogrammes (110 lbs.) of weight, as much more as might be necessary for the basket and rigging, motor, fuel, and absolutely indispensable ballast. In reality I was building an air-ship to fit my little tricycle motor. I looked for the workshop of some small mechanic near my residence in the centre of residential Paris where I could have my plans executed under my own eyes and could apply my own hands to the task. I found such an one in the Rue du Colisée. There I first worked out a tandem of two cylinders of a tricycle motor—that is, their prolongation, one after the other, to work the same connecting-rod while fed by a single carburator. To bring everything down to a minimum weight, I cut out from every part of the motor whatever was not strictly necessary to solidity. In this way I realised something that was interesting in those days—a 3$\tfrac{1}{2}$ horse-power motor that weighed 30 kilogrammes (66 lbs.). I soon had an opportunity to test my tandem