Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/67

 War-Time Uses of the Old -Fashioned Balloon

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In the oval: An officer in the basket of a sausage balloon. Telephone receivers are strapped to the officer's head. The wires run down through the rope to the ground. By means of the telephone he communicates to the battery the effect of each shot. Upper right hand picture: The man who is sent aloft often in the observation balloon becomes a far more daring parachute artist than any man who ever risked his neck at a county fair. The parachute was intended to serve as a safety device. In the whole history of aerial navigation, it never saved a single life in a cross-country journey. War, alone, justifies its existence. The war parachute is of the ordinary type made familiar by the county fair as seen in the bottom picture. Half an hour after an officer has dropped to the ground to save his life, he is up again in a new balloon

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