Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/544

 �© I'resH llliistratiiiK .Sirvi. ,■

A captive sausage balloon is provided with auxiliary air-bags which serve to steady the balloon. In the latest form these give the structure the appearance of a huge elephant

Now Appears the Elephant of the Air

The reason for the queer shapes of captive balloons

��GUY FAWKES' Day in England is a holiday which remotely resem- bles our Fourth of July — a day celebrated to mark the thwarting of a conspiracy. It was the custom to send up on Guy Fawkes' Day balloons which were effigies of the conspirators. There v/ere also balloons, sent up at county fairs, shaped like pigs and cows.

And now comes the French army with its elephant balloon, which is not inven- ted for edification, but an earnest effort to improve the observation balloon.

��It was the Germans who invented the "sausage" captive balloon which is raised by the wind after the fashion of a kite. Some countries adopted the sausage bal- loon and even bought the German manu- factured product. Others, like France and Great Bl-itain, obstinately clung to the obsolete spherical balloon. Then came the Great War and prejudice was blown away. The sausage was imitated at once.

A sausage balloon needs various ap- pendages to catch the air and to steady it.

��528

�� �