This celestial machine is known as the
Ezekiel Airship dating from 1902. Characteristic are the big paddles supposedly paddling the machine through the air.....
Quote:
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Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles. It was built in a nearby machine shop and was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902. A year before the Wright brothers first flew. En route to the St.Louis world's fair in 1904, the airship was destroyed by a storm. In 1913 a second model crashed, and the Rev. Cannon gave up the project.
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A really resplendant replica is made of this machine, which now hangs from the ceiling of a special museum in Pittsburg (Texas). Of course their is some rumour about the claims of flight made with the Ezekiel. The historical site was even voted as third worst historical site by James Loewen
here.
The text goes like this
Quote:
#3 Pittsburg, Texas, Where Flight Began
All ye who learned that the Wright brothers invented the airplane and first flew at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, hark! The State of Texas tells quite a different story. In downtown Pittsburg an official Texas marker announces:
The Ezekiel Airship
Baptist minister and inventor Burrell Cannon (1848-1922) led some Pittsburg investors to establish the Ezekiel Airship Company and build a craft described in the Biblical book of Ezekiel. The ship had large fabric-covered wings powered by an engine that turned four sets of paddles.
The marker goes on to tell that the plane "was briefly airborne at this site late in 1902, a year before the Wright brothers first flew." It does not tell what is plainly visible in this drawing, part of the official logo of Pittsburg: the "four sets of paddles" rotated vertically! Such paddlewheels work fine on a river, where a clear demarkation exists between water and not-water. In an airship, after a paddle moves down, generating lift, and backward, generating forward movement, it unfortunately moves up, negating any lift, and forward, nullifying any forward motion. The Ezekiel Airship never got off the ground, despite the claims of the Texas Historical Commission. Rev. Cannon eventually conceded as much, concluding, "God never willed that this airship should fly."
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The real beauty to be seen is the
share which was issued by the
Ezekiel Air Ship Mfg Co., it is a work of art (just as the machine, if it flew or not
)
Cheers
Kees