The Passenger Air-Ship.
By Editor
One journal recalls that in 1829 a fatal accident occurred in the beginning of steam railway travel in England. Engineers in Southern England were discharged for running twenty-five miles an hour. The first railway in New York had for rails straps laid on stone sleepers, afterward spiked to wooden beams. The other day in Germany the first passenger air-ship took her first regular trip, carrying twenty passengers 300 miles, without an accident. Still it is not safe to take this trip as a sample of all to come, but it does show how rapidly mechanical science and knowledge of physics have forged ahead. The ink on the above paragraph was scarcely dry when the news came that the great Zeppelin dirigible was a complete wreck. Laden with passengers she attempted an excursion of thirty-five miles from Dusseldorf, when the rising wind blew her from her course, and she became a plaything in the hands of the tempest, tossed at last in the tops of the trees in the Teutoborgian forest, broken and helpless. Providentially, none of her passengers or crew were injured.