Reading "The Flying Legion," a 1920 novel by George Allan England. It involves an enormous experimental flying machine—variously described as a monstrous airship and a hydroplane—with sextuple celluloid wings, heavier than air but equipped with four floats that can be adjusted to provide enough lift to almost exactly counter the weight.
It does this by pumping the air from the floats, creating vacuums within…
Funny that Otto von Guericke's pioneering experiment with vacuum and atmospheric pressure, the Magdeburg hemispheres, didn't simply float off into space… I'm genuinely amazed that the idea of vacuum as a lifting force could make it into a book in 1920. Still, it's quite entertaining so far, although there are hints that it might swerve into racist colonialism later (one of the unfortunate inevitabilities of so many books of this vintage and older).
Jon Hancock
npub1nz…zatrm
2026-03-21 22:48:36 UTC
in reply to nevent1q…w0ac
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npub1nz8xje3hhujvf9gsprlttww32yuetqzmld9ujz3xjp39gtc7tecsczatrmSeen on
wss://relay.ditto.pubPublished at
2026-03-21 22:48:36 UTCEvent JSON
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