CHAPTER 5; A WELCOME ARRIVAL.
Tuesday, mid-morning; October, 11, 1836;

Physics laboratory at the College de France,

Paris.

"Take a look at this, Professeur!"
Charles-Phillippe was covering his eyes with two, small stained-glass disks; one was tinted sky-blue; the other was a blood-red color.
His focus was on a sheet of paper laying on his desk; alternating bands of red, white and blue blanketing the entire sheet.
Professor Jean-Baptiste Biot leaned over his shoulder, asking, "What do you have to show me now, Monsieur Valcour?"
Charles turned aside and at once handed the two colored-glass disks over to his aging overseer, shifting his chair aside noisily to give the professor some space.
"Ahhh! That is interesting, young man.
There are bands that appear to float above the sheet of paper. It's a very strong illusion of depth."
The 62-year-old graying and balding scientist handed the two transparent disks
back to his young assistant, giving him a flickering smile of approval.
"An interesting discovery, Monsieur Valcour. I will examine this phenomena in further detail later on today. I will write up a report on it as well at that time," he explained, showing some anxiety over the time shown on the nearby clock, "But I have an scheduled appointment
to see my physician this morning - - - Nothing that should cause you or I any anxiety. It's the rheumatism in my hands
that has manifested itself again. It's no surprise, considering how extraordinarily cold and damp it has been this October."
Concern furrowed Charles' brow,
"I'm sorry to hear that, Professeur. I do hope and pray that it will not hinder you from carrying out your experiments and research activities,
which I know you love to do."
Professor Biot smiled in appreciation, shaking his head to assuage his assistant's
anxiety.
"I wouldn't worry. He'll probably suggest that I take a spoonful of laudanum every so often, That's what he has prescribed in the past few years." he hurriedly explained, struggling to slip on his heavy woolen long-coat. After a quick glance at his chained watch, ensuring that its time was reasonably accurate, he thrust on his gleaming black top-hat as he began to leave. But before he reached the open doorway, looking somewhat apologetic he wagged a finger at Charles, explaining, "Monsieur Valcour! Do tidy things up around here.
It is getting rather cluttered and disorganized in here with all these different materials, devices and apparatus scattered about, cramming every available space.
By the way I do regret that I won't have an opportunity to meet your friend George this morning. Alas, I was looking forward to meeting him; and I understand that he is bringing with him his two-year-old son - - - Another day, I'm sure." he sighed discreetly.
Charles couldn't hide his disappointment.
"I'm sorry that you couldn't stay an hour longer to make his acquaintance, Professeur, he should arrive by then. Regardless, I will pass on your regrets. And I will endeavor to make their visit a pleasant affair."
Once more his aging supervisor affirmatively pointed an index finger at him, again drawing his attention.
"....And I will have this laboratory tidied up and reorganized to your satisfaction by the time you return this afternoon, Professeur."
Charles declared, prompting an approving look from his employer before he departed in haste.
The 27-year-old laboratory worker obediently busied himself, gathering up and moving about different items, including books and science instruments, as well as a handful of devices that he himself had made and tinkered with for his own research efforts.
He too yearned to advance into the front-ranks of the scientists of his day, hoping one of his own science papers would get noticed.
The hour dragged on and finally a clatter of approaching footsteps drew his attention. There was a child's voice heard squealing impishly; then, what sounded like a gruff middle-aged female voice mildly reprimanding the youth. And then there was a familiar voice heard calling out from the hallway.
"Are you here, Charles?"
Charles briskly made his way to the doorway
to greet the arrivals in the typical Gallic way.
George-Richard Marchand, formally attired in civil servant's apparel worn beneath a thick warm long-coat, cracked a generous grin. He introduced a slightly portly woman, in her mid-fifties, wearing rather drab working-class clothing, Madame Trembley's deeply wrinkled cherubic face showed a grudging smile as she curtseyed nervously before being kissed on the hand. She happened to be the youth's grandmother. George then introduced his awestruck and restless two-year-old son, Nicholas to his friend for the first time.
Charles exuberantly reached down and hoisted up the youth.
"So you are Nicholas!" he cooed,
"It's too bad I haven't had the chance to see you sooner. I have been so busy, but that's no excuse. Let me show you around."
The young boy was much more interested in the plethora of 'unusual' objects arrayed
around the room than in being hoisted to Charles' shoulders.
He brought Nicholas over to one table in particular where there were two large disks mounted back-to-back on a stand, a string coiled around a shaft attached to the disk meant to spin from which the string was stretched out tautly and slung over a nearby small pulley-wheel leaning over the edge of the table and fastened to a lead weight dangling beneath. An assemblage of gears, an clockwork escapement and a pin-restrained pendulum were integrated into the unique device. The immoveable disk had a a cut-out gap, several centimeters wide, along its rim, that revealed a sketch of a man in a baggy outfit on the moveable disk behind it.
Charles beamed with childlike enthusiasm
as he lowered the easily excitable boy
down onto a high stool, strategically placed within easy viewing distance of the aperture on the fixed disk..
"Now, I'm going to show you, your father, and grandmother a remarkable living illusion!"
Charles announced, eagerly turning to wave the other two adults over, "If you please, George, bring over the oil lamp to improve illumination."
George smiled and shook his head, uttering,
"What are you pulling out of your bag of tricks now, my friend?" he muttered jestingly, as he complied.
With a touch of dramatic flair, Charles suddenly yanked the restraining pin out of the pendulum's arresting ring and the entire machine immediately came to life as the pendulum at once swung in harmony with the motions of the falling weight and the spinning gears, axle shaft and fast-rotating disk.
"PAPA, EEE MOOOVE!" the young lad
cried out, almost bouncing out of his seat, exceedingly thrilled by what he witnessed. His grandmother however was shocked, even superstitiously alarmed by the demonstration; ending up crossing herself.
Tepidly impressed, George could only bring himself to smile feebly; clapping grudgingly as well.
"I have a colleague who recently purchased a similar device," he said, "It's called a phena? - - -phena? - - - kistoscope. Phenakistoscope! That's quite a mouthful, and it's not an easy name to remember too. A Belgian, named? - - - named? - - - Monsieur Plateau invented it about four years ago." George-Richard explained, struggling to recall the
details, "But now you can find such devices for sale in a few novelty shops I'm told."
Charles chortled somewhat, shrugging indifferently as he lowered George's son
to the ground. "I'm not surprised. But my device as you can see operates by a clockwork type mechanism which gives the rotating disk a steady spinning rate. The same
cannot be said for Monsieur Plateau's hand-cranked version," he gently protested, "This device of mine also has twenty images compassing the rotating disk; Monsieur Plateau's apparatus only has something like eleven or thirteen I'm told...."
"...Show me! Show me!" Nicholas excitedly,
pleadingly interrupted Charles, yearning to see the demonstration again. The device's inventor smiling sadly kissed him on the forehead and handed him back to his father,
"Later, maybe. I have other things to show you, young man. But, first! Some treats!"
Charles hastily wandered over to a glass -paned cabinet and upon opening it pulled out a cherry-red stick of candy from a small bowl and cheerfully offered it to Nicholas.
"Merci." he gratefully whimpered, immediately beginning to suck on one end of it.
"He is be trained, even at an early age to become a gentlemen." George boasted,
"But what about you and Charlotte? It's been
two years since you two married, and yet no children." he added, showing some concern.
His friend shrugged, "We will be blessed when we will be blessed." he explained, "It's not like we haven't tried. Of course I am a little jealous that my younger brother, Henri
has fathered two children already."
George sensing that he was treading on unwelcome ground changed the topic of conversation back to the device, "You said that your device here has twenty images? drawings? along the rim? Is that why the flickering was minimal when I viewed the moving - - - pictures? - drawings?"
Charles laughed appreciatively,
"Ahhh - - - my friend, you have good insight.
Yes, the twenty images I've sketched and arrayed near the rim of the moving disk are
rotated and viewed at an accurately measured rate of - what else? Twenty images a second. I myself calibrated the pendulum on the device using a metronome that you see over there so that exactly twenty images would be viewed every second, reducing the annoying flickering effect to insignificance.
You cannot say the same thing about Monsieur Plateau's invention with maybe thirteen images a second viewed on his device, if it should happen to be spun at one rotation per second. Furthermore, I will show you a device I invented and used to arrange and sketch my images to obtain realistic motions."
Charles motioned to his adult guests to
join him at a nearby counter-top where he took the oil lamp, raising it up on a stand where its strong light streamed through a frosted glass-plate onto a mirror aligned 45 degrees off of horizontal inside a rectangular box.
The light that was reflected downward passed through a thin sheet of paper, sandwiched between two glass plates, on which sheet was sketched a familiar-looking drawing.
The downward projected outline of the sketch
was revealed on a sheet of paper beneath.
He took a pencil and quickly but skilfully
altered the outlines of the image shown on the paper, keeping the basic form of an outlined image of a reclining man, but changing its inclination and subtly altering its posture. George's memory was jogged.
"That image - that projected drawing looks familiar," he claimed, "It's a drawing of that pantomime artist, Monsieur Deburau whom we saw performing at the theatre-du-Funambles four years ago! I remember you later showing us those sketches you made of him at that time."
Charles responded silently for the moment by stretching out his forearm and demonstratively shifting its inclination back and forth, making sure they noticed.
"You see that?" he challenged them,
'If I were to sketch twenty or so realistic drawings of the altered positions of my arm
and showed them on that machine, perhaps painting each sketched frame in faithful colors, you would observe a realistic representation of my arm's motions."
George and his mother-in-law glanced at each other. George looked like he was warming to his friend's ideas and handiwork; she remained wary and suspicious of anything that she couldn't comprehend; having no desire to either.
"By the way, George, I am also designing and will seek a patent on a more ambitious contrivance working on these principles that will use a cloth - belt on which would be sketched and painted one hundred, maybe two hundred consecutive images that will be reeled beneath a viewing frame and wrapped around a - drum of sorts at a good rate of speed to generate similar illusions of motion, but showing sketched gesticulations or activities..."
"...lasting up to ten seconds." George jumped in, "You can show moving imagery that
would constitute a brief silent story; a mechanical and a very brief pantomime."
"Again you show good insight into my way of thinking, my friend, " Charles sincerely praised George, "But enough about this device! I think you and your son came to see the apparatus for my helicoptere experiments!"
Charles hustled his visitors over to a table on top of which was mounted an pedestal with a disk base. The clamp-fastened pedestal base had a hollow metal tube fitted in a hole in the middle, allowing the tube to spin once given impulse by its attached and wound string
that was draped over a pulley-wheel. There was a hook on the end of the string to attach lead weights of different sizes onto. Inside the hollow shaft of the tube were a pair of
flanking flanges, protruding inward, on which
a pair of corresponding grooves on a narrower and longer hollow metal shaft slipped down onto. That narrower rod had two 'wings'
projecting out in opposite directions from near the top. And at the top end was a small metal cup, of sorts, fitted.
Charles took one small lead-weight of about 150 grams and put it inside the cup on top of the winged tube. He then took a lead weight of about 500 grams and hooked it onto the string and, with his guests looking on, he let that heavier lead-weight drop.
The string immediately snapped taut and
was swiftly reeled over the pulley-wheel and down, causing the hollow metal shaft that it was attached to - to immediately begin to rotate, rapidly gaining rotational speed. The narrower winged tube inside was likewise spun up; a fluttering sound was heard and it began to rise up inside its tubular sleeve; it's winglike blades providing the lifting force.
The accelerating activity lasted only a couple of seconds before the lead block hit the floor, causing the lifting force to rapidly wane and cease.
George's two-year-old son was disappointed. George didn't look too impressed himself. However, his mother-in-law had enough. Angrily she demanded that her son-in-law hand over his son so she could take him home right away. Not willing to
confront his wife's mother at that moment, he grudgingly concurred, surrendering Nicholas
over to the care of his grandmother who wasted no time whisking the suddenly tearful and wailing young lad away from those premises.
George gave Charles a resigned look, sighing, "So it is with uneducated proletariat mothers-in-law." he said, shrugging demurely before changing subjects, "Anyways, my friend, I don't want to quench the fires of inspiration in you, but just over half-a-century ago an inventor named Monsieur de Launoy and his mechanic assistant, Monsieur Bienvenu designed, built, tested and demonstrated a similitude of your helicoptere device shown here.
The primary difference between his contrivance and yours is that the motive power for his invention came from wound gut-string held under tension; while you use falling weights to generate the necessary lift."
Charles frowned, shaking his head in exasperation, "No! No! No! That is not a fair
assessment! This apparatus over here is to test the efficiency of different lifting-wing designs that I have been working on. So far...."
he moaned, "....I have designed, built and tested lifting-wings of different shapes that yield lift-weight to drop-weight ratios of - up to and a little more than fifty percent. I think I could do better. The most promising designs are those resembling maple seeds."
His eyes tracked his friend making an unexpected move by graciously stooping down to pick up the 500 gram lead-weight, offering it back to Charles.
"Here! Wind up the string again and give it another go." George cheerfully implored, "This time put the two-hundred gram weight instead in the cup on top."
Charles once more set up the experimental device and let the drop weight go. The rotational wings once more spun up to speed, and lift was generated, though not as much height was gained as by the previous effort. Charles was surprised to see George briskly moving his open hands about beneath and to the sides of the spinning wings. He eyed George inquiringly,
"What are you hoping to learn? Or what have you discovered?" he asked him.
George seemed to ignore his friend for a time.
He finally looked up, thoughtfully replying,
"Wind! You are creating artificial miniature wind blasts by means of this device," he retorted, "miniature cyclonic wind blasts. There does appear to be a practical potential for this effect, but the problem is - is that the impelled or propelled atmospheric atoms are scattered, their force and impulse being dispersed instead of concentrated or focused."
Charles pondered his friend's conclusions
and then asked, "What would you do to
alleviate such a dispersion, George? Use a conduit of some sort?"
George's face brightened.
"Why, certainly! That is an excellent suggestion! A conduit - a tunnel for artificial miniature winds! - - - A tunnel which would concentrate and guide the flow of the moving elastic fluid. Such a tunnel could be fitted with dividing panels to convert these artificial cyclonic winds in to a - linear flow - - -
And if the artificial-wind tunnel were to have a suitably large diameter matched by revolving wings? - blades? of sufficient lengths, with the necessary power available to spin them at great speeds, then one can insert an experimental water trough inside
on which a model of a sailing-ship, or any kind of ship model can be tested. One can suppose build miniature windmills to test the efficiency of different designs in such a machine. What else can it be used for?"
Charles spread apart his hands silently
and solemnly, "Time will tell." he replied.