A Novel Scheme for Reaching California in a Balloon
A tongue-in-cheek item about a Delaware man's plan to hover motionless in a balloon while the earth rotates beneath him, letting California come to him — an amusing bit of 1872 pseudo-science whimsy.
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The Morning Star And Catholic Messenger · June 16, 1872 · Page 1
1 min readA man in Delaware, having heard that the earth revolves at the rate of about one thousand miles an hour, has arranged a plan for going up in a balloon and remaining stationary while the earth is permitted to slide away beneath. He thinks that by this means he can reach California in a couple of hours merely by shooting up from Wilmington in his balloon, and then dropping down again as soon as the Rocky Mountains are observed to go past. He has the whole thing arranged now in perfect order — the balloon and the place to start from, and his map, and so forth — so that the scheme cannot possibly fail; and all that he wants to make the thing complete is to find something to tie the balloon to in order to hold it still while it is in the air.
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