NJ sky is no stranger to weird things: 1860s saw the raft-like Aereon airship
By: David M. Zimmer
NorthJersey.com
USA Today Network - New Jersey
.... For all the buzz about drones zipping over New Jersey, the Garden State is no stranger to odd sights in its skies.
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The drone phenomenon has captured imaginations worldwide, dominating headlines and sparking countless theories. Whether driven by a combination of increased drone activity, misidentified objects, hoaxes and the viral hysteria of social media or some other factors, New Jersey may be the perfect stage for this modern mystery.
..... The state has been involved in a series of earth-shaking spectacles in flight. None were likely more peculiar and groundbreaking than Solomon Andres' flights of his Aereon airship. Resembling a giant inflatable pool raft, the ship set the state for modern steered aircraft when it took to the skies over Middlesex County during several trials and one full test flight in 1863.
..... Andrews, a physician from Perth Amboy, was 57 years old when he first piloted the Aereon. With no prior experience in ballooning, he ascended along in the craft, which defied the conventions of flight, John T. Cunningham wrote in an essay detailing the rise of Andrews and the Aereon for the state's 300th anniversary commission.
..... The Aereon was made up of thee cigar-shaped hydrogen balloons suspended a 16-foot-long basket with knee-high sideboards, Cunningham wrote. Each balloon was 80 feet long. The craft looked unwieldy, but looks can be deceiving.
..... "The shape, [Andrews] felt, would make the craft behave much like a sailboat on water and he devised a rudder on the back to steer the Aereon," Cunningham wrote. "In the basket, weights could be shifted on a track to make the airship tilt up or down, thus increasing the gliding tendency."
..... The Aereon was a mechanical marvel. The basket featured adjustable weights hat allowed Andrews to glide and maneuver, Roger B. Whitman wrote for Popular Science Monthly in January 1932.
..... His ship was the first self-propelled, steerable airship. in essence, it was the predecessor of modern-day blimps and even drones.
..... Like many of New Jersey's 19th-century doctors. Andrews was a pillar of his community. He was a political leader, public health advocate and amateur scientist. According to Cunningham, Andrews became a skilled watchmaker in his teens and by 23 was an expert in how the human body ticks.
..... "Two generations in Perth Amboy depended on him to deliver babies, to fight yellow fever and to relieve the miseries of death," Cunningham wrote.
..... County recorded show Andrews led the local board of helaht and was mayor, justice of the peace, alderman and port collector at various points. he invented combination locks, gas lamps, a sewing machine and more. The uppickalbe locks earned him notoriety and, in 1842, a 30-year contact with the U.S. Post Office, Whitman wrote.
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All the while, the skies were calling, Cunningham said.
..... "He tired in the early 1830s to interest balloonist in his understanding of flight, but they ignored him and continued tor rise in their fat, round balloons and to fall wherever the restless winds deposited them," Cunningham wrote.
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Andrews' vision for a better way to balloon did not wane. It started in force in 1849 within a ship house he built in Perth Amboy to craft a prototype airship. It was 80 feet long, 20 feet wide and 10 feet deep. Andrews held a public viewing for his airship on June 4 but destroyed the craft soon after. he demented it unsuitable for flight, Cunningham wrote.
.... It was not until the Civil War that Andrews, then a surgeon with the Sanitary commission in Virgina, would revive his theories. His airships could serve the Union better than free-blown observations balloons, he reasoned unsuccessfully to preoccupied politicians, including President Abraham Lincoln, Whitman recounted.
..... Andrews' vision was unlike anything seen before. The Arereon use a technique called variable buoyancy propulsion to achieve controlled flight without an engine. His ship was able to release hydrogen gas to descend or drop ballasts of sand to ascend. Moreover, by adjusting the airship's pitch, a pilot could harness airflow and achieve forward motion.
..... The approach allowed the Aereon to aviate in ways that no balloon of its time round. Andrews could fly it in circles, against the wind, on a non-stop round trip.
..... Three years later, Andrews took his ambitions even higher with the Aereon 2. The sleeker ship featuring a single "flattened lemon" hull and introduced variable volume controls. A sophisticated system of ropes and pulleys, the controls allowed Andrews to compress or expand the lemon-shaped gasbag mid-flight to better manipulate buoyancy.
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The Aereon 2 debuted in New York City on May 25, 1866. Launched from lower Manhattan , it ascended 2,000 feet and drifted over fifth Avenue and 14th Street with three passengers, said an account in the New York World published three Days later. The airship then accelerated rapidly toward its destination, crossing the East River and landing in Astoria, Queens, the account continued.
..... "Navigation of the air was a fixed fact. The problem of the centuries had been solved," it declared.
..... A seocnd flight, in June 5, 1866, was even mroe ambitious, Whitman wrote. Despite mechanicla challenges mid-flight, rudder soared to an impressive 6,000 feet and traveled 30 miles in variable wind before landing safely in Brookville, Long Island, newspaper reports said.
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The Aereons were sensational, Whitman wrote, and promised a future that today seems hard to imagine. The previous year. Andrews founded the Aerial Navigation Company with the aim of revolutionizing transportation with regular airship service between New York and Philadelphia. His vision was bold: a fleet of Aereons carrying passengers and cargo across the New Jersey skies.
..... The economic downturn after the Civil War dashed those dreams, however. A bank failure wiped out the company's funds, shareholders refused to cover the deficit and the Aerial Navigation Company went bankrupt "when the future seemed brightest and success most certain," Whitman wrote.
..... After 1866, Andrews and his ships never flew again. The never achieved commercial success, but they did leave a lasting impact on aviation, according to records and an analysis by Peter Lobner kept by the Lyncean Group of San Diego. Andrews' concept of variable buoyancy propulsion was revived by the Utah Aereon corporation in the 1970s and 1980s. Subsequent test by New Mexico State University and the U.K. Phoenix team further validated his ideas, Lobner wrote.
..... The variable volume control system he pioneered with the Aereon 2 also proved to be decades ahead of its time. Similar mechanisms appeared in mid-20th-centry Russian airships and later in the designs of French manufacturer Vooliris, Lobner said.