How I Overcame My Gravity

Fitz-James O'Brien

Dream Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Science Fiction _bleiler _isfdb shortfiction shortstory

Published: May 2, 1864

Magazine: Harper's New Monthly Magazine, May 1864

Description:

1698, HOW I OVERCAME MY GRAVITY. Harper's New Mon thly Magazine, May 1864. Published anonymously. Short story. 
*  The narrator, an amateur scientist, has long toyed with the notion of making a flying machine. When, one day, he wanders into a chemist's shop, he observes a toy gyroscope, in which a rotating body is seemingly indifferent to gravity in its movements around a fixed point. The idea now occurs to him of building a gyroscopic vessel. 

#  He constructs a huge gyroscopic globe with a stationary internal axis upon which the occupant rests. Entering it, he launches it, hoping to reach St. Paul. The flying machine works, but when it is at its high point it begins to fly apart, for it was not built sturdily enough. He is about to crash, when— he awakens in his home, the tea urn in his arms, while his wife berates him. It was all a dream. 
*  An amusing piece, noteworthy for the early use of a rotating body for antigravity; perhaps suggested by Arago's experiments.