At the age of teered the Real Gymnasium which was a new and fairly well equipt institution. In the department of physics were various models of classical stific apparatus, electrical and meical. The demonstrations and experiments performed from time to time by the instructors fasated me and were undoubtedly a powerful iive to iion. I was also passionately fond of mathematical studies and often won the professor''s praise for rapid calculation. This was due to my acquired facility of visualizing the figures and perf the operations, not in the usual intuitive manner, but as in actual life. Up to a certain degree of plexity it was absolutely the same to me whether I wrote the symbols on the board or jured them before my mental vision. But freehand drawing, to which many hours of the course were devoted, was an annoyance I could not ehis was rather remarkable as most of the members of the family excelled in it. Perhaps my aversion was simply due to the predile I found in undisturbed thought. Had it not been for a few exceptionally stupid boys, who could not do anything at all, my record would have been the worst. It was a serious handicap as uhe theing educational regime, drawing being obligatory, this deficy threateo spoil my whole career and my father had siderable trouble in railroading me from one class to another.
In the sed year at that institution I became obsessed with the idea of produg tinuous motion thru steady air pressure. The pump i, of which I have told, had set afire my youthful imagination and imprest me with the boundless abilities of a vacuum. I grew franti my desire to harhis inexhaustible energy but for a long time I was groping in the dark. Finally, however, my endeavors crystallized in an iion which was to enable me to achieve what no other mortal ever attempted.
Imagine a der freely rotatable on two bearings and partly surrounded by a regular trough which fits it perfectly. The open side of the trough is closed by a partition so that the drical segment within the enclosure divides the latter into two partmeirely separated from each other by air-tight sliding joints. One of these partments being sealed and once for all exhausted, the other remaining open, a perpetual rotation of the der would result, at least, I thought so. A wooden model was structed and fitted with infinite care and when I applied the pump on one side and actually observed that there was a tendency t, I was delirious with joy.
Meical flight was the ohing I wao aplish altho still uhe discing recolle of a bad fall I sustained by jumping with an umbrella from the top of a building. Every day I used to transport myself thru the air to distant regions but could not uand just how I mao do it. Now I had something crete——a flying mae with nothing more than a rotating shaft, flapping wings, and—a vacuum of unlimited power! From that time on I made my daily aerial excursions in a vehicle of fort and luxury as might have befitted King Solomon. It took years before I uood that the atmospheric pressure acted at right ao the surface of the der and that the slight rotary effort I observed was due to a leak. Tho this knowledge came gradually it gave me a painful shock.
I had hardly pleted my course at the Real Gymnasium when I rostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my dition became so desperate that I was given up by physis. During this period I ermitted to read stantly, obtaining books from the Public Librar