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The CARoMeFUTUfiE
i HE aeroautocraft of
the future will roll on
the road, cleave
through the water,
fly through the air.
Its owner will start from his garage or hangar, travel
streets or roads at will, cross streams or lakes that lie in his
path, rise in the air and fly over a hill, a valley, or woods, to another
road, all at his pleasure.
This is not the prediction of a dreamer, but the logical development
of present day tendencies. With the memory of Morse's first forty
miles of line less than a hundred years ago and comprehension of the
network of cables and wires which enmesh the earth today—with
recollection of Bell's toy in the Philadelphia Centennial, and a long
distance call three thousand miles long an accomplished fact forty years
after—recalling Edison's first inefficient electric light, now lost in the
dazzling rays of the present day electrical illumination—is it hard to
believe that the motor car of today, a fact—the aeroplane of today, another
fact—the motor boat of today, a third fact, may be—nay, »n/jfbe.
combined to form the universal vehicle of the not far-distant future?
Already the aeroplane and the motor boat have coalesced. We had
hydroplanes before aeroplanes, although hydroplane meant then
only a motor boat which rode on, rather than in, the water. The
flying boat—or hydroaeroplane, as it is called—which can soar or
swim is an everyday fact in 1917. What more logical than the addition
of the automobile, that the three modes of travel known to man may be
combined ?
To visualize the product is not especially difficult; even its structure
and details can be supposed with but a minimum chance of error.
The body will be a combination of the lines we now know only in separate
entities. It will have the enclosed glass top of the pleasure car,
the stream lines of the best yachting practice, and the lightness and
strength of the aeroplane fuselage. Attached to the top will be a pair
of not too large monoplane wings from which will be evolved a nose
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