Outing; Sport, Adventure, Travel, Fiction Volume 57 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1911 edition. Excerpt: ... five hours difference in time, would make twenty-three hours. When the railroad engineers provide improved tracks and motive power that will enable them to parallel the feats of the automobile men, if they ever do, the running time for the fastest trains between New York and Chicago will be reduced to seven hours, while San Francisco will be but a day's run from the Metropolis. And when the airship enthusiasts are able to dart through the air at a sustained speed of even half that which has been attained by the automobile it will be time enough to think of taking seriously the extravagant claims made in behalf of aviation. For the automobile is the swiftest machine ever built by human hands. It is so much swifter than its nearest competitor that those who read these lines to-day are likely to be some years older before its speed is even equaled, to say nothing of being surpassed, by any other kind of vehicle. So far as is known, but one human EDDIE HEIN IN THE BENZ THAT TRAVELED 20 MILES IN I4 MINUTES AT THE INDIANAPOLIS SPEEDWAY. being ever traveled faster than Barney Oldfield did in his racing auto on the beach at Daytona, Florida, on March 16, 1910. This solitary exception was a Hindoo carrier who chanced to tumble off the brink of a chasm in the Himalayas. His name has not been preserved, he never made any claim to the record, he was not officially timed, and altogether the event has no official standing. Still, as he is the onlv man who is even alleged to have covered so great a distance as six thousand feet in an unobstructed fall the matter is not without interest; for, according to the accepted rule for finding the velocity f a body falling freely from rest, he must have been going at the rate of seven miles a second when he reached he...