John Jacob Astor

A Journey in Other Worlds John Jacob Astor

"Is it not strange," said Dr. Cortlandt, "that though it has been known for over acentury that bodies charged with unlike electricities attract one another, andthose charged with like repel, no one thought of utilizing the counterpart ofgravitation? In the nineteenth century, savants and Indian jugglers performedexperiments with their disciples and masses of inert matter, by causing them toremain without visible support at some distance from the ground; and while many ofthese, of course, were quacks, some were on the right track, though they did notpush their research."President Bearwarden and Ayrault assented. They were steering for anapparently hard part of the planet's surface, about a degree and a half north of itsequator.