Samuel Cabot’s Aviation Propeller – 1896
The following article appeared in The Madisonian, (a now defunct Virginia City, Montana, newspaper), on August 29, 1896.
New Flying Machine
Boston Man Has Some Ideas He Is ready To Apply To One
Samuel Cabot, the Boston flying machine inventor, who is just starting to Europe to study flying machines, has invented and tested a propeller to be used in aerial navigation.
The propeller, made something like the propeller of a steamship, is operated by foot power and revolves at a high rate of speed. Mr. Cabot tested the machine by attaching it to a couple of bicycles which he fastened together. Then the pedals of the bicycles were removed and those of the propeller put on.
When the big fan began to turn, away went the bicycle, and the farther it went the higher became the rate of speed, until at last it was bowling along at the rate of ten miles an hour.
Mr. Cabot thinks he has solved one of the problems of man flight. Now, if he can get a machine that will stay up in the air, he calculates that he can drive it along with his invention.
