Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth, Parts III and IV

The bold experiment of drilling a tunnel through the earth complete, parts III and IV of Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth follow young William Swindon's experiences as he makes the perilous first voyage. In a footnote, the author assures us that his text has been double-checked for accuracy by a professor of Applied Mechanics, and what he describes is a fairly accurate impression of artificial weightlessness created through extended freefall. It's much the same process used by NASA to train astronauts, though in the real-world case it is induced by plummeting a special airplane into freefall. It is also how space shuttles and other bodies achieve orbit. Technically they are constantly falling towards the earth, but the earth curves away beneath them before they can land. 

These chapters appear as they originally did in the March and April 1898 editions of St. Nicholas Magazine, with illustrations of William A. Mackay. After the serial completed, Fezandié and St. Nicholas Magazine's parent company, The Century Co., republished it as a book with some additional chapters of background and incident. 

Clement Fezandié's Through the Earth, Parts I and II

What would be the most efficient way to pass from one side of the earth to the other? That's the old trick of the two dimensional map: you'd think it would be a straight line, but on a globe that translates into the curved line of airline flight paths. In the 19th century, there was no expedient way to circumnavigate the globe. Jules Verne showed that it could theoretically be done in 80 days, but the average traveler would be spending many more months at it. 

But what if you could just go through the earth?  

That is the question being broached by Clement Fezandié in this four-part serial that was published in the January-April 1898 volumes of St. Nicholas Magazine. The first two parts, presented here as they originally appeared, with illustrations by William A. Mackay (more famous for his role in developing ship camouflage for the US Navy), focus on the theory and construction of a tube from New York to Australia through the earth's core, and how people and freight may be moved along such a hazardous route.

Click on each page to see a larger version, and join us again next week for parts III and IV!