Flying Machine (Swedenborg) - The Published Account

The Published Account

When Swedenborg returned to Sweden in 1714, he met with inventor Christopher Polhem and together with him published the periodical Daedalus Hyperboreus. When Swedenborg mentioned publishing the Flying Machine, Polhem was skeptical as to whether it was possible to ever build a machine that could fly. He compared it to building a perpetuum mobile. But Swedenborg replied (somewhat ironically) with a quote by French author Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle:

The art of flying is hardly yet born. It will be perfected and some day people will fly up to the moon. Do we pretend to have discovered everything, or to have brought our knowledge to a point where nothing can be added to it? Oh, for mercy's sake, let us agree that there is still something left for the ages to come!

Swedenborg published it anonymously with the title Machine to Fly in the Air. It did not contain an image.

Swedenborg knew that the machine would not fly, but suggested it as a start and was confident that the problem would be solved. He said, "It seems easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into actuality, for it requires greater force and less weight than exists in a human body. The science of mechanics might perhaps suggest a means, namely, a strong spiral spring. If these advantages and requisites are observed, perhaps in time to come some one might know how better to utilize our sketch and cause some addition to be made so as to accomplish that which we can only suggest. Yet there are sufficient proofs and examples from nature that such flights can take place without danger, although when the first trials are made you may have to pay for the experience, and not mind an arm or leg." This greater force would not become possible until the motor was invented.