Evening bell:
The departure of the day of extinction.
On November 15, 1881, Rear Admiral Alexander Mozhaisky received the privilege of creating an "air-propelled missile" - the first Russian aircraft patent. For many years before and after, as the historical journal Rodina mentions, the sailor fought for his difficult initiative.
head to the wall
"I left my service position, I turned down another, also profitable in terms of salary and career advancement. At first I lived and wasted the little cash I had, then I got into debt, sold and mortgaged everything of value, even watches and wedding rings, suffered poverty and hardship, and did not receive what the government gives to every worker... ".
In the fall of 1884, at Krasnoy Slo, his apparatus lifted off the ground, but being unstable, leaned to one side and broke a wing. There were no further experiments due to lack of funding... ".
and never will be.
Once, as captain-lieutenant, Mozhaisky commanded the screw cutter "Vasdnik" (Rider), the first steamship in Russia. The young man was blindly in love with cumbersome mechanisms, not knowing that the steam engine would put an end to his dream.
He used his money to travel to America, then Europe, to order an engine of his own design. Naturally, it will be steam-powered, but refined to the extreme. It had to be free of its main drawback - excess weight.
Mozhaisky came up with the unthinkable: to make all the parts hollow from the inside, like bird bones.
המלח טעה בחישוב. אבל זה לא העניין. לא היה לו מושג שמנוע הקיטור מוביל את הרעיון שלו למבוי סתום. עידן מנועי הבעירה הפנימית התחיל.
מוז'איסקי חיכה עוד שש שנים למנועים חדשים, ושלח דיווחים נואשים למחלקה הצבאית. הוא היה ידוע כיוצר צרות. הוא מת בגיל שישים וחמש, בעוני ובשכחה מוחלטים. במשך זמן רב אפילו לא היה ידוע היכן קבור האדמירל מנועי בנזין פרצו למקום לאחר מותו.