The inventor, being too poor to develop his air ship alone, did little with the patent during its life; but in 1850 he organized a stock company to realize the needed funds. From the sale of 300 five-dollar shares he expected to raise $1,500, and with this sum build an “aëroport,” 150 feet long, capable of carrying five persons sixty miles an hour, the whole to be completed in six weeks. Once this was in operation he would easily command funds sufficient to build a full-sized vessel adapted to regular passenger service. For, after careful calculation, he reported that: “It appears certain that a safe and durable aërial ship (or aëroport) capable of carrying 150 passengers at a speed of ninety miles an hour, with more perfect safety than either steamboat or railroad cars, may be constructed for $15,000, and that the expense of running it would not exceed $25 per day.” The language and project seem very modern, even at the present time, and might well be copied now by a promoter of that identical project. But it must be observed that the most successful European experimenters, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on giant air ships, have not yet attained one half the speed contemplated by that ambitious and chimerical Yankee. The picture was handsome and alluring, none the less. It may even be said to excel in outward design any of the air-ship plans produced in either hemisphere before the middle of the nineteenth century. In 1850 a clockmaker and skillful workman, Jullien by name, exhibited in the Hippodrome, at Paris, a torpedo-shaped model balloon of gold-beater’s skin, provided with a screw propeller at either side of its bow, and a double rudder at its stern. It measured 23 feet in length and weighed 1,100 grammes complete. The propellers were actuated by spring power, and proved able to drive the tiny vessel against a moderate wind. The most suitable form for the bag was determined by towing models through water. [Illustration: FIG. 17.—JULLIEN’S MODEL DIRIGIBLE, 1850.] Aërodynamically considered, this tiny motor balloon was by far the best in design of any that appeared during the first century of aëronautics. It may be regarded as the harbinger of the swiftest modern French balloons. It was also an inspiration to Henri Giffard who assisted Jullien in constructing his clever model, and shortly afterwards built the first dirigible ever driven by a heat engine.