Long before Newark had an airport, Hoboken had a flying machine. It was a contraption built in Hoboken in 1851 by a Mr. Robjohn of New York and, according to press reports of the time, was planned to carry 25 passengers at a speed of 25 to 50 miles per hour at an altitude of 200 feet.
The aerial ship was described in Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion (Aug. 30, 1851). Named United States, the ship was built on open land “on the plain west of Hoboken village,” a mile from Hoboken’s present PATH station in a fenced enclosure about 290 by 275 feet. The machine was 64 feet long, six feet wide and six feet, four inches high. Each end came to a sharp point, and the aircraft’s body was composed of “a strong, light, wooden frame, covered with canvas, with doors and glass windows.”
It had copper boilers occupying a space of four cubic feet. Its 12-horsepower engines were made of gunmetal and cast steel, and were planned to make a 20-inch stroke 66 times a minute, to rotate at a rate of 400 rpm. The inventor expected the United States to carry fuel for 400 hours of flight.
To keep the machine aloft, there was a cigar-shaped balloon above the gondola, 260 feet long, 24 feet in diameter, with a 95,000-cubic-foot gas capacity for a lifting power then reported to be about 6,500 pounds. The entire weight of the gondola, “float,” and fixtures was expected to be about 4,000 pounds, leaving a surplus lifting capacity of 2,500 pounds.
The engines, reported Gleason’s, were “a curiosity,” weighing only 181 pounds, “and so perfect that by the force of his lungs, Mr. Robjohn caused both pistons to work a full revolution, carrying a driving wheel of five feet in diameter.”
The rudder, continued the report of 1851, “is worthy of minute examination, and by it the ship is designed to run up or down, or in any required direction.” The car was described as being “suspended by cords to the float, and when the whole is inflated and suspended in mid-air under the estimated velocity, it will be a rare sight.” Robjohn had invested $5,500 in his invention and, according to Gleason’s, “required only a few hundred more to perfect and set afloat his air ship.” Robjohn expected to power his craft by steam and to make fuel unnecessary, so he claimed to have devised a plan “for decomposing water, igniting the gases, which again become water, which is converted into steam by the combustion, and this steam is again condensed and returned for decomposition, thus securing entire immunity from waste, and a uniform weight during the longest voyages.” However, before this unlikely miracle of physics could be put into action, Robjohn expected the engines to be driven by steam generated from coke and the spirits of wine.
The ship’s first launching destroyed it, and there is nothing further known about this pioneering aviation effort in Hoboken. It is not known if Robjohn was a Hoboken man, and his office was reported to be have been at 166 Bowery in New York. Hoboken historian John J. Heaney, in his The Bicentennial Comes to Hoboken (1976), observed, “Robjohn probably would have made out better if he had powered his air ship to run on beer.”
Editor’s note: A full version of this column was originally printed in Hoboken History Issue No. 4, published by the Hoboken Historical Museum. Please visit the museum at 1301 Hudson St. for more information. To read past columns from this year-long series, visit www.hobokenreporter.com.