"flying horses"

[Dan Goncharoff]

I came across this:

Journal of the Franklin Institute - Page 303

books.google.comFranklin Institute (Philadelphia, Pa.) - 1844 - Free
Google eBook
http://bit.ly/q2e9tE

"The opposite ends of a sweep" sounds like a swing to me, not a carousel...

20. For a machine for giving Exercise to Dyspeptics and other
Invalids; Oliver Halsted, New York city, March 13.

 The patentee says,—'-The nature of tny invention consists in giving
to a seat, upon which the patient is placed, an exercise similar to
that given to the rider on a horse, with this difference, that, in the
absence of all effort, on the part of the patient, to retain his seat
upon the chair of exercise, (which absence of effort is not obtained
on horse back,) he may relax the abdominal muscles, which is
indispensable in order to stimulate the muscular coat of the stomach,
and, at the same time, restore the peristaltic motion of the bowels,
so that both secure their heathy action."
The seat may be attached, by means of a slide, to one end of a working
beam, vibrated by means of a crank, eccentric, or cam, actuated by any
first mover; or a seat may be attached by the same means to a car, the
axle of one of the sets of wheels being cranked to vibrate the beam,
and two of these cars may be attached to the opposite ends of a sweep,
in the manner of what are well known as flying horses. There are
various modifications described and represented. Claim.—"What I claim
as my invention, is the giving of an undulating, or jolting, motion to
a chair by means substantially as herein described, for the purpose of
curative treatment of dyspeptics, and other invalids, and for
healthful exercise. I do not mean to confine myself to the precise
form of construction of the individual parts, but vary them as 1 may
have occasion, without departing from the general principles of action
herein set forth, to wit, the giving of an undulating, or jolting,
motion to a chair in contradistinction to a rocking, or oscillating,
movement of the same, of which several examples of such variations are
represented and specified."

DanG


On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 11:22 AM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "flying horses"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> My past, I think, is pretty much coeval with yours; but we don't go back to
> the late 18th century.
>
> I do suppose that these flying horses were a merry-go-round, but I am
> puzzled as to how they could have operated so as to be a source of exercise
> for the riders.  A back-and-forth swing is exercise, either in kicking one's
> feet against the ground at the nadir, or in throwing one's body back and
> forth to move the center of gravity.  The riders on the railroad at Hoboken
> in the 1830s sat in the car and moved it by turning a hand crank.  this must
> have worked either by turning the wheels the car rolled on, (like pedalling
> a bicycle), or by turning a cogwheel under the car that engaged something on
> the track.
>
> In a modern fair, we might see wooden horses sitting on a circular disk
> which is rotated by a motor at the center, or wooden horses hanging from a
> ribwork that's spun by a motor.
> In the second contraption, without a motor, the riders could get exercise
> and move themselves and each other by kicking against the ground; if there
> were riders on several horses they would balance the thing and could move it
> a bit faster by coordinating their kicks than a single rider could, but
> still they wouldn't get the effect of centrifugal force that a motorized
> ride does.
> The first could, I suppose, be moved by hand cranks like the ride at
> Hoboken, but sitting on a wooden horse at the outside of a 25 or 30 foot
> radius disk while pedalling to move the disk doesn't sound like much fun,
> even for people who thought that going 8 miles an hour was going too fast.
>
> There's also the example of the Steeplechase ride at Steeplechase Park at
> Coney Island, which I was actually on, when a little boy.  Long gone, now,
> since the mid-50s.  In that ride, there were 5 or 6 horses each on a
> separate track that ran around the outside of a large building.  Each horse
> moved independently.  It was powered by gravity, but I suppose on a level
> track the horses could have been moved by pedalling.   I rode the thing with
> my father on the next horse, and quickly noticed that I could count on
> beating him to the finish line if I took the horse nearest the building.
>  This shows that I had the mental acuity to have been a successful jockey,
> and if only I hadn't grown to be 6'2" and weigh 200 lbs, I might have had a
> very different career than I have had.
>
> GAT
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2011 at 11:50 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>
> > At 8/10/2011 04:40 PM, George Thompson wrote:
> >
> >>      Presumably these were all some sort of Whirligig, or Roundabout, or
> >> Merry-go-round, &c.; though perhaps some sort of a back-and-forth swing?
> >>
> >
> > I definitely associate "flying horses" with carousels
> > (merry-go-rounds), not swings.  The ones that go up and down as the
> > merry go round. (That is, I must have heard or read it at some
> > time.)  But perhaps this is too far in the past for you young
> > whipper-snappers.
> >
> > Joel
> >
> > ------------------------------**------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
> Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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