The Flying-Machine Inventor Who Vanished and Left the Carpenter Unpaid
An Englishman named Howard hired a Tacoma carpenter to build a “living machine,” then disappeared with the key to the storeroom—leaving a very anxious workman and a mysterious apparatus.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
TACOMA, Aug. 10.—Three weeks ago an Englishman engaged John Sinnock, a carpenter, to assist in the construction of a flying machine. For several days the carpenters who were at work on the woodwork of the apparatus did not know what they were making. Finally the Englishman, whose name is Howard, satisfied their curiosity by telling them that it was a living machine, the most perfect and true machine ever conceived. The peculiarity of the machine is that it can be moved forward, backward or upward with a single fan. The Englishman guarded his secret carefully, and when he disappeared mysteriously ten days ago he had it carefully stowed away in a room and took the keys. He has not returned, and Sinnock is growing very anxious about his pay. If the man does not return soon Mr. Sinnock will break into the storeroom and sell the machine to the highest bidder in order to get his pay. The machine is to be worked by electricity, and Howard said he could carry five or six persons in a larger machine which he proposed to make. The iron fixtures for the machine were made in the East and shipped out here, and were adjusted by Mr. Sinnock and his men.
“It was a living machine, the most perfect and true machine ever conceived.”
Tacoma’s would-be aviation pioneer belongs to the long tradition of Pacific Northwest inventors whose grand claims outran their capital—and their obligations to the people who built the thing. The unpaid carpenter is the sober counterpoint to the flying-machine dream.
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