In this creative spoof, Bernasconi imagines the discovery of an important diary that documents the attempts of Captain Arsenio in the eighteenth cen tury to invent a flying machine. Excerpts from the diary are produced along with detailed diagrams, formulas, and illustrated pages for six failed projects that include, for example, an “Aerial Submarine,” whose “miraculous” but flammable gas and wooden “flight vessel” leads to disaster, and the uncon trollable “Illusion Burner”—a prototype of the turbine engine. Untutored in the sciences but with an unflagging optimism, Captain Arsenio survives one disaster after another, refusing to let physical pain and the destruction of his machines deter him from yet another attempt. hc