MOVING SIDEWALKS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 126, 10 March 1936, Page 8

MOVING SIDEWALKS.

NOVEL SUGGESTION MADE. Travelling sidewalks that would carry passengers about a mile in foui minutes and take the place of underground railroad trains, were described at the winter' convention of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers when N. \V? Storer, consulting railway engineer, Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, declared that such moving sidewalks would inipiove transit in the congested areas of large cities, states' the “Christian Science Monitor.” Mr Storey said they constituted a “by-way system of moving platforms for mass transportation,” adding that the travelling sidewalk was really two sections laid side by side. One of these never stops, while the ot.iei moves intermittently to take on and discharge passengers. “By-ways will cost less to build than subways, and will use less power for operation,” lie, said. * Ebenezer Hawkins was credited with having invented the travelling sidewalk about 1874. Mr Storer said the two endless elective platforms would have a stationary platform beside them and would he equipped with hand-rails, seats, ancl benches. They would travel below the ordinary sidewalk level at ail average speed of 15 miles an hour. Natural scientists and engineers attending the convention, heard an astronomical Arabian Nights tale when Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of the Harvard College Observatory, showed them a photograph of a “celestial HarounalRaschid parading through the heavens in the raiment of a beggar.” This nobody of the skies, he explained, is a spiral nebula, or island universe, which until recently was known only by a number. Only two great nebulae are known to be larger. Clouds of matter, probably meteoric dust, obscured the great nebula, from astronomers until its size was fully measured at the Oak Ridge station of the Harvard Observatory, Dr. tShapley said. It is visible only with the aid of a powerful telescope. The occasion of Dr. Shapley’s address was the annual presentation of the Edison Medal, which was conferred this year upon Dr. Lewis B. Stillwell, consulting electrical engineer, of New York ancl Princeton, New Jersey. Founded by associates and friends of the late Thomas A. Edison, it i.s awarded for achievement in the field of electrical arts, engineering, ancl science. The medal went to Dr. Stillwell for “distinguished engineering achievements and his pioneer work in the generation, distribution, ancl utilisation of electric energy.”