UNLEASHING 1,000 HORSE POWER.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 160, 8 July 1922, Page 17

UNLEASHING 1,000 HORSE POWER.

A large, bare, clean shed. A massive bench and gear in the centre of it. A marvellous machine of gleam-ing cylinders poised, dormant, on the bench. Around the machine, like attendant priests, a number of men in overalls. It is the test of the firet aeroplane engine

in the world actually to develop 1000 h.p. Suddenly that gleaming monster i wakes to life—to almost incredible life. Beginning with a rather husky, sleepy drone, ac though coming to life from some profound slumber, this lord of airengines begins to "talk" in a louder and louder voice. Soon, in fact, he drowns .any other chance of conversation anyI where within his neighbourhood. I The man standing at the throttle I lever which governs the epeed of the colossus looks inquiringly at the chief engineer. The latter glances at a dial which tells how many revolutions a minute the monster is making. Then he node. Whereupon the engineer at the lever moves it apparently just a fraction of an inch or bo. The result is amazing. The growl becomes a roar, the roar a fearful, earsplitting tumult. You look at the tell-tale dial. My lord of engines is now running at 1,700 turne to the minute. His vast, clamouring song is filling the shed with a hurricane of sound. j You turn to a companion, nodding at the quivering needle of the dial. You put your mouth close to his ear. You shout. You positively yell. But, though your lips are almost touching his ear, he can hear nothing. He shakes his head with a, rueful smile. That frightful blast of sound, that unleashing of 1000 h.p. within the cylinders of a machine which weighs only a little over 20001b, is reducing one's ear-drums to such a state of paralysis that they are not merely insensible to any other eound, but they seem after a minute or so to register nothing that; is really perceptible of the engine's din. It is almost as though you might be I under water somewhere, in some cavern :in which there was a ceaseless and yet 1 almost inaudible movement of mighty I tides. j But this is not all. The monster has [been snarling, roaring, howling; but now, at another movement of that remorseless lever, he raises his voice to a demoniacal, frenzied shriek. It is really : dreadful. j And yet there is such a terrible, awful power in that final note that It makes you thrill from head to foot. This is something new. Men's ears have not heard before that voice of 1000 h.p. given off by 16 immensely li<rht ami yet phenomenally stron? cylinders, the pistons inside which are racing at such a dizzy epeed that they are now turning the crankshaft at just on 2000 revolutions a minute. Some sense inside you seems to register disquiet, almost fear; and yet there iis another and dominant sensation of almost savage triumph. This is, in fact, the last and frreateßt wonder in specialised enrrineerinjr—this development of the power of a bip steam locomotive in a piece of intricate i mechanism which can be tucked away in I the front of the body of an aeroplane!—■ I Mr. H. Harper in the "Daily Mail."