SPEED WITHOUT ENGINES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3220, 19 May 1924, Page 2

SPEED WITHOUT ENGINES.

The news from Switzerland that Captain F. A. NT. Browning, of the British bobsleigh team entered for the Olympic winter games, was travelling at forty miles an hour when his bob overturned no doubt surprised some people who are inclined to take it for granted that to achieve any considerable speed an engine- of somei kind is essential. Yet, as the above qnoted incident shows, surprisingly high speeds can be i cached' without the assistance of any mechanical power. The splinter who covers a. hundred yards in ten seconds travels at an average speed of rather more than! the twenty miles an hour legal maximum lor a motor car and during part of the race must considerably exceed the lim.t.

A man on roller skates can travel sfill faster, for although the ordinary skater makes the circuit of the rink at only about fourteen miles an hour the racing expert has been known to attain a speed of twenty-fivei miles. Ice-skating produces about the same maximum speed as roller skating, hut it is estimated that in ice hockey and over short distances rather higher speeds are sometimes attained. Diving can produce very high velocities. varying with the height from which thet dive l is made. A diver, for instance, who takes off from a height of fifty feet is l actually travelling at the rate of thirty-eight miles an hour u hen he- enters the water.

Tire motor cyclist whose speedometer registers sixty miles an hour experiences a glow of pride in his mount, yet nothing has been done which has not already been achieved by man power. A speed of more than sixty-one miles an hour Jins been reached on an ordinary racing pattern “push” bicycle, and although tlie ‘‘push’’ cyclist was paced by a motor cyclist and proteted from wmd pressure this is none the less a remarkable feat.

It is, however, only when wheels arc abandoned that the highest man power speeds become possible.

In the races on skis down tlio snow clad mountain slopes an average speed of forty-five miles an hour is not uncommon even among the lessor lights or the sport, while the expert will equal the speed of an express train and cover the distance at sixty miles an hour.

Lngeing on tho specially prepared snow or ice runs frequently produces a speed of forty-five miles an hour, and on the famous Cresta run a speed of eighty miles an hour has been reached.