SURVEY OF YEAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 37, 13 February 1936, Page 6

SURVEY OF YEAR

THE MARCH OF SCIENCE

ADVANCE IN MANY FIELDS

THE AGE OF SPEED

About one hundred years ago a writer exclaimed, "Of all modern inventions recommend me to the cab. I picked up one an Cheap'side and' absolutely flew here; . . A new Ipswich coach . . .is very near the ground, to prevent it from upsetting, i presume, for-though it has only two horses it goes at the rate of twelve miles an hour. ... It is quite impossible it can last; they will either be stopt by some accident, or indicted as a nuisance." Creevey, who wrote these words, would' no doubt have dubbed his the age of speed, with a capital S. (writes Eric N. Davis in the "Cape Times"). -What would have been his reaction to the news that on September 27, 1935, a railway- train on its journey from London to Grantham reached the amazing speed of 112 miles per hour, and, instead of being condemned as a nuisance, was belauded for the achievement? Once more in chronicling the past year pride of place must be given to the annihilation of time and space by mechanical marvels. In the same month of September, Sir Malcolm Campbell drove his "Bluebird" at more than 300 miles per hour, while later in the year Captain G. E. T. Eyston achieved a new world's record of 159.3 miles • within the hour, the greatest distance ever covered on land within that time. But if speed is the keynote of today, fuel supplies for the monsters whereby it is secured becomes more and more pressing a problem. , ■ COAI^PETKOL ADVANCE. Faced with the exhaustion of the world's natural deposits of oil, the -technician is seeking constantly- to add to the store by other means, and the year 1935 will always be memorable for the inauguration of a British plant in which a substantial contribution is made by intricate and dangerous processes of treating coal and other substances with hydrogen at high temperatures and pressures. ■ Such events make it difficult to avoid the conclusion, after regarding the trend of scientific work today, that man is compelled, both as a result of his past wastefulness and because of the Frankenstein monster his civilisation has become, to devote an.altogether inordinate amount of time and energy to attempts to! make by artificial means substances that Nature can supply certainly more' simply, probably more. economically, and possibly more efficiently. This is not, of course, invariably so. Hadioactivitywas first produced artificially last year, and experiments since continued justify hopes that the mass production of artificial radium, with properties even more valuable to the medical profession in'particular, and at a cost far below that of the present supply, may quite reasonably soon be an everyday occurrence. .. J So far it is true, only the tiniest of amounts have been secured, but the size of the oak bears little relation'to that of the acorn. '■■'.. According to a proclamation by Herr Hitler, the search for a synthetic rubber,'one of the commodities now as indispensable to the world -as any other, has been rewarded by complete success, though the Fuehrer certainly failed to go into the economics.;, of the matter. Unless it can be produced at a price comparable with that .of the natural product it will be the research chemist rather than the consumer who will be interested. ■It would not be correct to say that as another year dawns television is as far off as ever. Although televisors j have not yet become normal articles of furniture, and .there still remains the need for emphasising the difference between what" can be accomplished in the laboratory and what can be put out as a national service, a great deal has been accomplished during the past few months, and the time of fufilment, it not yet, is.very much, nearer. GLASS HOUSES. However, if we cannot today see objects round.the corner or miles away, it is not impossible that the adage about glass houses may have a more real, importance before long. There is now a glass, that casts no shadow, and that keeps but heat... It has been suggested, quite seriously, by an eminent chemist, that all that is needed now is an architect gifted with the requisite amount of imagination and a house might be built through which the inhabitants, besides being able to keep cool in the hottest of weather, might also enjoy the advantage of being able to see without being seen! As a Hungarian inventor has Dust demonstrated an apparatus said to emit rays that make invisible the object upon which they are focused, the problem of the unwanted caller, especially the more virulent type of rent collector or tax gatherer, would seem to be solved at last! ■' IN THE UPPER AIK. More important, perhaps, is the news of the discovery after months of research by Professor E. V. Appleton, the famous physicist, that in the upper atmosphere encompassing the. earth there is a vast layer of intense heat, perhaps 1000 degrees Centigrade, which is probably the reason why wavelengths below, about six metres are of no value for successful long-dis-tance radio transmissions. It also looks # from this as if the occupants of any projectile intended to take them to the moon might have other worries than those concerned with' the accuracy of their marksman's aim. All the same, the^stratosphere continues to be probed by scientists., A Soviet balloon has ascended with instruments to a height of twenty-five miles, a temperature of 76 degrees below zero having been recorded ,-at an altitude of 30,000 feet. It is hoped to project rockets to a height of at least fifty miles, speeds of 700 miles an hour having already been attained with 12ft rockets, propelled by a mixture of liquid oxygen and petrol, sent off during experiments at Professor Goddard Clark's laboratory in New Mexico. It sounds as if the "No Smoking" notice is not the least conspicuous one around the professor's premises, but solid petrol, into which explosive bullets have been fired at short range without its exploding, which it is claimed is non-inflammable unless flame is actually applied to it, was recently exhibited at the New Cork School of Aeronautics. If the high hopes it has aroused are not dispelled .in practice, the fire dan-

ger to aeroplanes and cars would be reduced almost to vanishing point by ist general use. . . ' Perhaps, however,. before that both coal and oil will be superseded, for the suggestion has. been made in the course of the British Association's meeting this year that in the blizzards of the Arctic, where, for instance, in little-known Adolie Land, an air "river" at least fifty miles wide, and probably hundreds of feet deep, moves at fifty miles per hour during most of the year, may be lying dormant a, source of power ready to hand for harnessing by windmills when other more accessible forms of power have become exhausted. THE "FLYING FLEA." In aviation probably as much attention has been drawn to the performances of the midget "Flying Flea," which, with its motor-cycle engine and low cost generally, may be the means of bringing the aeroplane almost literally into every home, as to the spectacular feats of the giant high-powered machines, one of which in the United States has put up a record for sustained flight by keeping up an average speed during a nine hours' trip of

over 250 miles per hour, or in the autogiro of Senor de ]a Cierva, which has at last succeeded in taking off from the ground without any forward run. Shall we conclude, seeing that among the latest items of news are the construction of huge bombproof shelters in every country, even in the Vatican City .itself, with ■ the;' following words, spoken, during the year by.one of the foremost scientists of the world: — "In comparison 'With the amount of

research being carried on in scientifi' laboratories investigations undertake) with the deliberate purpose of discov ering destructive substances for usi in armaments are an 'infinitesimal pro portion. Nothing could be further fron the truth than that shells and; poisoi gas. those degrading aspects of moden civilisation, are necessary consequence, of scientific- progress.' They are du< to human greed, and. to the' sarm spirit as that which led Cain to ris< up" and slay his brother." ■--)'