“Balloon House” Can Be Held Up By Vacuum Cleaner

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22971, 14 June 1949, Page 7

“Balloon House” Can Be Held Up By Vacuum Cleaner

(By a Reuter Correspondent)

NEW YORK.

The United States Air Force has disclosed the existence of a new “balloon house” made only of air, glass and rubber, and capable of being held up by a vacuum cleaner. The house is said to be flexible and strong. It is claimed that it wil stand up against winds of 140 miles an hour. (75-mile winds are a hurricane.)

The house is half of a huge balloon 36ft. high and 53ft. in diameter, fastened to a concrete base. It is made of fibre glass and rubber and is only as thick as a few pages of a newspaper. Air holds .it up, acting as the timbers and the beams. Once it is inflated, a vacuum cleaner pushing air in keeps it pumped up and entilated. You enter and leave through an air-lock.

The pressure inside, is less than inside a child’s toy balloon; but a puncture would not make this house explode. It would just collapse slowly % If hit by shell fire, there would be no ’wood or stones to fall on men or equipment. The balloon house called the radome—was built to protect new radar equipment for the Air Force. It was made by the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory at Buffalo, New York. Movable Private Homes

The idea could be modified for movable private homes or for buildings like an ice-skating rink. The radome is designed to operate in any climate from 67 degrees below zero fahrenheit up to 140 degrees. The one demonstrated is black, but it can be given different colours for camouflage in regions from the Arctic to the jungles. It has withstood wind gusts of 80 miles an hour and is designed to take 140 without blowing over. The radome wfill stand up under heavy snow or thick coatings of ice. A rope is moored to the top and runs down to the ground. Men can walk round the dome, hauling rope to cut off the snow, or whipping the rope to crack encrusted ice.

A man can stand on top of the roof. His weight makes only an inch or so bulge. Folded, the bag is the size of two office desks and weighs 1,6001 b. An aeroplane can carry it easily. Two blowers can pump it up in 20 minutes. Then the vacuum cleaner takes over.

Mr. Edward Dye, head of the development division at the Cornell Laboratory, conceived the idea. Mr. Walter Bird, project engineer, led the work of making it practical. A special erecting gear of collapsible ribs helps to put up and remove the balloon without touching any radar towers or equipment. This air-supported radome idea could be adapted to other shapes for. private dwellings or buildings. A skating rink 100 yards wide and 200 yards long was not impossible, Mr. Bird said. A revolving door would be sufficient as an airlock.