ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 22 October 1928, Page 9

ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION.

COMPLETE OFFICE EQUIPMENT. ON BOARD SECOND VESSEL. The ice-breaker City of New York, first of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition vessels to leave New York for the South Pole, cleared for Dunedin, New Zealand, under command of Captain Frederick C. Melville, with 200 tons ox supplies and a crew of 31 about the middle of August. ' Commander Richard E. Byrd and a group of personal friends were on board the little barque as she went down the Narrows, and were taken off at Quarantine by the city tug Macom and brought back to New York. The second vessel of the Antarctic Expedition, the Chelsea, will follow later. Some of the dogs for the expedition will be sent south on the whaling vessel Ross. included in the Chelsea’s cargo will be complete ofiice equipment for recording the technical data compiled by the members of the expedition, and for carrying on tiio extensive clerical j routine required in the management of j the operations. C. D. Alexander, supply officer, estimates that the office equipment will total approximately 20,(XX) pounds. It will give facilities comparable to a metropolitan • office, although specially designed to meet the requirements of Commander Byrd’s expedition. Four standard typewriters, three portable typewriters, filing cabinets, portable desks, strong boxes, cardindexes, and reams of paper are included in the list. Also there is a visible log system designed by Mr. Alexander to be carried in airplanes. It is a flexible leather binder 15 by 12 inches, carrying 24 removable cards on each side. One set of cards is for meteorological data and the other for navigation and motor data. The complete set of cards will be presented to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington upon Commander Byrd’s return home. Meanwhile final tests of the aircraft which Commander Byrd will use in his polar exploration were under way. Lieut. Bernt Balchen, chief pilot of the expedition, and Dean Smith, copilot, have arrived at New York with tri-motored Ford monoplane, the largest airplane which the expedition will use. At, Fanningdale Lieutenant Balchen and Harold I. June, naval pilot who is to -accompany the polar party, started the last tests of the expedition’s Fairchild monoplane. NEW KIND OF CAMERA.

A new kind of camera, which will record in a small snapshot picture its own position on the earth’s surface, has been perfected at Rochester, U.S.A., for the United States navy. It was lent on August 23 to Commander M. R. Pierce, of the United States naval air station at Lakehurst, N.J., who collaborated with the Eastman Kodak Company in perfecting and building it. An important possibility of this camera in the expedition, Commancvei Pierce said, would be to establish definitely the location of spots on the Antarctic continent photographed from the air in the process of map-making. After a test made, Commander Pierce said he liadi established the accuracy of the camera to within half a second. Apart from Commander Byrd’s use of it,’the camera will be available in ordinary navigation, because an observation with it is more rapid than one with an ordinary sextant, and is easier to read. The camera is capable of being loaded to make 100 separate pictures on one roll of film. It rolls out, cuts and deposits the film in a safe dark box; the pictures can be developed in a plane.