SPEED WITHOUT ENGINES.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XLV, Issue XLV, 23 May 1924, Page 4

SPEED WITHOUT ENGINES.

The news from Switzerland that Capt;,in F. A. M. 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 toi achieve any considerable speed an engine of some kind is essential.

Yet, as the above quoted incident shows, surprisingly high speeds can he reached without the assistance of any mechainical 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 limit.

A man on roller skates can travel still 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 »peed of twenty-five miles. Ice-skating produces about the same maximum speed as roller skating, but 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 the: d.ve is made. A diver,, for instance, who takes off from a height of fifty feet is actually travelling at the rate of, thirty-eight miles an hour when he enters the water.

The motor cyclist- whose speedometer registers sixty miles an hour experiences a glow of pride in his mount, yet nothing lias been done which has not already been achieved by man power. A speed oi more than sixty-one miles an hour Ims been reached on an ordinary racing pattern "push" bicycle, and although the "push'' cyclist was paced by a motor cyclist and proteted from wind pressure this is none the less a. remarkable feat.

It is, however, only when wheels aro abandoned that tlie highest- mail power speeds become possible. In the races on skis down the snow clad mountain slopes an average speed of forty-five miles an hour is not uncommon even among the lesser lights oi the sport, while the expert will equal tlm speed of an express train and cover the distance at sixty miles an. hour.

Lugeing on the 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 lias been reached.