WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 45, 21 January 1939, Page 11

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

BANISHING FROST. Wo hear that electricity is being used for warming the soil in winter. Somehow, no sooner do we hear this than we feel annoyed with ourselves for not having thought of it before. If only we had we might have been making a fortune. The first place at which the new idea was worked out, so far as we know, was Everton football ground, the well-known field on which many an exciting game has been played with all England listening-in. Every sportsman knows that a football match may he ruined by hard frost. It aln and fog may cause a match to-bo cancelled, but severe frost makes the ground as hard as iron, and therefore extremely dangerous to the players. Our clever inventors know this, and they have come along with a simple method of keeping the ground above freezing point whatever the state of the_ weather and however low the thermometer may fall. An experiment made in December. 1937, proved in practice what had been worked out in theory.

Very odd it was one winter morning to look over the Kvorton football ground. Everywhere there was thin ice and snow except for a patch of ground about 18 yards square. That green oasis was soft in spite of nine degrees of frost registered overnight. Play would have been impossible on the rest of the field, but it was possible on that small piece. The secret was simply that wires had been laid about nine inches underground and a thermostat had been installed. When flic temperature fell low enough to he near the freezing point the thermostat sent a weak current along the wires, warming the ground sufficiently fo keep it from becoming hard.—(Ti).