NEON WILL MAKE NEW AIR BEACON SHINE 100 MILES

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6813, 17 January 1929, Page 4

NEON WILL MAKE NEW AIR BEACON SHINE 100 MILES

Chemist Shows How Gas Aids Electric Light - Describes Rare Ones.

Knowing that an electric spark which will jump only one inch through air will leap' six nnd a half feet through neon, the gas is being used in constructing an air beacon of 4,000,000 candle power, visible for 100 miles, said Dr. H. Monmouth Smith, professor of inorganic chemistry, lecturing at tho Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Dr. Smith opened the initial Society of Arts popular science lecture at tho institute. His address covered gases raro and common, some of which arc always floating about in the air while others are obtained most laboriously.

Neon Most Efficient.

Neon, which became popular almost overnight as a medium for brilliant electric signs, Dr. Smith said, offers tho most efficient aid in tho conversion of electrical energy into light yet discovered. Where the ordinary beacon now being used an aviation fields may be seen 10 miles, ho declared, a neon beacon will bo visible for 'SO miles. “Tlie time will come,” Dr. Smith forecasted, “when airmen flying about tho country even during the darkest night will never be out of sight of these great beacons marking tho airways of the heavens.” So common an ingredient of the air as hydrogen, Dr. Smith continued, is called into great demand by its use in lightcr-than-air ships. The United States is now building two dirigibles, which if filled .with hydrogen, will each require approximately 6,500.000 cubic feet of the gas, he said. Hydrogen used in arc welding benefits in helping eliminate riveting machines, while its use in making hard fats from vegetable oils'is employed with 300,000,000 pounds of. oils annually, ho added.

Advantage of Helium.

Helium also is used in dirigibles, Dr. Smith explained, the airship Los Angeles being filled with it. While leas buoyant than hydrogen it has the advantage of being notvinflammablc. Coining from the skies down into the depths of the sea, he asserted that helium is now being used in the _ synthetic air supplied to divers, enabling them to work longer under water. It has the lowest boiling and freezing point of any substance known to tho chemical world, he said . In surveying other gases, Dr. Smith said that attompts arc being made to discover moro about krypton and xenon, which with argon, neon and helium make up the rare gases of tho air. Oxygen valued at 22,577,110 dollars was used for welding in 1925, ho asserted, in contradistinction to the bare 4,000,000 cubic feet of the gas used in J9IL , Without ethylene, Dr. Smith con-

eluded, no one would recognise their ordinary household gas, for without it tho latter has no luminosity.