A DEVILISH INVENTION.

Northern Advocate, 7 December 1916, Page 3

A DEVILISH INVENTION.

THE LATEST TORPEDO HORROR,

SAN /FRANCISCO, October 23. The French and British naval authorities have had their attention directed to a most remarkable invention, which may shortly bo utilised in the present war. Briefly, the invention is a torpedo with cars, so tuned that enemy ships cannot escape its deadly wake. Montraville M. Wood, the inventor, lives in Berwyn, a suburb of Chicago, and talks interestingly of his latest scientific creation. "In the present war," says Wood, "hundreds of valuable torpedoes have been picked up at sea after being dodged by enemy ships. My torpedo is so equipped that it will follow the sound of the ship with whose propeller it is tuned. "If the pursued ship changes its course the ears of the torpedo follow the sound, and remain on the trial. If the pursued ship sees the torpedo and stops to allow it to pass, then the torpedo halts, for tlie torpedo's propeller operation is governed by the sound from the boat which it t/ails." To prevent the confiscation of unexploded torpedoes Wood's invention is so perfected that when its propeller stops the torpedo drops to a depth of 100 ft or more. There it remains until the propeller is started again by the activity of the ship for which it is intended. In such ease the torpedo comes to within three feet of the surface of the water, and gives chase in the direction indicated by the torpedo's ears. The Wood torpedo is divided into three sections. The first contains a chamber for explosives. The second or middle section contains what Wood calls the "brains." In the third section is the torpedo engine. In his laboratory Mr Wood has shown to friends a torpedo weighing sixty-five pounds, and valued at 2200 dollars, not loaded. This, he states, is the. average cost of torpedoes in use in the European war.