STEEL CURTAIN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 27 March 1936, Page 7

STEEL CURTAIN

INVENTOR’S SCHEME TO STOP AIR RAIDS AIR MINISTRY INTERESTED ■ A steel curtain which will be ail aerial armour round London or any oth* er city, so that no aircraft squadron could get through. This is the plan of Harry Grindell Matthews, England's Edison, who has succeeded in interesting the Air Ministry in his proposal. Tests will he made within the next few months, and if they are only half as successful as the inventor believes, citizens of a town or city will be able to sleep peacefully in their beds at night, safe from the fear of aerial invasion. Tucked away in a lonely bungalow on a Welsh hillside near Swansea, Grindell Matthews has succeeded in perfecting a submarine-detecting device which will show the presence of underwater craft at a distance of 30 miles. Yet the existing machinery in use by our navy can only detect submarines 400 yards away ! Having succeeded in this, the inventor has turned his ideas to air defence, and has evolved a plan for laying an aerial mine field immediately in front of, and surrounding, an attacking squadron. Ail aerial torpedo will he shot from the ground, and will reach ari altitude, og 30,000 feet in a few second’s. This rocket will carry secondary rockets which can be released by time fuse at any desired altitude. A layer of these rockets can be despatched in all directions, travelling 300 or 400 feet. A parachute will then open from each, and up to 500 feet of wire will drop down from a coil, with a small bomb attached. These wires will form a steel curtain more than capable of crashing attacking invaders. The advantage of these torpedos is that they can lie 1 carried in fast cars to any part of the coast to intercept attacking planes, while the number of men re. quired to attend the releasing stations is less than an ordinary, gun crew. The famous inventor conceived the idea after hearing arguments in Parliament in which defensive fire was suggested, for he points out that the firing of our own guns, the exploding of shells and the falling of shrapnel would add to the terror of . the civilian population. “The thing,” he said, “is too ghastly to contemplate. Invaders must be brought down before they can reach any large city. We must ensure that there will never be any .more aerial warfare on women and children.” This is not all that the mystery inventor is planning for the good of mankind. He has constructed machinery...for the transmission of certain rays without oominujicating wires. He can kill rats and other vermin with no difficulty, even though they are 60 feet away, while engines are stepped suddenly at a distance as though a magician had waved his hand. He believes that it will be possible in time to arrange an electric charge with lightning speed to arrest aeroplanes and men in ffiglit. Further he hopes that this ray, if developed, will be one of the most powerful factors ever known in the destruction of cancer genus. For many years Grindell Matthews has had the reputation of thinking a decade ahead of other men. He was the pioneer of wireless telephony, and the first man to speak by radio to an aeroplane travelling at 60 miles an hour. By means of a special kind of searchlight he projected what appeared to bo a false moon into the heavens, thereby causing many Londoners to have a stiff neck for weeks craning to see the phenomenon. Very soon he may make the imaginings of Jules Verne and 11. G. Wells seem quite tame by comparison. Foreign governments realise this, and have approached him, only to be told, “I am a Briton, and will give my discoveries to my country.” - ■ The inventor is handicapped by blindness in one eye owing to an accident during his early experiments. He is guarded by barbed wire fences, with invisible burglar alarm rays and electric flood-lighting which can turn night into day. He needs them all, for many unauthorised persons have attempted to steal his secrets.

■ Grindell Matthews has set out to annihilate space and time by means of rocket aeroplanes. He plans-to use a liquid hydrogen, a fuel capable of terrific propulsion, as the gas for driving these machines, and is convinced that they could travel at the amazing speed of two miles a second. Such a projectile could ascend to the stars, and none can foretell to what purpose it may consume space and race time. He is taking the lid off the future, and those who know him best believe ■ that he will make electricity and the hidden rays of the air surrender their secrets. He is harnessing the air in the service of humanity, and his conquests made in the interests of peace will soon be revealed to'us.