ABORIGINAL GENIUS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18585, 18 December 1923, Page 9

ABORIGINAL GENIUS.

SCIENTIST AND INVENTOR. (i >" AN AVIATION DEVICE. ! : ■' [rai)M OtTtt OWJT COBRESPOJSTDENT.] '' 'SYDNEY, Dec,' C ' . David Unaipon, the Son of the aboriginal chief of the Narrinyeri tribe, a fullblooded aboriginal • from the Port McLeay Mission ! Station on the Lower Murray, claims to have invented a contrivance by mean.? of which aeroplanes can riso vir-tically-from tha ground without first running along for some distance in- order to gain impetus. How he accomplished this, and the devices, he intends to use 1 to raise the aiaihine, Unaipon. will not disclose at present. Ho is applying for patent rights, but when the manufacture of some special appliances ha.> been completed, he says that he will be prepared to demonstrate.

Unaipon -is a remarkable man in more ways than one. He is a religious preacher, a research student, '.and an inventor of more things than these new - appliances for raising aeroplanes.: The sheepshearing machine is practically his, ; for he ■ claims ,to have discovered ; how to adapt laterial motion for ; the use of th» machine, 'while the adaptation of parabolical motion to steam and /internal combus-' tion engines—thus doing away with cranksis another of his discoveries. His sermons, which ' ate' powerful and well . thought out, and. moreover often alarmingly, direct, > have caused no little stir in Sydney, where he has . just finished conducting "a series of missions. He is.the product of a mission station. He was bom oil one, educated on one. and has liv&i on one practically all his life. That he' was educated he owes to his. father, the chief, who, strangely enough, insisted upon his faking advantage of the schooling which the Port McLeay station offered, v The rest, apparently, is du« to' David himself, for he is a man with a well-shaped , head, big, brown, cthoughtful eyes, and the stoop of the, .student. He talks grudgingly— of •: religion— but with, a conciseness that is as unusual as it is pleasing. , .