PROFESSOR'S AIR ROCKET.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20868, 9 May 1931, Page 7 (Supplement)

PROFESSOR'S AIR ROCKET.

SUGGESTED POSSIBILITIES. Professor Hermann Oberwarth, 0110 of tlio inventors of the " air-rocket," recently delivered a lecture in Vienna on his 20 years' research work. For his rocket ho employs benzine in a fluid state. Tho empty rocket weighs somewhat, more than 17J.11)., and five times much after having been filled. Special mechanism constructed by Professor Oberwarth renders it possible for the rocket to reach a speed of nearly two miles a second, and to travel 650 miles. This rapidity inav be increased by placing one or several smaller rockets on the flying one. \ Professor Oberwarth claims that the invention will enable scientists to penetrate into and search the higher regions of the air by a meteorological registrationsrocket, furnished with a parachute. Thence will be possible to photograph an enemy's position, or unknown dis- 5 tricts, through which the rocket is directed. LeLters could be sent to the United States within half an hour, and the cost would be only four to eight times as much as is now paid. Tlio rocket, it is claimed, could also bo used for sending flying airships up to immense heights. The " rocket-space ship" could, it is claimed, even break through the atmosphere round the earth, and, if further improvements be achieved, it might even visit other planets. Poison gas-rockets might also be produced for war, which would supersede all present methods of warfare, which would be one way, Professor Oberwarth suggests, to universal peace.

CAMERA THAT IS SWALLOWED. Successful experiments have been made at St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, with a camera, invented by two young Austrian scientists, by means of which tho interior of tho stomach of a patient who has swallowed it may bo photographed. The working of tno camera has been described by a specialist, who stated that he found the instrument very easy to swallow, and suffered no illeffects. lie explained that the camera not only photographed the entire wall of the stomach on 16 plates, each tho size of a snip out of a tramcar ticket, but it operates with a flash of 200,000 candlepower and docs its work in 20 seconds. Lie added: "Tho camera is in the form of a small cylinder about 2in. long and 5-Bin. thick. Two parts are of metal and tlio intermediate portions arc of unbreakable glass. This part contains tho lamp. The camera is at the end of a semi-flexible tube, which contains two wire—one for carrying tho current for the flash and the other for operating the tiny shutters. It is absolutely sale. I consider the invention a tremendous technical achievement."

MECHANICAL " GUESSER." Up to the present a laborious and time-wasting process lias been necessary to calculate in advance the number ot telephone calls and their routing which might bo expected by a new telephone oxchange. To obviate this a " mechanical guesser" has been devised in which bouncing balls of steel do away with mathematicians' calculations. Thousands of the balls, about the size of a bicycle ballbearing, each represents an imaginary telephone call. They are made to bounce from a plate into a series of small holes arranged like those of the old-time game of bean bag. Each hole represents a different type of telephone call, and tho flying ball's bounco into one or another in strict accordance with mathematical laws of probability. Merely by counting the balls that have fallen through each holo a speedy analysis of expected telephono traffic is obtained. HUMAN HAIR FOR FOG BELL. Human hair is employed in the operation of a new electric fog bell. A strand of several hundred hairs is stretched botween two supports, and on the strand is a link. As the air moistens the hair stretches, the link is lowored, and an electrical contact starts the electric motor operating the bell.