THE MARVEL TRAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 16120, 8 July 1914, Page 5

THE MARVEL TRAIN

SPEED OF 300 MILES AN HOUR.

A remarkable invention, which, if it docs under working conditions what it achieves in the model stage, has almost Hinitloss possibilities, was displayed in Jjondon during May.

It is a train or car which will run through the air at a speed estimated by tho inventor at 200 or 300 miles an hour.

One force raises the train into the air, another drives it through the, air. At the

demonstration in London one first saw a sigar-shaped car supported on two rails. An electric switch was moved, and the car was raised into the air and kept there as though held by invisible hands. The only connections with the raibj were for the purpose of electrical contact. It was impossible even by exerting one's full force to press the train down to the rails again.

A second switch sent the train through the air at great speed. The train was brought to rest in the air. Tho original switch was moved back and the train dropped to the rails again.

The inventor is M. Emile Bachelet, a French electrical engineer, who has been secretly working on the idea for 20 years. The details of the invention will be kept secret for the present. The inventor claims that the cost of railwnv construction, including locomotives and power, '"ould be 25 per cent, cheaper under his system than in any existing railway.

—Is it a Commercial Possibility?—

H. Hamilton Fyfe, in the Daily Mail, thus gives his impressions:— There is so much more behind this invention than mere rapid travelling. The force used is capable of development in a hundred ways not yet even hinted at. Sir David Salomons, the famous electrician, said while \I was there, "This Frenchman is likely to, be to electricity what Stephenson was to steam." Whither his discovery mny lead us no one can say.

Is it a commercial possibility? Experts differ. I am not concerned in this article with its commercial uses, which can probably only be discovered by actual experience. I will merely try to describe the miraculous model which is now being demonstrated in the city.

I shall never forget the earliest parade of motor caTs. I shall never forget the lea.p of my heart the first time I saw an aeroplane slide up into the air. And I shall have to he very old before I lose the recollection of seeing Emile Bachelet perform his electrical miracles in a city warehouse. Do you think " miracle" too strong a word to use? Let me describe some of them, first tellin? t-ou that they did not astonish and spellbind only me, who lay no claim to scientific knowledge. They had the same effect upon a number of "men who know"-*—engineers, electricians, and a couple of admirals from the Admiralty—who happened, Hickily for me, to be there at the same time.

At one end of tho warehouse floor, which has been turned into n. workshop, is a switchboard controlling current from a powerful accumulator. Fifteen yards away a small magnetic coil stands on a pedestal wired to the accumulator. "Here," cays M. Bachelet, an alert Frenchman with rough, grey hair, a mystic's eyes, and an American accent, "here is a disc of metal., Please take it and try to press it down upon the coil." At the same time he signals to the young lady at the switchboard, and she turns on a current of somethinc over 200 volts.

The admiral who holds the disc tries to press it down. He cannot. A force comes up from the coil which repels it. This invisible force is as strong as a jet of water would be, and, like a iet of water risins. from a fountain, it is evidently cone-shaped, for th'e disc slips off it and bwomes more manageable when it is not held above the centre of the coil. This is to make manifest the "law of repulsion," which has long been known and which M. Baehelet makes no claim to have discovered, but which is the basis of his invention. Steam was known, of course, before Stephenson, but he was the first to show what it could be made to

do. Next a disc of steel is laid upon the coil. The current being turned on, instantly magnetised and becomes immovable. "No man alive could.lift it off," says M. Baehelet. The admiral has a trv. I try also. Firm as a rock! "Turn off the current." Now M. Baehelet takes it off and puts beneath it a thin sheet of copper. Whirr-r-r goes the electrity, the steel rises at once and stays in the air. If it was a miracle for the prophet Elisha to make an iron axe-head float in to River of Jordan, surely it is no less than that to make a heavy piece of steel float in air!

"Ah!" says someone, "but in this case we know how it is done." Do we? How is it done? Lord Kelvin did not know what electricity was. M. Baehelet does not know vhy his steel floats. "If I could tell you that," he says"l could tell you what Life is-" Through a "glass screen 3in thick the "repulsive force" make a piece of aluminium dance about, an the current is quickly diminished and increased. Several blocks' of metal, 141b weight in all,- are forced up and held in suspension. Ihree dishes are balanced over the coil—one of steel and two of aluminium. First an aluminium one i 3 jerked off on to the floor. The steel one, with the second aluminium one inside it, falls upon the "jet of power." Instantly the second aluminium one joins ite fellow on the floor. Then with a smile M. Bachelet has his handbells played. • A scale of belle with a coil under • each bell and on the coil a striker. The' young lady at the switchboard gets busy. For each note she wants she sends current through the coil underneath the bell which will produce it. That lifts the striker. She plays a little tune.

"And now that you have seen how the principle works, come and see how I v&o it to run a train," M. Bachelet eays. His trainway—it is not a railway, for there are no rails—runs along the side of the room. It looks something like an ordinary toy railway, for there- are slote in which the train rests while it is not "flying," and overhead there are currentcarriers and controllers. But you must get out of your head at once all idea of a train propelled or we understand propulsion. We are accustomed to think that there muet be some engine, driven by steam or electricity or petrol, to drag or push the rain (or the tramway car or the motor car) along. There is nothing of that kind here. The forces which make the train go are the two forces of electric magnetism—one attractive, the otlher repellent. Here is the train at rest, Underneath it and all along the tramway, close together, are coils similar to those with which the experiments were done. Turn the current into these coils and the train, repelled by it, rises into the air, just as the pieces of metal did. Strengthen the currents syid it rises still more. But how is it to be moved along? Observe that there are arches over the tramway. These are solenoids, coils of wire which act as pulling magnets when current is put into them. Here is the "attractive" force coming into play. The train, being lifted up into the air by the "repellent" power, is moved by the attraction of these solenoids. They pull it towards them. As soon «s it is through one arch it is Tinder the influence of the next, and so on. Beautifully simple! Why has no one thought of it before? Aβ the train goes along it switches on and switches off again automatically the current required to keep it going. There is therefore no waste of current. Also the trainway would be, according to M. Bachelet, cheaper by far than the ordinary railroad, "Could it go round curves?" asks someone. "Certainly," he replies. "No difficulty at all. More solenoids. More, aJso, on uphill grades. Fewer when trains run downhill. But yon shall see all these questions answered practically when I sjet a full-size trainway laid down. It will be near London, yes. Starting from a great railway station. One* mffe? Oh, yt>s. MoTe perhaps. Possiblv eight miles. Then you will see."

The myefeic eyes g-low with joyous anticipation. At last the fruit of 20 years' labour eeejne to hang within reaoh. A poor boy, born in Paris, Emilo Bachelet went to the United States 30 years ago, and for two-thirds of that time he has been giving all his energy and spending every penny he could earn upon his plans for makimr use of the "force of repul-

sion." His own Hying train may work, or it may not. That will not ni'fect tin; value of the, invention. Engineers will set to work the design something better. But they will not rob Bachelet of credit. The Steplienson of electricity! A fine imaginative phrase.