FLOATING CABLES

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23260, 23 July 1945, Page 6

FLOATING CABLES

Buoyancy Given By Tennis Balls LONDON. June 15. Twenty-three million tennis bails—the United Kingdom's wartime output—were used by British industry in a brilliant plan to defeat the German magnetic mine. This has just been revealed by the Henley Tyre and Rubber Company. Early in tire war. they state, the chief engineer and research manager of the company were asked to solve a major problem which was threatening the success of Britain's new minesweeping technique. This technique involved the use of minesweepers which towed behind them each about 500 yards of electric cable. A powerful electric current generated inside the ship had to be passed through the cables into the sea and thus explode all the mines in the area by an electric discharge. But the cables had to be made to float. This was the stumbling block which the two scientists had to overcome. They hit on the following original solution: it was to carry electric wires on a cable made of tennis balls pressed and packed tightly one after another to form one long self-buoyant cable. The plan was entirely successful. Since then United Kingdom manufacturers have used a total of 23,000,000 tennis balls to make hundreds of buoyant sets involving more than 1.000.000 yards of cable.