Policeman's Radio: Speedway Scheme.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19201, 15 October 1930, Page 6

Policeman's Radio: Speedway Scheme.

A London Letter ,

(Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, September 1. ALARMING have motor-car smash and grab raids become in London and the provinces, that Scotland Yard has made arrangements to call a conference of Metropolitan and Home counties police chiefs and wireless experts specially to discuss the matter. For the moment the police chiefs are concentrating attention on experiments by the Brighton police. The Watch Committee there has made a grant towards the cost of the experiments, and the Brighton Chief Constable, who is a wireless expert, has been appointed to the Special Committee set up in London. It is proposed to equip police officers throughout the country with small wireless pocket receiving sets, by means of which they would be able to keep in constant touch with headquarters. A set has 1 already been made which will fit the pocket, and its weight is much less than was expected. An electric buzzer, which will be attached to the policeman’s tunic, will inform him when he is being called by headquarters, and by adjusting a pair of miniature earphones he will be able to receive instructions. The wireless sets will have a range of about eight miles, enough to cover most boroughs, and it is believed that, with the broadcast description of the wanted men, escape should be almost impossible. The experiments are now almost completed, and it is expected that the scheme will be in general operation in about eighteen months. An English Folk Museum. N OT content with improving the amenities of the public parks by establishing children’s playgrounds and bathing places, Mr George Lansbury, the First Commissioner of Works, is now busy planning a Folk Museum on the site of the Botanic Gardens in Regents Park. Its provision was recommended by the recent report of the Royal Commission on Museum Galleries, which pointed out how far behind other countries, notably Sweden and Holland, we are in this respect, and emphasised the danger of delay. Rapidly the material which would furnish a Folk Museum is disappearing. It might be easy still to find old cottages, barns, farm buildings, windmills and water-mills, smithies and work shops to re-erect, but their number is getting fewer every year, and to equip them with all their original fittings would be difficult now, and still more difficult in a few years’ time. Who can doubt either the utility or the popularity of a Folk Museum? Could anything be more delightful or a better illustration to history than to be able to stroll into a Tudor timbered cottage, furnished to the last detail from spinning wheel to bed linen, rush-light holder to pewter plates and horn spoons? Or to be able to see in reconstructed farm buildings how farmers of still earlier days tilled their land with primitive ploughs and oxen and ox-gear, harvested their corn with scythes and sickles, and threshed it with flails?

The Commissioners hoped there would be, not only an English Folk Museum, but one each for Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Their attention -was concentrated upon national collections; but it must not be ignored that a good many of our provincial towns have gone far already in their collections of objects which they describe generically as “byegones.” In some places the articles are exhibited in historic manor houses, tithe barns, and the like, so that local Folk Museums have had a good start. Aids to Learning.

THE British Institute or Adult Education has arranged a novel form of exhibition to be held at the London School of Economics during the first week of September. Visitors will see a comprehensive assembly of mechanical aids to learning—films, gramophones, epidiascopes microscopes, lanterns, and so on. It is hoped to attract a large number of educational authorities, and to show that even the highly personal business of teaching can with advantage allow itself to become in some degree mechanised. The Eugenics Society will be represented, the British Social Hygiene Council will demonstrate visual methods of instruction in social hygiene, the British Broadcasting Corporation will have a model studio at work, and the Baird Company will give displays of television. During the exhibition, a series of conferences will be held by the Commission on Educational and Cultural Films which was set up with Government approval last November to inquire into the whole subject of educational films in this country —the number available, their distribution and the relations between educational bodies and the film industry. Great Britain it at present far behind most Continental countries in this, largely because no central organisation exists—such as the Bildstelle in Germany and the Harvard Film Institute—to which schools or local authorities requiring educational films can apply. The Commission hopes in its eventual report to put forward constructive proposals, not merely for remedying this defect but for establishing some sort of free trade in educational films between Great Britain and her neighbours. Britain’s Great Speedway.

TSRITAIN will soon possess the finest motor speedway track in the world, for it is announced that the Automobile Racing Association has received from the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury a grant of tidal lands for the Associations’ Wash speedway scheme. Eight thousand acres are involved in the grant, while another 2000 a6res of privately owned land will be included in the scheme. This smaller section is the property of forty-seven frontagers, with whom the association has been in negotiation. The grant results from the Board of Trade enquiry held in Boston in January, when the whole scheme was considered. Following the investigation, the association were informed that the Board of Trade could definitely approve of the scheme from an engineering standpoint. The next stage will be for the directorate of the Automobile Racing Association to consider the Treasury’s offer, which will almost certainly be accepted. In that event, work will probably be commenced quite shortly. The scheme will, it is estimated, provide employment for 3000 men for eighteen months to two years. The proposal is to build a straight concrete track nearly fifteen miles long and 200 yards wide along the north shore of the Wash. A monster breakwater, 21ft high, will be built from Skegness to Freiston, Lincolnshire, and this will reclaim a stretch of the Wash fifteen miles long and a mile wide. On this will be constructed a monster speedway, twice the length of Daytona Beach, on which world record speed bids can be made.

The scheme also provides for a waterway for motor-boat trials and a T.T. track, eight miles in circuit, which will contain replicas of the most famous hairpin bends and tortuous corners in the world. Stand accommodation will be provided for 200,000 spectators.