NEW PATENTS FOR AIR.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17995, 14 April 1930, Page 15

NEW PATENTS FOR AIR.

INCLUDE LAUNCHING GEAR SAFETY AND EFFICIENCY.

Among the half hundred or more patents pertaining to aeronautics issued by the United States Patent Office in recent weeks arc many devices of a “freak” character, hut many more that reveal the serious purpose of their inventors to contribute toward the safety and efficiency of flying. The New. York metropolitan area continues to be the country’s most prolific source of inventive genius, as gauged by the patent issues. More and more patents are also being taken out by foreign inventors of aircraft and aircraft devices. An automatic launching device for airplanes and an automatic steering method for dirigible craft, the inventions of Elmer A. Sperry Junr., were among the patent grants. The launching device includes a runway and a means of releasing the plane from disappearing wheel checks from the cockpit. It is assigned to the Sperry Development Company _of Dover, Del. The steering device, which is assigned to the Sperry Gyroscope Company, has a compass-gov-erned controller and rudder with a means responsive to persistent yawing movements of the ship. A safety attachment for airplane propellers* in the form of a shell attached to the main propeller shaft was patented by Thomas Cleveland Luton of Evansville, Ind., as a “means for preventing airpkuies from talcing nose dives.” Stability would be given an airplane by Frederico G. Diago of Havana, Cuba, by a set of wings working on binges and made extensible when necessary. Wolfgang Klemperer of Akron, is the inventor of a load-factor indicator for aircraft. Alexander ProcofieffSeversky of New York City, has patented a mid-air refuelling means. Vincent Strafing, also of New York City, obtained a patent on a water-drawing apparatus for aircraft w’hich used a suction pipe connected to the landing gear. To Fight Ice on Wings. In order to prevent ice _ from accumulating on wings, Daniel Morris of St. Petersburg, Fla., has devised a svslcm of hollow shafts forming a pivotal support for the wings and through which heat conducting pipes are run in order to melt the ice. An arrangement for mounting radiators in airplane wings was patented by Eugene M. G. Lepere of Paris, France. ■ George E. Mounce of Portland, Ore., took out a patent on a glider with a special means for being towed behind a planeAmong grants of patents to foreigners w 7 as one to Felix Nanke .of Walthamtowe, England, on an “onithopter,” an oscillating Wing affair. Hugo Junkers is patentee of a method of distributing pulverulent material from a flying machine, and Anthony Fokker, whose address is given as Amsterdam, has a patent on a multimotored plane on which eighteen claims are made. Louis Bleriot has taken out a patent on an aerial advertising and signalling device connected with the wing of a plane.