RIVER THAMES AS VEHICLE PARK

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 28, 23 September 1946, Page 4

RIVER THAMES AS VEHICLE PARK

LONDON INVENTOR’S PLAN SOLVING TRAFFIC PROBLEM In the near future, motorists wishing to park their autos in central London will drive them down the Thames embankment on to the river —if one London inventor has his

way. Such a plan to turn parts of the River Thames into parking lots to help solve London’s daily worsening traffic problems now down for discussion by the London County Council. The sponsor of the scheme is Mr R. M. Hamilton, a noted amateur yachtsman and designer of the Royal Navy’s unorthodox but successful “Lily” floating airport. It took Mr Hamilton three years to persuade doubting experts he could produce a practicable seadrome. He hopes it will not take more than as many weeks to convince London’s planning authorities that the methods used in building the “Lily” airport can give London millions of square feet on which to park autos without interfering with rebuilding schemes. It was in 1940 that the inventor woke up one morning and realised he had solved a difficult problem in his sleep. He had found a method of building flexible floating structures that would bear great weights and could be made in any shape or size desired. Later, the Admiralty took up his ideas, and in 1945—after severe tests, including the winter’s worst storm—the full-scale model airport proved successful. He also proved that by using the “Lily” system it would be possible even to build a Channel bridge if it were wanted. The “Lily” takes its names from its resemblance to a carpet of lily leaves on a pond. It is basically just a collection of six-feet-wide hexagonal buoyancy cans hinged together. An intricate mathematical system of stresses enables the whole thing to be flexible.