IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 296, 11 July 1929, Page 7

IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE.

Mr Harry Harper, in his book “Twenty-five Years of Flying,” explains how it will be possible some day to disprove the saying that you cannot be in two different places at the same time. By perfecting very large aircraft, with special engines and propellers capable of rising ten miles or more high, and up there in thin, low-resist-ance air, attaining a speed — l *-\ch will be augmented until these nage machines are ratling like projectiles through the higher zones, we shall span the Atlantic in an almost unbelievable short time.

Instead of lasting five or more days, as it does by steamship, the ocean passage between London and New York may, high-flying advocates believe, shrink until ultimately great

winged passenger crafts, reaching colossal upper-air speeds, will reduce those five days to not more than about five hours! And in this way, remembering the difference between our clocks and those of New York, that seemingly impossible feat will be accomplished of being in two places at the same time.

Assume for example, that in a liner of the upper air one rushes from London at 12 o’clock noon bound on a meteor-like dash across the Atlantic. At that moment the clocks in New York, bearing in mind that they are five hours earlier than those in London, would be pointing to 7 a.m. This would *rnean that if we cleaved our way above the ocean at the enormous speeds envisaged, and actually glided down over New York within five hours of leaving London, we should look beneath us and see the hands of the New York clocks pointing to 12 o’clock—just prec.sely the same time as the London clocks had indicated when we ascended at the beginning of our rocket-like rush. Thus we achieve the apparently impossible, and be in two places, more than 3000 miles apart, at the same time!