SPEED PHOTOGRAPHS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 725, 28 December 1933, Page 3

SPEED PHOTOGRAPHS

. INGENlOUiS PROCESS TO DETECT FLAWS IN AYIATION. ENGLISH INVENTOR'S WORK. Working unobstrusively all day, and sometimes far into the night in a soundproof laboratory in Long Acre, London, is a comparatively unknown. Englishman who has, by means of a marvellous new invention, besn the means of safeguarding the lives of British airmen. He is Mr. S. J. Cox, a research' technician, whose amazing high-speed camera — ia.n appartus capabT,e of taking; pictures at the rate of 24.0 ex- • posures a second — was recently placed by him at the disposal of the British Admiralty. "Lives were bedng lost at the rate •of about three or four per week in the Air F'oi'ce, until Mr. Cox came along with' his invention and detected the fiaw that was responsible," said one who knows the inventor. "Marvellous." '"The Admiralty heads were perplexed and worried because every •other day there was a serious accident when aircraft landed on the first naval aircraft carrier, E'agle. "Try as they would they eould no-t discover the reason why the airmen were not able to effect perfect landings. "-Then an invitation was sent out to Mr. Cox to atbend with his invention and take pictures which mighit give soni'e clue to the defects. "Mr. Cox arrived aboard the Eagie and fixed up two of his cameras. He toolc pictures of landings, and later they were run through a screen. "Immediately the naval chiefs present saw the pic'tures, one of them, a famous Admiral, exclaimed: We have been working in the dark. This is marvellous! Now we can s,ee what has been wrong.' "For the screened pictures showed clearly that the air stream set up hy the moving ship caught the 'planes as they landed and thus caused acci- . dents." Mr. Cox's camera is the most as- ] tonishing thing 'of its k-ind ever in- j vented. ! It takes pictures at practically | double the speed achieved by the ea-

mera that takes the slow-mot'ion pictures seen in kinemas. To take these kinema slow-motion pictures it is, of course, necessary to film them at high speed, and they are then run over slowly in the opposite direction. And in another sphere Mr. Cox's invention has been used with remarkable r&sults. i 'No't long ago, when British surgeons were grappling w-ith the task of providing the best possible artificial limbs for disabled soldiers, they wished to have some moving pictures taken which would aid them in their studies of the human limbs, •Mr. Cox's camera pictures showed that, dnstead'of, as was believed by many, lifting his feet two inches from the ground every time he takes a step, the aveiiage man does not lift the wholc cf his foot more than a quarter of an inch from the ground. This demonstration proved of in•calculable benefit to tha surgical experts, and revolutionised the science of arbicficial limb-making.