PACIFIC PROSPECTS.

Shannon News, 9 October 1923, Page 3

PACIFIC PROSPECTS.

TO ’FRISCO IN A WEEK.

No doubt that the airship will develop into one of the cheapest forms of long-distance transport, apart from being the speediest, exists in the mind of Mr. George A. Taylor, who read a paper upon “ Aerial Sciences (Aviation and Wireless) and their Possibilities in the Pacific,” before the Science Congress in Australia. In adapting the airship to the Pacific area, Mr. Taylor suggests the establishment of four primal routes, Honolulu could be the central station, from, which four aerial ways could be ar■angcd, one to Noi’th America (San Francisco), 2080 miles; Japan (Yokohama), 3171 miles; Australia (Sydney), 4476 miles; South America (Valparaiso), 5285 miles. With the speed of the scheme already mention'd, the time between the various staions, and the central station Avould >e: To North America (San Fran•isco) ,52 hours; to Japan (Yokohama), 72 hours; to Australia (Sydney, Ada Fiji),'ll2 hours; to South America (Valparaiso), 133 hours. The .mie between Australia an'd America would thus be shortened by 12 days, svith considerable shortening between Fapan and South America, Avhere Japanese development is promised to take place; and this speeding and heapening' of traffic will be the vreatest factors in linking business reations betAvecn Pacific parties.

With helium gas, Mr. Taylor pointer out, many problems connected with urships would be solved. Filling staions for airship travel over the Pacific would be widely spread for some cime. In such conditions, helium gas with its small loss from diffusion, vould be still more advantageous. Mr. Taylor said the aeroplane would not be as useful in survey work •.s it could not be brought to a standkill like the airship, in detecting posiions of shoals, submerged wrecks, md reefs. Shoal depth, viewed from my point but the vertical, was' difficult to observe on account of reflected mrface-light. To-day, the lecturer added, the steamer journey between Sydney and San Francisco took 19 days. The adap tatioii of the airship to Pacific traffic would reduce the time to less than seven days. There was no reason why such a line should not be speedily and profitably put into operation. TELEGRAri-HC PICTURES.

The problem of transmitting coloured photographs by radio had been solved, Mr. Taylor declared, and this innovation should enable the broadcasting of distant landscape beauty. He indicated a prospect of receiving a naturally coloured photograph of a person or picture from a distant Pacific island following the mere transmission of the request. Three coloured plates made from the natural coloured photograph taken in the ordinary way, would he transmitted by radio, the three plates on the reception cylinder being acid-etched, mounted, and printed in three colours distributing the photograph among stations many thousands of miles distant from the scene.

Radio telegraphic transmission of colour photography, he said, possessed advantages over"' radio-telephony, in that there was more certainty of reception and a wider'radius at lower cost—an important factor in the grcai Pacific area.

Australia, Mr. Taylor recalled, could claim credit for the first adaptation of wireless to various uses. A process for locating centres of disturbance, such as explosions, by sound and by wireless waves, had been discovered. Sketches had been transmitted by wireless in Australia as far back as 1910.