Atlantic May Be Flown in Pilotless Plane

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 68, 11 June 1927, Page 14

Atlantic May Be Flown in Pilotless Plane

Cojitrol By Radio SCIENCE’S NEXT WONDER In one of a series of articles by the British aviation expert. Mr. Harry Harper, in the Melbourne -Herald,’’ new and ingenious devices in television and the advances made in perfecting an airplane free of all human control are described. Wonders so strange that some of them seem, at a first glance, fantastic, are dawning in the application of television to aviation, and in the development of pilotless airplanes controlled by wireless. The wonder of to-day in science is the commonplace of to-morrow. The other day I had an illuminating conversation on' television and the flying machine with Mr. John L. Baird, the English scientist, who first proved the practicability of television in December, 1925. Not for nothing is the Air Ministry so interested in secret experiments on which he is engaged. I have also received information of the latest work in America and France with engine-driven manless airplanes controlled by wireless, In the United States recently, long, perfectly governed flights have been made by aircraft which have had no human hand upon their levers. Just dawning is an ability to do things which will impress us, more than anything has ever done before with the fact that science is conferring on us powers making us almost superhuman. Machines That Dee What experts on both sides of the Atlantic are now envisaging are marvellous pieces of mechanism, inhumanly human, which will enable operators not only to control pilotless airplanes while they are high in the air, but to endow these manless machines with a power of “seeing” electrically what is in front, on either side, or above and below, and of flash ing back that bird’s eye view by wirescreens, miles distant, at a point sphere less so that it is reproduced on the controllers sit with their intricate gear. In the bodies of such weird winged craft will be special lenses which one might describe as "automatic eyes.” Through them will be passed a pictuie of all that lies within visual range. These images will be focussed upon light-sensitive receivers. Then they will be transmitted wirelessly to the land station which has sent aloft these all-seeing eyes. Control From Earth At this ground-station an operator will sit before his illuminated screens. On them, ever-changing, will be a series of pictures, and, as he studies them, they will show him everything that is visible within range of ’that pilotless plane he is controlling, and which may be rushing through the air many miles distant. Could there he anything more amazing? Picture it. It means, ultimately, that when some great event is to take place, no matter in what part of the world, light-sensitive screens will be raised aloft above the spot in specially-designed hovering machines of the helicopter or rotatingwing type, controlled automatically from the ground. Air-Borne Screens Focussed on these air-borne screens by powerful lenses, just as it transpires, will be the actual scene it is desired that the rest of the world shall see. The light-sensitive cells of the screen, “seeing” what the lenses project upon them, will flash their marvellous vision for thousands of miles. We shall study the newspapers and note when something we are interested in is to take place at some point an immense distance away. But distance will not matter in the least. When the time comes, we shall stroll into the cinema where one of the receiving screens has been erected. There; reproduced in every detail, we shall see that scene enacted thousands of miles away! In Natural Colours Great horse-races, great boxing matches, great ceremonial events, the beauties and wonders of foreign lands. We shall see them all with air-borne eyes! And we may hope to see them not just in different shades of black and white, but in all their natural, truelife colours. We may have the illusion, as we sit in our stalls, that we are transported bodily to some wonderful place thousands of miles away, and that we are positively seeing, with our own eyes, some fascinating event that is in progress. There it will be on the screen before us—vivid, wonderful, actually taking place. Sight and Sound

We shall see the blue of the sea. the green of the trees, the flash of many colours in a great horse race. And, as sound is already transmitted so perfectly by wireless, we shall have the final and complete illusion not only of living movement and natural colour, but of the roar of some great delighted multitude, the thud of hoofs, the barking of alligators in Amazonia’s lagoons.

Technicians who are now working on new phases of manless flight are investigating the problem of wirelessly directed air journeys not merely ly of hundreds but of thousands of miles, pilotless machines being passed in and out of the control-area of one ground station after another. One project which would have been declared impossible not so long ago is for a- wirelessly-controlled, pilotless airplane flight across the Atlantic. Miles High The first attempt at such a flight by a machine completely pilotless may be made in the direction from America to Europe, because on this route, for long periods at a time high-altitude, favourable winds can be relied upon. A specially-designed trans-Atlantic machine shall, it is proposed, have engines and air-screws adapted to function efficiently in the thin air at immense heights. Guided at its start so that it ascends miles high, and then heads toward the coast of Europe, it is calculated that the machine, aided by a great tide of upper air, and rushing like a projectile from a monster gun, will devour distance above the ocean at 300 miles an hour, or five miles a minute. One of the most fascinating aspects of the scheme will be the employment, at the point where the pilotless machine completes its above-ocean

voyage, of a perfected type of wire less beacon.

One might compare this to a lighthouse shining its rays seaward to attract the eyes of mariners; only in this case the beam from the beacon will be a powerful projection of wireless energy. The invisible ray from the beacon flashing out over the Atlantic, will influence a special mechanism in the pilotless plane while the machine is still at a great distance away.

This mechanism will be connected to the control surfaces of the airplane and the result will be that the machine, pointing its bow automatically until It Is heading directly for the distant beacon, will fly toward 'it unerringly. International co-operation will be invoked in the guidance of the manless craft while tar out above mid-Atlantic. Ships with special wireeless plants will be required, some setting out from the United States side and some from European waters. Between them these craft, plotting out by wireless direction-finding the position of the machine invisible in the sky above, without any human occupant on board, will send up to it the impulses necessary to keep it heading in the right direction. Scientific Wizardry ■ In this regard one of the greatest pieces of scientific wizardry will be the method by which the pilotless airplane, even without a soul on board, will signal its own position, from minute to minute, as it rushes unseen through the upper air. This will be done by a self-con-tained automatic wireless installation within the machine itself. Operated by a mechanism driven by the power-plant of the airplane, this wireless installation will keep sending out, over and over again, a prearranged signal which will be recognised by all those who listen for it. By this means ships and shore stations, working out the position of the plane from the stream of signals emanating from it, will keep track of it and guide it on its trans-ocean flight.