AN AMERICAN MOTOR.

Taranaki Daily News, 14 November 1917, Page 2

AN AMERICAN MOTOR.

A WONDERFUL AFFAIR. America claims to have solved the motor problem for war in the air with a new engine which American engineers have constructed. Details of design and construction, power, speed, and weight have been withheld, but expertß aver that the motor is equal in performing ability of the best, which the European war has produced abroad. It. is the superior of all in standardisation of construction. Twelve factories contributed parts of the new motor, and so accurately were they made, an airplane equipped with this assembled motor established a new American record for altitude. Were the Liberty motor only mediocre in performance, this standardisation of mparts would yet make its creation a notable achievement in aeronautics. All parts are interchangeable,' and to a degree which, it is promised, will make it possible for a perfect, new machine to be reconstructed from wrecked motors, parts of which may have remained in-' tact. The story of tlie motor is as wonderful as the finished production itself, Two Of the country's foremost engineers, figuratively locked in a room in a AV-ash-ington hotel, created the Liberty motor, For 'fl've days they never left that room, Th -is days the neW motor had been set lip. To them "belongs chief credit for the achievement. But to them came consulting engineers and draftsmen from all over the country, and it is indicative of the American determination to excel in the air that engineers and motor manufacturers, unhesitatingly and unselfishly, tevealfld to those men their trade secrets and trade processes on which, for any private enterprise, they would have declined to put a price. The tJnitcd States h hot a great manufacturer of heayy guriS, but apparently she can furnish the heeded aircraft, and it may he that the beginning of the end for Germany will prove to have been niarked by the initial flight of America's own Thp time for jealousy a? f) tyfrq stfikps is bi)t it would be '.gratifying to Americans if their airmen, jn craft pf American manufacture, representatives of the race that of all the world .first learned to control the air, should lend their strength to give weight to the final blo>y,