IN THE PUBLIC EYE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8170, 28 June 1906, Page 3

IN THE PUBLIC EYE.

Fog in certain places and at certain times accounts for collisions on land and sen, arrest of business, loss of money, ill-healtb, and iucreaßed mortality; smoke is in big cities a nuisance, and also it accounts for much destruction, unsightlinesa, and it may be a little sickness. To dispel fog and smoke has long been a study of scientific men, but it has remained for Sir Oliver Lodge, Principal of the University of Hirwingbam, to achieve the first real success. He has invented an apparatus by which he can lift and distribute fog and smoke in sections, tbe assumption being; that tbe size of tbe sphere oleared in this way depends on tbe size of the scheme. From what is stated it appears that ha has operated on both fog and smoke singly and together, distinguishing between the two, and has amply succeeded in lifting tbe curtain and scattering it into unseeable ttiinnegg. Whether ships can be provided with such machines is a question, likewise whether they really want them: bat there is little question that machines can be operated on rivers that have much navigation and from City heights where fog and ?smoke are a nuisance up to a real danger. The good Sir Oliver will do in London, for instance, if the apparatus can work on a big scale either by enlargement or repitition is quite incalculable. JBig fogs in London have before now accounted for a loss of millions'in money, and the sacrifice of precious life, and many a boat has come to grief on tbe lhames through tbe same evil. As for smoke, so great is the trouble in that metropolis tbat as a recent cablegram says the public are becoming much concerned and tbis is an evil which unless obecked must go on growing. No city in the world is altogether free from smoke evil where there is manufacture and very few places are quite exempt from tbe visitation of fogs in certain seasons of the year. Hence Sir Oliver Lodge's inventon, if all tbat is claimed for it. is cf world wide importance and value.