NEW WAR WEAPON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1939, Page 9

NEW WAR WEAPON

USE OF TELEVISION. America is forecasting television as the most powerful new weapon which the war will bring to perfection. Newly invented adaptations of television recently patented in Washington are described in the "New York Times" as covering submarine, air and artillery warfare. America claims that Britain, France. Germany and Italy have already begun experimenting with television between ground stations and aeroplanes. Now it is announced that American inventors have actually registered the patents of television receivers and transmitters small and light enough to be installed in war planes. John Hays Hammond. Junr, inventor of a radio-controlled torpedo which turns round and tries again when it misses its objective, has patented s method of "scrambling" television transmissions so .that only those for whom they are intended can receive them. He claims that Army orders, maps, plans of operations could now be televised safely from general headquarters to units in the front line. Another television patent which its inventor hopes to make millions from the European war is No 2062003 just registered. It claims to be able to send a televised picture of an airport to a pilot lost in fog, or over strange country. A small light, moving to scale across the picture, shows the pilot his exact height and position in relation to the airfield. Albert A. Arnhym, of Chicago, has patented "television spectacles.” which he claims are sensitive to infra-red rays. Pilots wearing them would be able to see through clouds to the ground below. Observers wearing them on the ground at night would be able to see the heated parts of aeroplane engines by the infra-red rays which they throw out. Two of America’s greatest television experts. Dr Lee DeForest and Mr U. A. Sanabria, say that Germany is experimenting with "television torpedoes." very small lightly engined flying torpedoes which would be aimed by the pictures sent back from their "television eyes," and their bombs j would be dropped by radio remote con-> trol. The two experts admit that- these I machines would be vulnerable, but they say that they would be cheap and simple to manufacture, and they would be sent to their objectives in mass flights. The German Zeiss optical works are supposed to be co-operating on the television side of the "flying torpedo" experiment. This may be just another example of German propaganda in America. But its possibilities are being studied by American scientists.