Peterborough Collegiate and Vocational School - Echoes Yearbook (Peterborough, Ontario Canada)

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, The Horseless Carriage Many and Amusing Were the Thrills and Spills of the First Automobiles by DONALD CARTER, III Ind. Arts On a day in October, 1892, the first American motor car was seen on the road. This pioneer con- trivance was the labored creation of the Duryea Brothers, proprietors of a bicycle shop at Spring- field, Massachusetts. The car's body was taken intact from a lady's phaeton, complete with whip- socket. Once its ear-splitting one-cylinder engine was started there was no way to control the car's speed: it ran seven miles an hour until it hit some- thing or stopped. Within a few years all sorts of motor vehicles were on the market, electric, steam and gasoline cars. Less orthodox ones were propelled by com- pressed air, kerosene, acetylene gas, ether, liquid air, and illuminating gas. A Chicagoan invented the multiple cylinder engine so designed that when driving on level ground, the driver could disconnect the cylinders not needed and give them a rest. A still more ec- conomical trans- the ever-present problem of animal psychology. How should the well-bred motorist approach the skittish horse that had heard his coming from afar? When they met, the chances were that someone was going to be pretty mad. There were even cases where motorists were shot at by enraged farmers. The mechanical perversity of the early motor car was almost beyond belief. A gas tank sometimes dropped oii. Occasionally, the whole engine fell out. A long journey of seventy-five miles was likely to be ended with stripped gears, burnt out bearings, and clogged valves. At any moment the driver might be forced to take his car to pieces on the road and practically rebuild it, with the usaul as- sistance of idlers and small boys. Failing in this, the car was towed by a horse to the nearest town for repairs. Most of the repair men were retired locksmiths, plumbers, or bicycle mechanics. With little know- ledge but vast curiosity, they usually had a most PQ1'tati0UWaSP,f0' unfortunate influence upon the machinery brought mlsed by a SPUUS GENERA to their attention. Many a motor came to grief at mlgtlfff V6h1ClC, X ,I X L STQ E the hands of a mechanic who found a few other W C W9-5 SUP' , fi Hx . things that need- posed to Wind if- - , ed adjuamemn- Sfflf UP first Ulu' , ' ., , EQ, Often the car's 21158. down ' ,Q , ' ailments baffled e inventor al- Mfr , - ,. .. the collective pid to expladin vilrlhat E -9 it A 'W'-Q W Q scientific genius of aPPe11C W CU ' I ,zip , X ' a community. there Was U0 hill T ff -EX J T Lf ' T hen it was neces- to 80 d0WU- If ,7 , .7 5' -f r fc! sary to telephone none of these en- A -.... ., ..- V ' j H V ' or telegraph the gines met the buy- ' ' 5 ' 9 ffj' , up manufacturer to ' hnd out what to er's fancy, there was a French veh- icle which actual- 14 N0 betler will be made. Time cannoi fmprmv fi. do. In those days the officers of a ly ran on mothballs, achieving three miles to the pound of moth repellent. Its chief trouble was that the exhaust emitted fumes as abhorrent to men as to moths, as bad, perhaps, as the fumes of the modern bus. Early in motor history a weakness for reckless superlatives developed. In 1899 one manufacturer assured potential purchasers that, No better will be made. Time cannot improve it. To visualize the vehicles thus hailed, imagine an ordinary buggy body mounted on bicycle wheels. Hang an oil lamp on the dashboard for a headlight g provide a curved steering tiller, a three gallon gas tank, and beneath the seat put a steam boiler, wrapped in piano wire to keep it from exploding. Learning to use the early car was a bewildering task. The driver of one popular car, for instance, had to contend with three handlevers, three foot- levers, two hand-Wheels and a bell. Then there was motor company might expect to be called out of bed at any hour of the night to aid a Stranded Client, What to call the new vehicle was a serious ques- tion. At first Hhorseless carriage was popular. Fearful and wonderful were some of the other verbal inventions which contended for favor. 'fPolycycle, petrocar, autoliacre, and self-propeller, all were in actual use not to mention Hmotocyclef' autogondola or road locomotive. Similarly there was the question of what to call the driver Chauffeur met with disfavour as too frenchified and because it was translated literally to mean Stroker instead motomeer, conductor and motorman were advocated. A Thus, amid praise and ridicule, our pioneer motorists made the first feeble assaults upon the barriers of space and time. They were hardy souls. Their's was a creed of noble simplicity that what one man had built, another man could keep in motion. Strong in this faith, they suffered, endured and conquered to give us the modern motor car. Page T hirty-cme

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THE WORLD OF SCIENCE Aviation Progress Man Achieves at Last His Greatest Dream by LEO CLANCY, IND. ARTS Ill Since the beginning of time, man dreamed of conquering the atmosphere above the earth on which he lived. Many times he stopped and looked up into the great void of space above him. No doubt he wondered and marvelled at the manoeuvres of birds in flights as they wheeled, circled, soared and glided in graceful fashion on the air currents. Perhaps some one man thought a little further than his fellows. What was the strange force which kept the birds aloft by their outstretched wings and tail? Why didn't they fall as a stone cast off a cliff? What rare ability did they possess that enabled them to stay aloft for hours with an almost effortless grace? And finally, why could not man master the theory of flight as he had mastered all things on sea and earth? This question was left unanswered for many generations of mankind, but always it kept reappearing before the mind of the dreamer as does a mirage. Many a genius sat at his work trying to conceive a device by which man might fly. His first idea might have been a pair of wings strapped to his outstretched arms. Perhaps some bolder and more confident individual tested these ideas. With the great wings of some bird he might leap off a cliff confident he could fly-only to crash to his death on the rocks below for the sake of making discoveries in the science of flight. The earliest known device which might really have flown was drawn on canvas by the great artist Leonardo da Vinci early in the sixteenth century. However it was not until almost three hundred years later that tests of flight were actually tried. At this time man interested himself in balloons and rigid or semi-rigid dirigibles, of lighter than air type usually filled with hot air or gas. It was not until the nineteenth century that man turned his attention to heavier than air machines. After the success of the balloons and of such men as Dumont, Santos and others, men became gradually interested in branches of aircraft. The earliest man known to achieve success with heavier than air machines was a German of surprising intelli- gence by the name of Lilienthal. He constructed several types of gliders in which he Went aloft by running down a slope until his momentum carried him into a graceful gliding flight. After this, aviation became more than just a dream. In America the Wright Brothers achieved success such as European adventurers were having abroad. In 1903 at Kitty Hawk Sand Hills in North Carolina the epoch making flight of the Wright Brothers set the world to excited comment. It was really true! Man had flown in a heavier than air machine! From this time a great haste to fly was manifested throughout the world. Aviation in its infancy saw many disappointments, many fatal disasters, many hopes dashed to pieces as man tried to grasp the theory of flight. Men such as Langley, the Wright Brothers, Curtis, Alexander Graham Bell, and countless others in distant countries must be remembered for the part each contributed to aviation. Then came the horrors of the world war. Im- mediately there was a feverish rush among the nations, each trying to build something more deadly, more destructive than its enemy. Aviation was lifted from its infancy when its value as a deadly defensive or offensive weapon of warfare was re- alized. The cleverest minds of the world were set to work in the designing and manufacture of aero- planes for war. During the four years of the war, aviation developed in one year as much as it would in ten years of peace. Motors were improved, planes were made speedier and easier to manoeuver until the end of the War. Then dawned the commercial period. For many years aviation as a commercial means was thought little of by mankind. Gradually aeroplanes came into use for carrying mail and passengers. A need for a new design, better engines, improved accom- modation, became apparent. As a result aircraft corporations sprang up all over the world. Planes of all designs, large and small, came into use. Pas- sengers who formerly sat in an open cockpit of a two passenger plane exposed to propeller blast, exhaust gas and other discomforts, now reclined in the luxurious comfort of modern transport planes. Great strides were taken until to-day commercial aviation is a huge industry in itself. It is an industry in itself. It is an industry which pays workers and owners well. To-day regular routes for airmail and passenger transportation are carried out to split-second time schedule. Engines, design and the flying of aircraft have developed into a fine science. Always the cry for something better, safer, and faster is heard, and always those behind the scenes are seeking to satisfy this demand. From something that was considered the dream of a lunatic, aviation has grown to its present status, and still it is striving for that peak of perfection it has not yet achieved. Pastor baculo stivave innixus aralor Vidit et abslupuit, quique aethera carpere possent Credidit esse deos. OVID 143 B.c.-17 A.D.J The shepherd leaning on his staff and the ploughman resting on the plough-handle saw and were amazed, and thought that those who could sail through the air must be gods. Page Thirty

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lnterview With a Fire Ranger A Few Words With the Guardian of Ontario's Forests By BETTY DETCHER, Sp. Com. With trembling hand, I opened the door as my host called cheerily, Come right in. I was not nervous but stronger hearts than mine had quaked at the mere thought of ascending the tiny ladder which leads up to a fire ranger's tower. I looked back once, waved to my more timid companions on the the ground below, and entered the stronghold of one of the guardians of our northern forests. Kirk Adams is a typical member of that great body of men who stand guard over the northland. He is very kind and friendly, and willing to answer any questions about his work. How long have you been a ranger? After I had assured him I wouldn't ask his age, he answered slowly, Twenty years. I came up here when there were no roads, only a winding trail through the forest. The last twenty miles were covered in canoes. Why did you choose this type of work ? I asked, wondering why a man born and educated in the city should wish to forsake it as this man had done. The old story, he replied with a laugh, Ad- ventures, thrills, you might say,-'the call of the wi1d.' But there isn't the same thrill now that ex- isted when I first came out here. We have aero- planes, radio, and motorcars to assist us in our work, and it is not so lonely since highways have been built through the forests. For the same reason, he added, Our work has been greatly increased. There is always the careless camper or motorist who leaves behind him a glowing cigarette butt or the unquenched embers of a campfire. Kirk was growing more and more excited as he denounced the thoughtlessness and indifference of some of the tourists who travelled through his be- loved Algonquin. Suddenly he stopped speaking, and, holding up his hand for silence, picked up from the table a pair of powerful binoculars with the re- mark, Look just to the north of the nearest moun- tain, and tell me what you see. At first I could see nothing strange, but as my eyes became accustomed to the powerful glasses I could detect a thin column of bluish-grey smoke ris- ing from behind the mountains. Smoke .,..... . Smoke! l I shouted excitedly, Hurry ...,.... do something !' ' The ranger laughed at my excitement and calmly bent over the radio. Tap-Tap-he repeated the message as he sent it out to headquarters at Whit- ney, twenty miles away, 'iSmoke rising at White Mountain-Investigate, Adams. Turning from the radio he said to me, Now watch the sky over there. Almost before he had finished speaking two aero- planes came in sight, flew to the place from which the smoke was rising, dropped chemicals to ex- tinguish the flames, and fiew off again. Continued on Page 865 Page Tlzirty-two The Man Who conceived a New Universe Einstein, the Worlc.l's Foremost Scientist by HUGH KENNER, II C Ac. His reasoning is the result of one of the highest achievements of human thought. The speaker was Sir joseph -I. Thomson, who was certainly not given to uttering ill-considered words. The thinker referred to was Albert Einsteing his achievment, the General Theory of Relativity. Greater mathematicians than this shock-headed German jew have existed, certainly greater ex- perimentersg but he srupasses them all in the qual- ity of his imagination. Michelson it was who performed the preliminary experiments, and it was Minkowski who gave the Theory its elegant mathem- atical dressg but it took the genius of Einstein to frame for the world a new conception of the universe. Einstein was born in the city of Ulm, in southern Germany, in the year 1879. So backward was he at acquiring the ability to walk and talk that for a time it was feared that he was mentally deficientg on the other hand, his first sight of the compass needle's mysterious persistence made him tremble and grow cold, Perhaps it was then, at the age of four years, that he had the first premonition of the greatness that was to be his in the scientific world. Be that as it may, he soon entered school at Munich, fifty miles from his birthplace, where he distinguish- ed himself in mathematics and in little else. At this time a textbook on geometry, which was not then a school subject, fell into his hands, and he took great delight in working out the problems it contained. At the age of fourteen it was manifest to those who knew him that he was a mathematical genius. After some time the family moved to Italy, whence he was sent to Switzerland to enter the Zurich Academy. Failing completely in the entrance examination, the man was to be ranked with New- ton and Copernicus was forced to do plenty of cramming and submit to a second test before being accepted. Meanwhile, in America, great things were hap- pening in the world of physics. It had long been known that the human creature has no sense of ab- solute motiong he can detect change of position only by reference to some fixed outside point: that is, only relative motion can be sensed. In 1887 Michel- son and Morley performed their famous experiment to determine the velocity of the earth relative to the ether. Their apparatus was almost incredibly sensitive, but the experiment failed completely, and the scientific world was thrown into a quandary until Hendrik Lorentz proposed his Contraction Hypothesis, which partly solved the difiiculty. When Einstein was in his second year at the Academy, he began to see his way clear to a solu- tion of the problem which had been set the scien- tists, and when he left the Institution and started work in the patent office at Berne he evolved what we know as the Restricted Theory of Relativity, published in 1905. CContinued on Page 805