Powerful Aero Engines

1917

In testing an airplane engine of 200 horse power a Detroit company mounted it upon a heavy motor truck, and the aerial propeller sent the track flying along a boulevard at the rate of more than 40 miles an hour. This was a speed that the truck could not begin to develop under its own motive power, and the method furnished a better practical test of the 12-cylinder airplane engine than was possible in the testing laboratory or in any stationary trial on blocks.

As an additional test the rear wheels of the two-ton truck were locked, so that they could not revolve, and in this condition it was driven across a ball park by the airplane engine and propeller through heavy drifts of snow and over ice. The motor weighs 800 pounds and develops power sufficient to drive a 12-passenger airplane at 40 miles an hour. — Popular Mechanics Magazine.


Won His Lost Watch

An extraordinary watch story is told by a Welsh campaigner home on leave from African battlefields. When he was in German West Africa he lost a wristlet watch. It was not very valuable, so he did not worry a lot about it. But many months later, when on active service in German East Africa, he took a share in a raffle for a watch. He won, and to his amazement found that the prize was his own watch.