Omaha daily bee., 1909-02-21
CATCHING UP WITH TINE
Man, Beast and Machine Score New
Speed Records.
HOT PACE OF THE CENTURY
Everything IL on the Move on Land,
Sea and Air-some Recent
spurts that Are Top
nOtchers.

Inc IWenIeIn century II ~ aeN "a ~
Before its dawn the world logged along at
a paltry sixty miles an hour and boosted
that II was going faster than antedluvlan
stage coaches and sailing ships. Then man
woke up and realised that he was losing
time. He became ashamed OF his slowness'
A feverish desire to catch up and hustle
and get there boiled in his veins. lie
smashed the old machines and made sur
prising new ones calculated 70 devour DIS
lance ON sea, land and in the upper air. At
the same time he groomed himself 10
surpass athletic records and his horse to
better the gait of tedious epoehs' Now ven
Father Time has an anxious worried look
as the wind stiffens his white whiskers
and he endeavors to pour the sand from
his glass fast enough to keep ahead OF
the procession.
Everything Is on the move. If the steel
lever laRs in the piston, try a turbine
wheel; IL coal is cumbersome, use gasoline
or the electric '~juice.i Man himself may
be fabricated and hustled with a dose Of
oxygen. The Pennsylvania railroad has
Just ordered 100 electric locomotives, which
will be able to split space at the rate
OF 10 miles an hour and bring Philadelphia
nearer to New York than some parts OF
Brooklyn. When the system is completed
leading citizens OF Pittsburg will take the
theater train for the metropolis and get
back In time to spend the next day re-
cuperating from Holsters and chorus girls
Two Miles a Minute.
Two miles a minute Is rapid. but already
electrical cars on the Marienfedt-Zossen
line In Prussia have travelled at the
rate of 1870 miles an hour. Neither the motor
nor the tracks seem to suffer from this
humping speed, while the passengers,
whose ancestors were warned of the fatal
danger of riding in a steam train at six
teen miles an hour, survive comfortably.
The fastest bit Of railroad travel In the
United States up to date was done by a
philadelphia & Reading train, in 1904, over
a four-mile stretch from Egg Harbor TO
Brleantine Junction, when the wheels re-
volved at the rate Of lib miles an hour. A
wear later a Lake Shore q Michigan South
ern train averaged nearly seventy miles
an hour on the long run between Buffalo
and Chicago.
II is not fair to call motorists scorchers
who tear around country roads. They
rarely 20 faster than the Twentieth Gem
tury Limited, but the true scorchers are
ambitious to equal the record of Fred
A16ITlOlI dk ScN
years ago. Mounted on q cigar shaped
devil wagon, Marriott flew over the smooth
Sand at twenty-eight and one-fifth seconds
for the mile, or better than two miles a
minute. AT the same contest Demogeot up
held the honor Of France by covering two
miles in fifty-eight and four-fifths seconds,
n Clifford carp proved the endurance OF
England by knocking off 100 miles at an
- At.sA aaAArIa m thu fnfIA
That some handy going could be accom-
plished on q plain country o was the
contention Of Walter Christie, the Ameri-
can, and he made good on Long Island last
year with a 12p-mile-an-hour clip.
Catching Up.
Everything that goes fast needs some
thing faster to catch II. While the racing
car Is at present una~pproachable, the com
mon scorcher may be overhauled by a mo-
torcycle, which is the torpedo boat de-
stroyer Of the highway. A streak of dust,
a pop-pop-pop like a rapid fire gum, and
the majesty of the law on two wheels cap
lures the four-wheeled violator of the
speed limit. At Morris park on last cleo
ton day, Walter Goerke won the ten-mile
National championship for motorcycles in
ten minutes and forty-five seconds.
Ocean Flyers.
Leg power stil has its records. Aided
by the suction Of an express train, behind
which he rode a bicycle on a board track.
Murphy pedalled his celebrated mile in
fifty-four and three-fifths seconds. Robert
A. walthour has done his mile in 1O6M
and H. Caldwell has gruelled fifty miles In
a tick less than al hour.
Most machines that go fast are compli-
Gated and costly, but any country boy can
make an Ice yacht skim the frozen lake
or river at an unparalleled speed. No motor
yet devised has driven anything ON wheels
as rapidly as the wind drives the ice yacht
over It's CLASSY course. There are no bear
ings to get hot, and II there is any friction
on the steel skates the Ice keeps them
cool. On the frozen Shrewsbury river two
years ago the yact Drub went over a short
measured course at the rate OF a mile In
twenty-four seconds, or $50 miles an hour.
In order to exceed this, man may have to
launch himself In a cyclone or get shot
out OF high power rifle, Ice yachts often
make two miles In a minute, and quite
outdistanee slowpoke express trains on the
bank Of the Hudson river.
The transatlantic blue ribbon for pas
Senger steamships is held by the Lusitania,
with a record Of Is knots, while the cruiser.
battleship Indomitable recently took the
prince OF Wales home from the Quebec
celebration at an average gait Of 2a.1s
knots. Dixie II, which won the interna.
tional motor boat race in Huntington bay
last summer made an alleged worlds rec
ord OF $.@ miles an hour in a private
speed test. Charles r.. Flint's launch Arrow
Is credited with the phenomenal speed Of
40 miles an hour. Probably the swift est
warship In the world is the English de-
stroyer Tartar, which not long ago spurted
a short distance at the rate of 1870 miles
an hour. There are five Of these smoke
belchlng speed devourers of $50 tons dis
placement and 1900 horsepower. Each
fas turbine engines working on triple
screws and uses oil fuel.
1t is hard to stimat the speed Of aero
planes because the machines travel in ir.