The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1916-04-28
EVOLUTION OF SPEED
WRITER HAS TRACED ITS PKoo.
REss THROUGH cENTuRiEe.
All Of Mans Ingenuity, However, Haa
Not Caused Him to Devise Meane
to Travel Faster Than
the Little Swallow.

Those twittering swallows hava
something to twit about. Until IN
hour ago I thought of them only -
friendly decorations in the sky. Now
I see them in their true light; %
mans rivals In the struggle for speed
supremacy.
was sitting by a sunny bay win
dow, overlooking stretch of the main
street In sleepy Southern village. In
all the landscape nothing had stirred
for half an hour but the swallows, .
passing motor car, and schoolboy
racing In its wake in the vain hope OF
hooking" a ride. Motion. however-
even SO little Of 1t as this-has way
of 7fonopolizing our attention from
everything else. II set me to thinking
about speed; wondering. in particu-
lar, how motor cars and swallows and
self-propelled humans compared In
the worlds record. ! got down .
newspaper almanac, a pad Of paper.
and q pencil, and began to enliven
some slow moments by tracing the
dizzy evolution Of speed.
The standing Of the self-propelled
human, I soon enough discovered, was
pitifully low In the averages. In his
lightest apparel and favored with
spiked shoes and well-ro1led track Of
cinders, the best that the best man
among us can run q mile In In s& .
rate that would carry him only IL
Ex,nv1
Gle could maintain for an hour tho
pace of a worlds championship 100
yard dash, our record would be only
q miles and small fraction
But see, how mans pride and his
lust for speed have urged him to OF.
pedients. Mounted on the best Of race
horses he has managed to have him
self propelled for a mile at . rate OF
nearly 40 miles an hour.
By inventing the bicycle he then
raised the rate at which he could
cover a mile at speed of "a Is miles
an hour. The motor cycle almost
succeeded in doubling this pace. Its
rate for the mile Is 100.
Meanwhile, man was developing
other inventions. In locomotive no
attained a speed, over short course,
OF 120 miles an hour. He experiment.
ed with flying machines, until In the
fastest monoplanes he managed to huri
himself through the air at q rate Of
six and one-half more miles an hour
than he had been able to force out OF
q railway engine. This rate is enough
to make the brain reel, but think, next.
of the terrific speed at which he has
driven a motor car--142.S miles an
hour. ~
Cause for congratulation truly. but
not yet enough to allow him to crow:
for, even with this, man has not DO
come the speed king Of creation.
Hawks and vultures, our scientists
say, can attain a speed Of $50 miles
an hour. And not only can they pass
up In short-distance swoops ana
spurts; they also can maintain their
greater speed over long courses. On
an air route from Antwerp to Com
piegne, a swallow-no picked athlete.
either, but (supposedly) common
homebody bird, eager to get back TO
the family chimney-few 140 miles
the other day at an average speed q
12S miles an hotr. No world's ehasi-
ton motor car or monoplane has
record that compares favorably with
this for such distance.
Man Is swiftly progressing; he oAa
motor mile now at q speed ten
times as fast as he can run It; ana
he may yet become the speed king Of
creation. But meanwhile-and this 10
what gals him-he has to take on MS
hat to an ordinary little twitterinE
swallow.-Charles Phelps Gushing. u
New York Evening Post.