Dunedin man’s airship invention

Mr H.F. Parker, formerly of Dunedin, who designed the water recovery apparatus installed on one of the engines of the United States naval dirigible Shenandoah, the effect of which is to compensate for the weight of the gasoline burned and thus to provide counter-ballast and drinking water, describes in a recent letter a night flight on that airship. He writes: "I have had quite a strenuous week, including an all-night flight. The shed tests which have been delaying my work were completed on Tuesday, and we set out on Tuesday evening, June 24, to do some flight tests. I foolishly accepted double duties, looking after my condensers and taking readings for the engine tests. I should have given all my attention to the condensers, but couldn’t resist the temptation of a station in the control car. We got away just before sunset. I had an excellent view as my station was where there are ladders out to the power cars, so I was able to perch myself on the ladder and watch the whole performance. At first I held on very tight with both hands as there was nothing beneath but 3000 feet of air, but later on I found myself running around with no more concern than if the drop were five feet only. Wonderful doesn’t describe the sight: Coney Island was right beneath most brilliantly illuminated; then, looking ahead were Brooklyn, marked by a regular pattern of street lamps of vast extent; the bridges over the East River and Manhattan. We were headed right for Now York where the Democrats were in convention selecting a candidate for the Presidency. Altogether, it was a fascinating experience and entirely confirmed my opinion that rigid airships are the most comfortable and interesting method of travel in existence"

Waitaki’s vanished world

Some particularly interesting New Zealand fossils represent an extinct member of the order of whales, porpoises, and dolphins, classed together as cetaceans. Most of those fossils come from the Waitaki Valley, Waihao, and Ngapara, near Oamaru, and from Waikouaiti and Milburn, Otago. The creature whose memory they have preserved belonged to an extinct group known to zoologists as the squalodonts — shark-toothed cetaceans, believed to be the ancestors of the present sperm whales. The extinct New Zealander seems to have belonged to a division of the squalodonts named the zouglodonts. Remains of the zouglodonts formerly were believed to be reptilian, but Sir Richard Owen demonstrated their true character and he named them zouglodonts — yoked teeth — because the section of a molar examined by turn was taken from the base of the crown of the tooth where is was beginning to divide into roots, and these looked like two single teeth linked or yoked together. New Zealand’s shark-toothed cetacean, like most of its kind, lived in the Miocene, the middle period of the Tertiary Era, a period of great change in the earth’s surface and in forms of life. In that period in New Zealand, there were a gigantic shark, a gigantic sting-ray, a gigantic penguin and a large nautilus. In shelly sands and sandstones on the south bank of the Waitaki River, near Wharekuri Stream, fragments of the shark-toothed cetaceans were found amongst no fewer than 41 species of molluscs.

A key commodity

During the six months January-June of this year 1862 pianos were imported, valued at £92,787, while the value of other musical instruments imported during the same period was £119,861, or £41,000 in excess of the corresponding six months last year.  — ODT, 12.8.1924

Compiled by Peter Dowden