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Show Lightning-Hunters Keep Power Going BY DAN MURDOCH PHONE rings late at night in a New York hotel room. "Newark Airport Weather Bureau calling! Storm approaching, from southeast. Wind about 50 miles an hour." The man holding the receiver becomes wide awake. He throws on his clothes, hurries to the street. "Empire State Building!" he tells the cab-driver. And soon he's rising in the elevator to the 102nd floor. Two more flights to walk up, and a lock to fumble with. Inside the room, he dashes about pulling switches on weird machinery, setting dials, checking to see that everything's working. Lock the door, dash down the steps, elevator to the ground, and eight blocks away to another building on Fifth Avenue. A 50-story 50-story elevator ride, another door to unlock, more machinery. Especially Es-pecially a huge camera at one win- leaving the wires entirely. Whatever What-ever happens means serious, costly damage to the company's equipment, equip-ment, and no electric current for anybody for a while. We can't prevent thunder storms, but we can keep lightning from striking wires, or from cutting cut-ting off the current when it does strike them. But to do that, we have to know all about lightning what causes it, how it behaves, how to control it. That's why so many men work at the job of "hunting" and "trapping" "trap-ping" it. They design "insulators," "insula-tors," "arresters," and "ground wires," and try them out. They try to lead lightning away from wires, directly into the ground before be-fore it can do harm. These tricks and devices work sometimes. The question is: Why do they sometimes some-times fail? How can they be perfected per-fected so they'll fail less often? Within the last 30 years we've learned many of the answers, but not all. lightning. Others are at similar observation posts throughout the country. Still others are in laboratories lab-oratories making artificial lightning light-ning strike miniature houses and factories. Experts collect and pire State Building. The man waits. Nothing happens. hap-pens. The storm has stopped, or veered away from the city. Later he turns off all the machinery, locks the door, leaves, goes back to the Empire State Building's 104th floor again, disconnects everything. Then back to his hotel room to finish his sleep or until the next storm warning. COMETIMES the storm gets there. Thunder booms, lightning light-ning flickers over the tower of the Empire State Building. Eight blocks away, high up in the other building, the man stares steadily. His hands work the camera, photographing pho-tographing every flash. He talks out loud, describing what he sees, into a recording apparatus hung around his neck. Every so often he glances at other devices, to make sure they're on the job of measuring the current, distance, speed, and length of every flash-No flash-No matter how long the storm lasts hours, maybe this man stays rooted at his post. This man's a lightning hunter, one of many scientists who study study all reports, photographs, and recordings. They tell the "hunters" "hunt-ers" what to look for next time, and tell the engineers how to design de-sign , new electrical equipment. They advise people on how to avoid danger to their lives and property from lightning bolts. Why all this to-do about lightning? light-ning? One reason is that big electric elec-tric power companies are fighting a war against a powerful, dangerous danger-ous enemy. Lightning, as you probably know, is a great electric current flashing through the air. The electricity elec-tricity in the earth flashes upward to meet it. The bolt tears through anything in the way, but usually it goes through whatever conducts electricity best metal, machinery and electric wires, especially high-power high-power transmission lines which bring current across country from dams and dynamos to towns and cities. s jHEN these wires are struck, the current in them may get so strong it burns out machines in electric power stations. Sometimes Some-times the current joins the lightning light-ning in a flash to the ground, |