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Show as a result of the electricity group's visit to the United States. U.S. Idea Helps Lay Power Lines British electricity authorities, using helicopters to run trans-mision trans-mision lines through rough country, coun-try, report they got the idea from a Marshall Plan visit to the United States. One of the "flying windmills" recently laid from the air a 1,280-foot 1,280-foot span of a 66,000-volt trans-mision trans-mision line across a densely wooded valley in the Malvern Hills in less than two minutes. The old method would have meant sending crews to cut down hundreds of trees to clear a 30-foot-wide path through the woods. The idea came from Roger Mallet, Mal-let, deputy chief engineer of the Midlands Electricity Board. Mallet Mal-let had been one of 32 Britons, representing the British electricity electrici-ty supply industry, who spent six weeks in the United States in 1949 under the technical assistance assist-ance program started by the Economic Eco-nomic Cooperation Administra- J tion and continuing under the Mutual Security Agency. Mallet remembered the helicopters heli-copters in use at the Tennessee Valley Authority for . patrolling power lines and laying overhead I lines across difficult country. Why, he reasoned, shouldn't it be done in Britain as well ? Spectacular though this helicopter heli-copter operation was, it is only one of a number of examples of new techniques in use in Britain |