Iron County Record | 1942-07-23 | Page 3 | Post-War Period in U. S. to be an 'Age of Wonders'

Post-War Period In U. S. to Be an 'Age of Wonders' After -War Years Will See Astonishing Changes in Ways of Living. Mr. and Mrs. Average American of the post-war era probably will find themselves living in a world full of comforts, com-forts, conveniences and gadgets gad-gets that at a present day view have a decidedly Jules Verne flavor. They may own a home that was erected from the ground up in eight hours and is just as stable as one which before the war required six months to build. The home will have conveniences undreamed of even for comfort-loving Americans. Ameri-cans. They probably will drive a modestly priced automobile that runs 35 miles on a gallon of gasoline gaso-line and will negotiate terrain and hills formerly suitable only for the time-hnnored mountain goat. If they live on a farm they probably proba-bly will have an amazing vehicle that can be used to plough, harrow, milk and round up the cows. When vacation time comes around they may fly over to Cairo or down to Buenos Aires for the week-end. Or they may even make an around-the-world trip during the head of the family's traditional "two weeks off with pay." These are not fancies conjured from a Lewis Carroll (who authored "Alice In Wonderland") imagination. imagina-tion. They are practical potentialities potentiali-ties which industrial experts already are forecasting as the logical peacetime peace-time application of armament developments. de-velopments. War Is a forceful spur to the progress prog-ress of industrial science and invention. in-vention. Under Its duress there is no time for the cautiously slow experiments ex-periments which mark the reception recep-tion accorded new inventions and discoveries in years of peace. New methods, new materials are accepted accept-ed overnight and are tested in the acid furnaces of combat. The tragedy trag-edy of modern warfare Is an anachronism anach-ronism of progress. Distance Annihilated. There is no better Illustration of this than the advancement made by aviation as a result of World War I. The airplane represented new potentialities po-tentialities of speed and destruction and as such was seized upon as a weapon of offense by the Allies and their enemies alike. In the short period pe-riod of four years aviation made an advance that would have required a quarter of a century in normal times. Today, the same situation magnified magni-fied ten times over obtains. Only recently, Glenn Martin, the noted aircraft designer, announced plans for a 125-ton behemoth of the air capable of transporting 50,000 pounds of equipment at speeds of 200 to 230 miles an hour to be built after the war. This plane, said Mr. Martin, will be "as big as a 30;room house." Meanwhile, another company compa-ny is reported to have already completed com-pleted the wooden dummy of a ship that will dwarf the Martin monster a 160-ton model which could move whole battalions across the continent conti-nent overnight. Already in use are new methods of construction which lighten aircraft air-craft by hundreds of pounds and so tremendously Increase their passenger passen-ger and freight carrying ability. Naturally, Nat-urally, these planes ore at present only in military form. in ia.iv vuuira. However, when peace comes these Goliaths of the clouds will be interpreted in-terpreted in terms of pleasure and eonvenience for a travel-loving nation. na-tion. The almost unbelievable speed which has been developed for military mili-tary planes some of which fly in excess of 500 miles an hour will place far-flung continents and their cities within a comparatively few days or few hours flying distance of the United States. Flying freight trains probably will become the order or-der of the skies. The increasing public interest in aviation, the training of thou sands of young men as expert pilots and the strides made by safety in aviation also presage a new era of private flying. Ten years, even five years from now, plane-rental and fly-it-yourself services probably will be too commonplace to be news. When priorities are ao longer necessary, neces-sary, stall proof, spin proof planes such as the "Ercoupe" and "Skyfarere" (notable for folding wing features) probably will travel side by side with automobiles au-tomobiles along the highways as they shuttle from air field to garage. As C. R. Smith, former president of American Airlines, recently declared, de-clared, "In the post-war period, non- Toward a New Era Even as the nation devotes the full energies of Its industrial power and scientific genius to victory, vic-tory, its citizens can still lift their eyes above and beyond the holocaust of world war to an era that will bring with It a new pattern pat-tern of living at once finer and more dramatic in Its benefits than anything civilization has known before. stop operation over the ocean will be prosaic with most of the crossing cross-ing to Europe done at high altitude speeds in excess of 300 miles per hour." Miracle Car Forecast for Farm Use. As in aviation so in the world of automotive progress the developments develop-ments of war will become integrated into America's peacetime pattern of life a few years hence. In recent tests conducted by the United States department of agriculture agri-culture and Willys-Overland Motors, Inc., makers and manufacturers of the standard design Jeep, at Auburn, Ala., and Toledo, Ohio, the vehicle gave promise of performing with the same versatility on the farm as it presently is doing on the battlefields battle-fields of Europe and the Far East. During these tests the car did everything ev-erything from cultip.K king and harrowing har-rowing a field in one operation, using us-ing 2.12 gallons of gas per acre, to hauling almost a ton and a half of farm produce a distance of 13 miles on a gallon of gasoline. Already known as the "army's miracle car," the Jeep is the descendant de-scendant of a motor driven platform on wheels known as the "belly-flop-per," which was first demonstrated demonstrat-ed at Fort Benning, Ga., in 1940. At the request of army officials Joseph W. Frazer, president of the Willys-Overland Willys-Overland company, and other automotive auto-motive experts undertook the design of a car which would not exceed 1,400 pounds in weight and should k , 4 v 5 1 ' , , - - " " f ' v.!'. Nv" n-""1", v t , - I This is a modern version of beating swords Into ploughshares: converting con-verting the army's miracle car, the "Jeep," into an agricultural vehicle of many uses. Who knows, but that some future day Old Bossy, down In the south pasture, will be herded by means of such a jeep? be capable of carrying a 625 pound load. That a peacetime version of this vehicle which can climb grades that balk a tank and negotiate rough terrain ter-rain at 40 miles an hour should be developed is, of course, logical and the American farmer will thus inherit in-herit one of the nation's most valuable valu-able pieces of military equipment. These automotive principles of high-powered engines which consume con-sume a minimum of fuel also will be applied to pleasure vehicles, automobile au-tomobile designers predict, forecasting forecast-ing a light yet powerful car which will require only about one gallon of gasoline every 35 or 40 miles. On the Sea, Too. On the sea also the war effort is providing amazing new inventions applicable to the country's peacetime peace-time pattern of living. The United States has experimented with an all-aluminum all-aluminum destroyer which they believe be-lieve will cut through the water at 52 knots, an hour. Seacraft designers declare that the use of aluminum in boat construction construc-tion may well be the forerunner of high speed passenger transport ships faster than anything previously dreamed of. Row and sail boats so light that a half-grown boy can carry car-ry one across country, and fleet pleasure craft that will rival in water wa-ter the speed of their automotive cousins on land, undoubtedly will make their appearance in the postwar post-war era at prices within reach of the American in the smaller income bracket. Describing the post-war house which Americans may be occupying occu-pying ten years from now, Norman Nor-man Bel Geddcs, who designed the Futurama at the New York World's Fair, pictures a prefabricated prefab-ricated house which a crew of six men could erect in one eight-hour day. With such a house a family might well cat dinner in a home that had been no more than a pile of materials materi-als the same morning. "We have all the techniques and facilities to build houses such as I have described," says Mr. Bel Ged-des. Ged-des. "Today, we have an opportunity oppor-tunity to change over from old-fashioned and costly methods to the modern mass production way of building better homes at lower cost." He estimates that at least 2,500,000 new housing units will be required after the war. Still another noted American architect, ar-chitect, Walter Dorwin Teague, declares de-clares that we have only to apply to home-building the same techniques tech-niques of design, manufacture and selling that have provided one motor mo-tor car for every four people in the United States to produce a type of home which will be within reach of the man in the very low income bracket. Mr. Teague has designed a house to sell for $1,000 to $2,000 which can be rearranged, even when occupied, as to size and floor plan almost as easily as one changes the furniture in a room. The Teague house not only can be enlarged or reduced in size at the owner's will but also can be moved from one building site to another. Such a factory-fabricated house, he says, will compare with present day houses as a modern automobile compares with an old-fashioned buggy. bug-gy. If the owner of such a house discovers that his job necessitates a move across the continent he will simply take the house down, call a truck and have the house transported transport-ed to his new place of residence. If after six or eight years he wants a new house he will trade in his old one just as he does his automobile. Still another architect who has been studying post-war housing problems, prob-lems, William Hamby, urges that "For better living the post-war home must be Improved for the one who has the most to do the woman." In a house planned "to take the drudgery out of housekeeping," Mr. Hamby abolishes the usual kitchen and substitutes a streamlined and beautified unit so planned that while the homemaker gets dinner she can also participate in the family's activities..