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Show Air Leviathan of Near Future p?,...,.....!.,;!JJ!!, This new design of Glenn L. Martin company's proposed 250,000-pound 250,000-pound flying ship is a "preview" of what all will be seeing as it roars across the skies after the war is won. Such planes as these today could haul regiments from coast to coast In a day's time. 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 thousands 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 no 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 cultipacking 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 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 Geddes, 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 eat 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 Geddes. 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. |