Air Torpedo Speeds Mail Delivery (Mar, 1932)
Air Torpedo Speeds Mail Delivery
THE speediest thing yet in the way of devices to facilitate mail delivery is an air torpedo which has recently been introduced in Germany. The invention of a Berlin engineer, Herr Richard Pfautz, the vehicle speeds from city to city on a special overhead trolley, which carries the current to power the two electric propeller motors situated at each end of the cylinder, as shown in the accompanying photo.
When the system is finally established, it will take but forty minutes, engineers estimate, to send a letter from the eastern frontier of Germany to the French border, and at a cost of not more than six cents. Engineers are now investigating the vehicle’s possibilities.
This exact system was tried out in Scotland for transporting people rather than post. Like so many of these exciting inventions, it never led to anything:
http://www.gearwheelsma…
It seems as if the Germans had many crackpot ideas in the early 1930s.
And less than 10 years later the Germans were sending an entirely different kind of “Air Torpedo” across the French border!
To connect just two points, it sounds plausible. If they were going to connect every major city in Germany to ever other one, it would get messy.
A quick measurement across Germany in 1932 gives about 550 miles from the eastern frontier (not counting East Prussia which was discontinuous) to the French border. That means it would have to move at 825 miles/hour. The speed of sound in air is 768 miles/hour, so this thing would be travelling at Mach 1.07. The sonic boom would be a bit noisy as it passed at the very least. Really it seems pretty implausible.