Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 112, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1913 — TELLING DISTANCE BY SOUND [ARTICLE]

TELLING DISTANCE BY SOUND

Modem Science Has Brought It to Exactitude That Is Easily Suscep- ■ tlble of Proof.

There la an old saying that If you can count five between the flash and thunder you are safe. Modern science tells us that if you can see the flash at all you are safe, because if It struck you you would have no time to see It "The speed of lightning la about 180 (times that of sight

The old idea was that if you could count five the storm was a mile away, which was considered a safe distance. Sound travels at the rate of 1,142 feet a second, or about a mile in five seconds. In order to count seconds accurately many photographers start by saying to themselves: “No one thousand, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand,” etc. This gives about the right space between each count of one, two, three, etc., If you ttop at the number of seconds you want to time. With a little prac-

tice with a watch beside you this is accurate up to half a minute or more. If you hear a steam whistle blowing and note the Instant it stops you can count the seconds until you lose the sound, and by allowing a fifth of a mile for each second yon can judge the distance. The same is true of guns, or an explosion, or even of hammering or any loud sounds. Other Colonists Than British? “If there -is one tenet in which British self-complacency has clung

with more desperate energy than another," says an English author, Mr. Charles Thomas-Stanford, in a recently published book "About Algeria,” “It is that our people are the only successful colonists. >. A motor drive through the rich plain which encircles Algiers will send .our long cherished beliefs a-packing to the limbo of dead British prejudices." The author describes with special enthusiasm a visit to a farm whose equipment Included two motor cars and an aeroplane.