Timeline from Science News

From the January 19, 1929 issue

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NOISELESS AIRPLANES AVIATION'S GOAL

A few weeks ago, an airmail plane roaring through the night received a charge of buckshot dangerously close to its motors. Visions of the first plane hold-up, so often depicted by fiction writers, were dispelled when investigation showed that an irate farmer had used this means of discouraging planes from flying over his land. He said the deafening noise bothered his hens and caused them to stop laying.

He was the first to express his dissatisfaction in such sensational form, but millions of people are becoming intolerant of the noise created by airplanes. Both the airplane-riding public and the millions who must hear this noise from the ground are demanding that planes be silenced. Science is attempting to accomplish this, but engineers at work on the problem are finding it one of the most baffling confronting aviation today.

UR YIELDS OLD GODS AND ROYAL TOMBS

The body of a baby girl, adorned with a little gold headdress almost exactly like that worn by Queen Shub-ad of Ur, is one of the new discoveries in the royal graves at Ur of the Chaldees, according to a report just received from C. Leonard Woolley, director of the joint expedition of the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the British Museum.

This 5,000-year-old grave, which Mr. Woolley suggests might be called the grave of the baby princess, contained also a set of miniature silver dishes, including a tumbler and bowls. The royal headdress, which attracted much attention last season when discovered with the remains of the Queen, is a delicate and elaborate structure of gold ribbon, gold leaves, and flowers with pointed petals.

GOOD AS NEON LIGHTS

Red neon lights, suggested as beacons for airports, are not any better able to penetrate fog, as its advocates have claimed, than ordinary incandescent lamps equipped with colored screens. This was announced by Dr. Lyman J. Briggs of the U.S. Bureau of Standards. Neon lights are familiar to everyone because they are used in the newest tubular advertising signs.


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