Science: Easy on the Curves

A hurtling railroad diner causes many a slip ‘twixt cup and lip. Seasoned travelers know a goopish trick to keep their coffee from sloshing into the saucer: stick a spoon in the cup. Now science has come up with a trick worth two of that. Last week Westinghouse proudly announced an invention which it called the most important since the development of the spring: a super shock-absorber system that promises to smooth out the roughest roadbed. Now a passenger will be able to stroll the length of the train without sitting on a stranger’s lap.

Westinghouse Engineer Clinton R. Hanna got the idea from the famed tank-gun stabilizer that he developed during the war. The stabilizer made it possible to fire a gun accurately from a speeding tank. Looking around for a peacetime use for his device, Hanna finally tinkered together a contraption with an extraordinary capacity for detecting the slightest jar.

The system’s chief working parts (as applied to a railroad car’s wheels) are a pendulum, a set of floating weights, hydraulic cylinders and motor-driven screw-jacks. Functioning faster than a human brain, the mechanism goes into action the instant the car wheels hit a bump in the track or begin to rock from side to side. By adjusting the wheels to compensate (in three thousandths of a second), the shock absorber keeps the car itself on an even keel. It also tilts the car automatically to a comfortable angle as it rounds a curve.

Dr. Hanna’s invention, which is adaptable to buses, is now being tested by one of the big railroads. Westinghouse also claims that the device will enable trains to travel 25% faster on curves.