Masked hero of Wild West
QUESTION Why did the Lone Ranger wear
a mask?
The Lone Ranger’s mask was never mentioned in the 3,000 radio programmes where the character made his debut in 1933. It was only explained in 1949 when the Lone Ranger made his first appearance on TV.
As the story related, John Reid was left for dead when a team of Texas Rangers, including his brother Dan, was attacked by the brutal Cavendish gang.
With the help of a Native American, Tonto, he recovered and went incognito behind a mask he made from his dead brother’s vest until he had brought all the Cavendish gang to justice.
Tonto explained to him that he was the ‘lone ranger’ to have survived the attack.
On TV, the mask gave the Lone Ranger an air of mystery as he continued to bring criminals to account in the Wild West.
As young viewers, we had to believe that the mask made the Lone Ranger unrecognisable to his enemies. It inspired respect in the people he helped, who were often left wondering: ‘ Who was that masked man?’
The Lone Ranger was occasionally shown without his mask, but he then adopted another disguise, such as fake facial hair.
A black mask was used when the programmes were filmed in colour. Interestingly, in the black-and-white episodes, the Lone Ranger had actually worn a purple mask.
Ian MacDonald, Billericay, Essex.
QUESTION Do tortoises have ears?
MeMbeRs of the Testudines family, tortoises, turtles and terrapins, lack an outer ear. behind an enlarged, round tympanic membrane of less than 0.5mm in thickness, middle ear bones direct vibrations down the ear canal.
Tortoises don’t have eardrums, but small bones in their inner ears help distinguish sounds and vibrations.
hearing is a secondary sense for tortoises, whose senses of sight and smell are acute. studies have demonstrated they only perceive deep sounds. This enables them to detect predators long distances away.
This may explain why tortoises respond more readily to a deeper male voice than a higher female one.
Tortoise vision is much better than their hearing, allowing them to see colours, shapes and patterns. They have a strong sense of smell, helping them avoid predators and find food and a partner during mating times.
They can also sense non-airborne scent particles with their tongue and the lining of their mouth.
Barbara Ainley, Cannock, Staffs.
QUESTION Who invented the ramjet?
The ramjet is arguably the simplest possible type of jet engine, consisting of a tube with no moving parts.
Air enters at the front and is slowed down to increase its pressure. heat is added, by burning fuel, causing the air to expand and accelerate out of a nozzle at the rear of the tube, producing thrust.
The major problem with a ramjet engine is that it has to be moving at 200 mph to work at all and does not produce useful thrust until it reaches 400 mph.
so, on an aircraft, another means must be used for take-off and to get up to a speed at which the ramjet will work.
Given its speed limitations, it is all the more remarkable that French military engineer Rene Lorin came up with the concept in 1908.
his ideas were published in aviation journal L’Aerophile from 1908 to 1913 and he took out a patent for his invention. At the time, an attempt to build a prototype failed due to inadequate materials. Also, there was no way that an aircraft of the time could fly fast enough to allow a ramjet to operate.
In 1915, hungarian Albert Fono came up with the idea of fitting a ramjet to an artillery shell to increase its range. A patent was granted in 1932, but the Austro-hungarian army rejected it.
In the soviet Union in 1928, boris s. stechkin presented a theory about the operation of a ramjet engine.
The first working model was designed by I. A. Merkulov and tested in 1933 by firing it from an artillery cannon. These shells may have been the first jet-powered projectiles to break the sound barrier.
As an experiment, in 1939, two ramjet engines were added to a Polikarpov I-15 biplane fighter. Its top speed was just about sufficient for the ramjets to begin functioning.
between the wars, new inline liquidcooled engines achieved higher speeds, but the drag produced by their coolant radiators became a problem.
In 1936, F. W. Meredith, a researcher at the Royal Aircraft establishment at Farnborough, hampshire, proposed that by shaping the duct in which the radiators were mounted, it would be possible to reduce drag and even produce thrust.
It was not possible to use this in a spitfire or hurricane, but it was applied successfully to the Mustang by mounting the radiator towards the rear of the fuselage. effectively, the combination of duct and radiator acted as a lowtemperature ramjet.
In France in 1933, Rene Leduc came up with the idea of a ramjet, but when he tried to register his idea, Lorin’s 20-yearold patent was cited. he tried to contact Lorin, but found he had recently died.
Leduc designed a futuristic looking ramjet-powered aircraft and construction started in 1938. The project was kept hidden from the occupying German forces and was completed in 1947.
Testing began in 1949. As the aircraft had no other means of propulsion, it had to be carried on the back of another plane and released at altitude.
After three unpowered flights, the engine was ignited at half-power for 12 minutes and a speed of 420 mph was reached. On subsequent flights, at full power it reached 500 mph.
This was the first aircraft to fly solely on the power of a ramjet and had a better speed/ altitude performance than contemporary aircraft powered by gas turbines.
Denis Sharp, Littlehampton, W. Sussex.