The “walking man” is quite a massive affair. The outer frame is 48½ feet square, and it stands 33 feet high from the bottom of the spuds to the working deck level. The inner stage Is 29½ feet by 40¼ feet. The result is that the machine can make a forward stride of about ten feet. while the inner stage can move sideways for about three feet. The feet are raised and lowered by screw gearing driven by electric motors. A complete movement can be effected in fifteen minutes. It has been found that, with this travelling stage, work can be continued in the roughest weather. Indeed, it was the heavy seas experienced at Peterhead that led to its invention.
The Luchy machines have six articulated legs, three on each side of the body. Each leg ends in a deeply ridged foot, designed to give gripping power and to insure stability. The parts where the legs come from the mechanical body move on ball joints, thus giving free movement in all directions.
A study of the diagram on this page gives more clearly than any written description could, the essential principles of the Luchy invention.
In the Antarctic are enormous fields of mineral wealth. Captain Scott reported great coal beds and evidences of platinum, gold, iron and other useful minerals have been reported by other explorers. The great question has been how to get this mineral wealth away from such a place. The land is frozen and for a great part of the year is swept by terrific blizzards, in which man can hardly live, much less work. But it is claimed for the Luchy invention that several machines, each capable of holding crews of forty or fifty men, could be taken down to the Antarctic land mass. There
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they could be adjusted and could be effectively worked for the greater part of the year at least.
The boring tools in the head of the mosquitoes can be manipulated entirely from the inside of the machine itself and the body of the mechanism provides perfect shelter against the worst climatic conditions that could be encountered.
The machines will be made of steel and aluminum, and are not inordinately heavy. They are run by the Diesel oil machines, and the problem of fuel is the difficult one. It would be with coal. It will even be possible to use one machine as an operating mechanism and to use several others as carriers for whatever ores or other earth’s treasures their crews are after.
For work in deserts, where the only means of access is by caravan. it is thought that the Luchy machines will be extremely useful. They do away with the necessity of erecting elaborate buildings or elaborate fortifications against hostile tribes, and can move easily and swiftly from place to place. They carry their own supplies and their own means of movement, and so are not dependent upon their surroundings. In tropical countries, where locomotive travel is impeded by the vegetable groth, the machines can be equipped with cutting tools, and could clear a path to whatever point aimed at in a fraction of the time compared to the slow methods now in use.
In tropical countries, where locomotive travel is impeded by the vegetable groth, the machines can be equipped with cutting tools, and could clear a path to whatever point aimed at in a fraction of the time compared to the slow
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