“Any ideas on the quickest way to find them?” the elder scientist inquired.
Tom nodded. “The fastest way would be by aerial prospecting.”
To accomplish this, Tom went on, he proposed to build a fleet of small atomic-powered drone planes. These would carry Tom’s detecting Dam-onscope to spot radioactive ore, and his father’s mineral detectors. By sending the drones out in
MAGNETIC HOMING PIGEON 103
a search pattern across the whole country, it would be possible to locate any deposits quickly.
“But if you’re using unmanned drone planes, how do you expect to map the deposits?” Ned Newton asked with a puzzled frown.
Tom grinned. “Chow gave me the idea last night-a magnetic homing device.”
Tom sketched his plan on paper. Each plane would carry a magnetic sensing unit-trailed through the air at the end of a cable. This would “sense” the patterns of terrestrial magnetism which the plane passed over.
These patterns would be recorded on a magnetic memory drum, connected to a master steering unit inside the plane. When the drum was “played back”
through the master unit, the plane would automatically retrace its course to home base.
“Each plane will beep a radio signal whenever it detects a mineral deposit,”
Tom said. “This will start the playback. And when the plane returns to base, we simply check its flight course as recorded on tape to get the location of the deposit.”
Both Mr. Swift and Uncle Ned were enthusiastic.
“A mechanical homing pigeon,” Tom’s father added.
Tom drove back to his laboratory and set to work at once designing his newest invention. In
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