Aeronautics: Eggs from the Sky

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Down out of the sky upon Central Airport at Moscow plunked a bewildered hen and a dozen eggs. Neither the hen nor any of the eggs was damaged. Their fall, from an airplane 3,300 ft. high, was a demonstration of a new parachute designed by Soviet experts. Developed to support only small loads, the chute was of conventional design, but with a rubber hood affixed over its basket. The hood fills with air and expands in descent, decreasing the rate of fall to about 16.4 ft. per sec. (Ordinary rate of fall of U. S. made parachutes with a man of average weight: 18 to 20 ft. per sec. Force of landing is equivalent to a free jump from 6 or 7 ft.)

Although it is expected that the express-chute will be useful in delivering perishable cargo wherever there is no airfield, its invention was brought about directly by the needs of the Moscow newspaper Pravda ('Truth"). Pravda prints local editions in Leningrad, Kharkov, Tiflis and Novo-Sibirsk by delivering matrices by airplane and dropping them by parachute. With ordinary parachutes the matrices frequently were smashed.