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Every so often, usually in the vast deserts of the American Southwest, a hiker or a backpacker will run across something puzzling: a ginormous concrete arrow, as much as seventy feet in length, just sitting in the middle of scrub-covered nowhere. What are these giant arrows? Some kind of surveying mark? Landing beacons for flying saucers? Earth's turn signals? No, it's...
the Transcontinental Air Mail Route.On August 20, 1920, the United States opened its first coast-to-coast airmail delivery route, just 60 years after the Pony Express closed up shop. There were no good aviation charts in those days, so pilots had to eyeball their way across the country using landmarks. This meant that flying in bad weather was difficult, and night flying was just about impossible.
The Postal Service solved the problem with the world's first ground-based civilian navigation system: a series of lit beacons that would extend from New York to San Francisco. Every ten miles, pilots would pass a bright yellow concrete arrow. Each arrow would be surmounted by a 51-foot steel tower and lit by a million-candlepower rotating beacon. (A generator shed at the tail of each arrow powered the beacon.) Now mail could get from the Atlantic to the Pacific not in a matter of weeks, but in just 30 hours or so.
Yesteryear's low tech solution for a new high tech era.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by gmrath on Saturday October 15 2016, @04:03PM
No matter the era's current technology there is always someone willing to pay for the new and glittery whatever the perceived or actual needs. Those in the industry back then no doubt knew that the arrows were a short-term solution. Radio was rapidly maturing as a technology and the arrows went the way of the pony express as soon as radio localizer beacons and associated technology on the ground and in the air were rolled out across the nation. This was also at the beginning of the civil air industry and although the initial air mail was an Army operation, commercial airlines soon took it over. I'll bet the marketing went something like this: "We can get the mail safely across the continent and we can get you there safely too. And much quicker that trains." The rest is history, so to speak.