21st December 1997

• The Baby in the...
• The Versatile Chopper

By Uncle Douglas Senaratna

One night, almost 2000 years ago, in the village of Bethlehem in the ancient land of Judea, a boy who was sleeping in a cattle shed with his friend, a young ox, was awakened by a bright light. The boy shook his ox. "There is a bright light in this cattle shed. Wake up." The ox grumbled and woke up.

All the other animals in the cattle shed were also awake.

"It's a Shining One!" gasped the boy whose name was Joshua. He scrambled to his feet and reached for his crutch, for he was lame.

The Shining One spoke. "You must clean up this cattle shed for soon there will come a great visitor," he said and added "In the sky is a star that shines brighter than all the others. When that star comes right over this cattle shed, the visitor will be here."

Joshua and the other animals in the cattleshed heard what the Shining One said. And when he had gone, they whispered to one another. "Who is this great visitor ?" they asked.

"This must be one of those kings that I used to see when I was a lamb running after my mother in the meadows outside the big city of Jerusalem. It was so exciting there," said an old ram. "And then my mother and I were sold to the man who brought us here. I am old now, but I remember the time when I was a lamb in Jerusalem."

The old ram, whose name was Boss, loved to talk about the time he spent in Jerusalem. He bleated loud about the big houses and temples he saw. "Some of them reached up to heaven," he said.

Boss was the only one in the cattle shed who had seen Jerusalem. Not even Joshua had been there. Joshua's great wish was to go there one day, but it was a long walk and with his lame leg, walking was difficult.

There was one thing Joshua could do that most people could not do. That was to understand what farm animals say and also to speak to them. He had lived in the cattleshed all his life and knew the animals well, who lived there. The young ox was his good friend. Sometimes he went with the ox into the fields when the master of the ox wanted him to plough his field. But today the ox would have to go alone because the Shining One had told them to clean up the cattle shed.

Quite early, that day the animals and Joshua started cleaning the cattleshed; the cows, the sheep, the goats, the donkeys and Joshua. Even the little birds that had their nests on the roof helped in the cleaning. Only the ox could not come because his master took him out into the field to plough. The ox was sorry that he could not take part in the cleaning up.

It was evening and everyone was outside the cattleshed looking at the big star in the sky. It was moving fast. Soon it would be right over the cattleshed. The Shining One had said that it was then that the great visitor would come.

Joshua hobbled up the road with his crutch to see whether his friend the ox was coming. Joshua found his friend slowly ambling along. Many yards behind the ox, there came a man leading a mule with a young woman seated on it.

Joshua spoke to the man. "Where are you going and where are you from?" he asked.

"We are from the ancient district of Galilee. We have come for the "Counting of the Tribes' in the city of Jerusalem. But we can go no further. My wife is exhausted and she is going to have a baby. We are looking for a place where she could rest," the man said.

"There is an inn not far from here," Joshua said.

"We went there, but they told us there was no room," said the man.

Joshua looked at the ox. And the ox shook his head. Then Josua told the man: "Come with us. There is a cattle shed nearby. That is where we and a few other animals live. You and your wife can rest there. We are expecting a great visitor, but there will be enough room for us all."

"You are very kind and we thank you," the man said.

When they reached the cattleshed, Joshua said to the man, "You and your wife can rest in that corner. My friend the ox can sleep outside. But we will be too busy with the great visitor that we are expecting."

The old ram, Boss came upto the tired couple. "I heard they are on their way to Jerusalem. Tell them that I spent my youth in that wonderful city and I could tell them anything about it" he told Joshua. And Joshua smiled at the man.

As night darkened the sky, the big star was shining brightly and it was almost above the cattleshed. In two hours it would be right over- head.

In the cattleshed, the young woman was moaning softly. There was no woman to help. When the man told Joshua about this, all female animals surrounded the young woman.

Suddenly there was light in the dark cattleshed. There was a flutter as of wings. The Shining One had come. Just then there was the tiny cry of a new born baby. The Shining One knelt on the floor. "The great visitor has arrived," he said.

"Where? where?" everyone asked, looking around. Joshua also looked around. Then suddenly he said "The Baby". All the animals looked at Josua and then gathered round the newborn infant, who was lying in the feed box.

"The infant is the visitor," the animals said.

Outside, there was sweet and wonderful music and crowds of Shining Ones in the sky with the star shining brightly.

Joshua stood by the manger (feed box) gazing at the beautiful, smiling baby. "Never was such a wonderful child born in such a humble place," he thought.

Suddenly the animals in the cattleshed became restless. Joshua went outside to find out why. At the entrance to the cattleshed stood three strangers. They were surely kings, Joshua thought. The clothes they wore were rich and beautiful.

Boss, the old ram saw the strangers and trotted upto Joshua. "These are surely kings, but they are not from Jerusalem," he whispered. "The kings that I have seen were not so richly clothed."

The three strange Kings smiled at Joshua and the ram. "Where is the new born king?" they asked. "We have come from far away lands in the East. We have followed the great star for three months. We were told that when the star stops moving, then it would point at the place where the great King is born."

The Three Kings went upto the manger in which the Baby lay. They laid rich gifts of gold, priceless perfumes and gems. Then they knelt and paid obeisance to the child.

The three Kings told the man: "Take the child and go to Egypt, for he is in great danger. The King of Judea is plotting to kill him. But we will go the other way," and they went.

The man heeded the words of the three Kings. He put his wife and the child, on the mule, thanked Josua and all the animals in the cattleshed and set out for Egypt.

Joshua, Boss, the old ram and the ox stood at the entrance to the cattleshed watching the travellers as they slowly went on. They were very sad.

"It was so wonderful," said Joshua. "Now it is so sad."

There were tears in his eyes.

The ram and the ox looked at Joshua. "Where is your crutch?" they asked surprised. "You are standing without your crutch. We have never seen without your crutch before."

The Versatile Chopper

It was some five hundred years ago when Leonardo da Vinci, that great man of ideas, designed a vehicle which he called a helical. Even though it was similar in many ways to the vehicle we know today, it wasn't until the 1930s that the helicopter really got off the ground.

The word helicopter comes from two Greek words: helix, meaning screw-like, and pteron, meaning wing. Nowadays it is sometimes known by the familiar name of 'chopper' which is often what the pilots call their machines.

It is an extremely versatile and manoeuvrable aircraft, needing only small spaces for landing and take-off, and able to turn quickly in flight, hover or even fly sideways.

Heliports, where many helicopters are based, are much smaller than airports, and can even be on the flat roof of a building, in the middle of a busy city.

How does a helicopter fly?

The 'wing' of a helicopter is made up of the rotor blades, which are attached to a central hub, and rotated by the engine. As they spin they act as an aerofoil, and develop lift.

The rotation of the blades in one direction would have the effect of making the body of the helicopter turn in the opposite direction, so this problem is overcome by the use of a small sideways-facing propeller at the tail, which counteracts the reaction.

In a twin-rotor helicopter — such as the distinctive Boeing Chinook — the two rotors each spin in opposite directions, so that they counterbalance each other.

The pilot steers the helicopter by changing the pitch of the rotor blades — that is, the angle at which they 'bite' the air.

He uses a 'collective pitch stick' which controls the up and down movement of the machine, and a 'cyclic pitch stick', which controls forwards, backwards and sideways movement.

The great inventor Edison was intrigued by the idea of helicopters, and in 1897 he prophesied that they would one day be more important than planes. The first true helicopter flight, however, didn't come till almost thirty years later, when the German Focke-Achgelis twin-rotor machine took to the air. It could fly for one hour at a time. Three years later Igor Sikorsky, a Russian living in the United States, built and flew the first single rotor machine.

The US Army was quick to see the potential of the machine, and its great success story had really begun.

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