At the same time a new impetus was given to aviation by the relatively
enormous power for weight of the atomic engine, it was at last possible
to add Redmayne's ingenious helicopter ascent and descent engine to the
vertical propeller that had hitherto been the sole driving force of the
aeroplane without overweighting the machine, and men found themselves
possessed of an instrument of flight that could hover or ascend or
descend vertically and gently as well as rush wildly through the air.
The last dread of flying vanished. As the journalists of the time
phrased it, this was the epoch of the Leap into the Air. The new atomic
aeroplane became indeed a mania; every one of means was frantic to
possess a thing so controllable, so secure and so free from the dust and
danger of the road, and in France alone in the year 1943 thirty thousand
of these new aeroplanes were manufactured and licensed, and soared
humming softly into the sky.

And with an equal speed atomic engines of various types invaded
industrialism. The railways paid enormous premiums for priority in the
delivery of atomic traction engines, atomic smelting was embarked
upon so eagerly as to lead to a number of disastrous explosions due
to inexperienced handling of the new power, and the revolutionary
cheapening of both materials and electricity made the entire
reconstruction of domestic buildings a matter merely dependent upon a
reorganisation of the methods of the builder and the house-furnisher.
Viewed from the side of the new power and from the point of view of
those who financed and manufactured the new engines and material
it required the age of the Leap into the Air was one of astonishing
prosperity. Patent-holding companies were presently paying dividends
of five or six hundred per cent. and enormous fortunes were made
and fantastic wages earned by all who were concerned in the new
developments. This prosperity was not a little enhanced by the fact that