New “Twin Screw Life Belt” Saves Victim at 10 M. P. H. (Mar, 1933)
Source: Modern Mechanix ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Mar, 1933
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New “Twin Screw Life Belt” Saves Victim at 10 M. P. H.
B. NONOMURA, a Japanese lawyer of Los Angeles, had for several years been contemplating a trip to his native country. So remembering his stormy voyage to this country years ago, and being unable to swim, Nonomura turned inventor and at an inventor’s exhibit at Los Angeles recently he proudly displayed a new self-propelled life preserver, on which he has succeeded in obtaining patent papers.
Going around the waist and fastening over the shoulders in the regular manner, his preserver has the added feature of twin screws in the rear which are turned by hand with cranks. His device will not only keep the man erect in the water, but can move forward at the rate of ten miles per hour. Mr. Nonomura is seen with his new style life preserver in the photo at the left.
I have 2 comments:
1. It looks like a toilet seat.
2. If Mr. Nonomura had any idea what was too come in the next 10 years, to many Japanese folks in the US, he might have taken his invention and jumped into the Pacific and headed West or at least to Canada until things cooled down.
Comment by Trey — January 27, 2006 @ 10:55 am
Ten miles an hour? I don’t think so. He’d be lucky to make any noticeable forward progress from those little props, especially cranking them by hand from a position that would have his hands underwater much of the time.
Comment by Eliyahu — May 26, 2008 @ 2:12 pm