Restored Enchantment

Radio is better with Battery Power

At a turn of the dial a radio program comes to you. It is clear. It is true. It is natural. You thank the powers of nature that have once more brought quiet to the distant reaches of the radio-swept air. You are grateful to the broadcasters whose programs were never so enjoyable, so enchanting. You call down blessings upon the authority that has allotted to each station its proper place. And, if you are radio-wise, you will be thankful that you bought a new set of “B” batteries to make the most out of radio’s newest and most glorious season.
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How Lasers Are Going to Work for You

The light fantastic is no longer a scientific curiosity: It’s now being used for just about everything from moon measuring to tire checking

By C. P. GILMORE / PS Consulting Editor, Science

At RCA’s David Sarnoff Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., Dr. Henry Kressel handed to me what appeared to be an odd-looking gold-colored bolt about three quarters of an inch long. The threaded part was ordinary enough. But a small block perhaps a quarter of an inch long and half that thick was built onto one side of its flat head. A wire from the head arched up and connected to the side of the block.

“That’s the laser,” he said, pointing to where the wire joined the block. “This metal block?” I asked.

He took the device, walked into a laboratory next door, put it under a powerful binocular microscope, and peered into the instrument as he adjusted it.
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Telegraph Kisses Are New Fad
Sending kisses by wire is a new use for facsimile telegraph transmission. Recently a New York girl kissed a telegram blank and the lipstick impression was placed on the facsimile transmitter, as at left, to be reproduced for delivery in Chicago.

Liquid levels monitored hundreds of miles from your central office by Bendix electro-span!

Important storage reservoirs for water, crude oil, gas, brine and other liquids are located in many remote and isolated sections of this country. It takes crews of men stationed at these points to keep a constant check of volumes and to open and close valves to balance supply and demand. The work is lonely, expensive to maintain, and sometimes dangerous.
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FLUORESCENCE

ITS RAINBOW COLORS MAY LIGHT TOMORROW’S CITIES

by Samuel G. Hibben

Director of Applied Lighting, Westinghouse Lamp Division.

AGE-OLD mysteries of flourescence and phosphoresence are being solved today because the demands of war and the foretaste of post-war electrical living have spurred scientific research and development, formerly dormant for several generations. A great incentive has been given to extend scientific studies of this subject—generally termed “luminescence”—through recent developments of the practical methods of producing the chief ingredient, “black light.” True, black light, which is another name for invisible ultraviolet radiations just out of range of the human eye, does exist in sunlight, but it is overcome by the much more powerful visible radiations.
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MYSTERY RAYS “SEE” Enemy Aircraft

AMERICAN and German War Departments announce simultaneously new rays capable of “seeing” enemy aircraft through fog, clouds, or dark, at distances of up to fifty miles. First tests in this country are being held at the Lighthouse Station near Highlands, N. J., by the War Department, the details of the invention being closely guarded by military police.

No larger than a penny match box is the German mystery ray machine, a highly-perfected ultra-short wave radio transmitter.

Groups of these transmitters, mounted along the border of a country and adjusted to send their “feeler” beams into the sky at a fixed angle, could be used for air defense. The 5 to 15 centimeter long beams act much like invisible light rays, and are reflected back to earth by aircraft.

Groups of ultra-short wave receivers stationed some distance from the transmitters would pick up one or more of the beams reflected. With each transmitter sending out a different type of signal, something like the interrupted signal produced by a dial telephone, and each receiver connected to the central switchboard, the distance and height of the plane could be calculated automatically and almost instantly by a machine built to interpret optical and trigonometrical formulas. With this data, air defense guns could be aimed accurately at the unseen targets.

RELIABILITY
Dependable performance is a quarter-century tradition at Motorola— the world’s largest exclusive manufacturer of electronic equipment. Under subcontract to Convair, Motorola engineered for reliability, and is now producing the guidance equipment for the Navy’s new all-weather anti-aircraft missile, the “Terrier”.
Positions open to qualified Engineers and Physicists
MOTOROLA
COMMUNICATIONS & ELECTRONICS DIVISION National Defense Department
2710 N. CLYBOURN AVE. • CHICAGO, ILL.. Laboratories: Phoenix, Arizona and Riverside, California

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Hair, Feathers Aid Cancer War

HAIR trimmed from 1,000,000 heads and feathers of 500,000 chickens provide a crystalline substance known as cystine used by eastern laboratories in the widening war on cancer. This new weapon in the fight against disease is a colorless, odorless chemical. Five thousand haircuts provide 100 pounds of hair, which in turn yield only five pounds of cystine.
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New Cable Conquers Congestion

IMAGINE a city street with a thousand rows of telephone poles, each holding aloft sixty wires!

Of course such a street would look more like a bad dream than any kind of a thoroughfare, but without the modern lead-covered cable that’s exactly what half the streets in most of our larger cities would look like. The picture at the left showing lower Broadway, in New York City, in the ’80s gives a slight hint of what a city street would look like without present day cables, developed in the past four decades by telephone engineers.
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Burton Holmes was apparently quite the Extraordinary Traveler.

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The Senic WONDERS of the WORLD
By BURTON HOLMES

THE nine most interesting places in the world? I should not dare to try to name them. But I can give you a list of those which to me have seemed to offer more of interest than any other nine that I have known. First—The Grand Canyon of Arizona. Why? Because I love beauty and it is the biggest beautiful thing in the world. It is unique because the earth can show nothing to equal it in beauty, gorgeous-ness of color, grandeur, impressive weirdness and immensity.
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Photograph Records Both Portrait and Voice
RECORDS of both the portrait and voice of subjects are the latest novelty photographs on the market in Germany.

The paper on which the photograph is printed is also grooved for phonograph recording. After the photograph is taken and the print is made, the subject can transcribe his voice on the photograph without damaging the picture.

The novelty photographs are especially valuable for sending “talking pictures” to friends and relatives in distant lands and cities. The photographs are of average size and carry a voice recording of approximately three minutes’ duration. The center is punched so that the record can be used on any phonograph.

German Scientists Construct Huge “Atom Smasher”
IN THE unending battle to harness the energy within the atom scientists at the Emperor Wilhelm Institute in Berlin have constructed a mammoth machine designated as an “atom smasher.” Experiments are being conducted under the direction of Professor Peter Debye, world famous physicist.

The gigantic “atom smasher” machine stands 50 feet high and is located within the confines of a windowless tower 135 feet high. A three-million volt electric current is used during the course of the experiments.

The wall of the tower features several observation platforms from which the scientists can make studies of the working of the apparatus. The high voltage accelerates particles passing through the vacuum tubes of the gigantic machine.