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Planes “Type” Messages in Sky

Radio taps the keys as seven-ship flying typewriter prints 15-mile-long placards at 10,000 feet.

By Herbert Johansen

WRITERS in the sky have abandoned old-fashioned, one-plane “penmanship.” Now they’re “typing” out their aerial messages in neat block letters.

The “keys” of Skytyping are seven planes that fly a straight, parallel course across the sky. Electronic controls puff smoke at preselected intervals to form celestial letters as in the word “T E S T,” shown in the photo at the top of this page.

A “mother” plane, flying in the center of the formation, automatically controls the entire operation. It transmits a constant stream of radio tone signals at one-second intervals. As receiving sets in each of the seven planes, including the mother plane, pick up the signals, switches are thrown in a control board that has 200 plug-in sockets. The board in each plane has been preset according to a message pattern.
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Unshackle Him!

When “Ding” penned this cartoon some months ago, America’s great defense program was just beginning to roll. Today, industry has gone to war. Our powerful industrial giant is slipping free of his shackles and the smoke of activity is pluming from the nation’s factories. To provide our readers with an authoritative background against which to project the news of the day, POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY presents on the following pages the first of a series of dramatic articles revealing just how industry is being mobilized to arm Uncle Sam’s vast forces of defense for guarding our country against the danger of attack from any quarter.

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Pro Football From Abacus To Computer

By Gene Ward

When it came schedule-making time in the National Football League, Commissioner Bert Bell used to lock himself in a suite of rooms at the Racquet Club in Philadelphia, sharpen a gross of pencils and stop all incoming calls.

He was a gregarious soul, this man who guided the pro game through its growing-pains era and he dreaded the self-imposed seclusion as a skipper of an ocean liner dreads being beached.

“But there is just no other way to do it,” he once told me. “Every owner has his pet ideas as to the schedule he wants his team to play, so the only solution is to do it myself and present it as fait accompli.”
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BOYS WANTED
(Spare Time)
From $1 to $5 EVERY WEEK

Fine prizes; a business of your own that can be developed at will; clean work; good hours. Boys wanted in every city and town. Complete outfit free. Write for details and start that extra spending money towards your jeans now.
E. L. GILBERT
3rd Floor, Dept. X 119 W. 40th Street, New York City

Model-Airplane Motor Drives Scooter
Up to 230 miles on a gallon of gasoline is the economical fuel-consumption rate of a curious motorized scooter constructed by E. Roberts, of Philadelphia, Pa. Converted from a toy motor cycle, the midget vehicle is driven by a one-fifth-horsepower model-airplane engine, acting on the front rubber-tired wheel through a spring-supported friction roller. Fifteen miles an hour is top speed on level ground.

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FIZZ-WHIZZ…A Midget Steam Car

By ROY L CLOUGH, Jr.

MEASURING but 5″ in length, this tiny steam car chuffs along rapidly on any smooth surface. Doughnut-style model airplane tires give it a good grip on the “road”—whether concrete driveway, tennis court, or polished floor. Power is supplied by a 3/8″ by 5/8″ double-acting oscillating engine, while the crankshaft doubles as the rear axle. No flywheel is used, the car itself having sufficient momentum. An “ink-pad” burner fires the boiler and, unless oversup-plied with alcohol, will not constitute a fire hazard. Caution: Don’t operate Fizz-Whizz where it may run under furniture or into inflammable material.
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Edison’s Magnificent Fumble

By ROBERT D. POTTER

AMERICA’S No. 1 inventor just missed one of the greatest inventions of all time. But he discovered the clue that enabled others to perfect it.

Most of those who currently celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Alva Edison at Milan, Ohio, on February 11, 1847, remember him for his electric light, talking machine, and moving pictures.

Many recall, too, his stock ticker, multiplex telegraph, storage battery, fluorescent lighting, and Portland cement.

Perhaps few, in contrast, ever heard of the Edison effect, to which we owe the vacuum tube and the marvels built around it—radio, television, radar, electron microscopes, atom smashers, and unknown wonders still to come.
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Super-Gun for Modern Crime Fighters

By PATRICK K. SNOOK

SHADES of Al Capone. Even the bootleg king’s old town of Cicero, Ill., finally has hung up its tommy guns. The Cicero police force has replaced its prohibition era “choppers” with space-age Colt Armalite AR-15 light machine rifles.

Throughout the country, matter of fact, America’s 300,000 lawmen are taking a long look at their outdated arsenals.

No wonder. With the AR-15 holding the spotlight of the show, Colt representatives are putting on special police demonstrations that really show what this new gun can do.

I recently participated in one of them. Bill Murphy represented the Colt Co., and a group of top gunnery instructors from the Chicago police department were on hand.
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Glasses Eliminate Headlight Glare

Complete comfort and safety are promised to the night automobile driver who will wear a new type of eyeshade. Colored material above the eyes blocks out the glare of approaching headlights at a distance and as the bright headlights approach, shields at the driver’s left block out the glare from that direction. It is claimed the eye glasses serve to tone down the brightness at the left side of the road and to leave perfectly clear and visible the right side where the driver is traveling.

“Cross-eyed” X-ray Casts 3-dimension Image

X-RAY shadowgraphs have heretofore displayed only two dimensions, height and width, but with the recent development of the “cross-eyed” X-ray a third dimension, depth, is added, making the image appear like a sculptured skeleton.

The three-dimensional X-ray is the invention of Prof. Jesse W. Du Mond, a Pasadena, California, scientist, who calls his instrument a “Stereofluoroscope.”

The main element of the machine is a pair of X-ray tubes whose beams, directed against the patient as illustrated in the drawing above, intersect in the body, thus casting shadows in two different planes.
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Old Records Make Flower Bowls

VERY artistic and serviceable fruit bowls, flower jars, and sewing baskets can be made from those old worn out phonograph records you have on hand. The first step is to dip the record in boiling hot water to soften the rubber composition. In this plastic state they can be bent to any shape you may desire, one of which is shown in the accompanying photo. When the bending operations are completed the records may be decorated with some ornamental design.

This would make for some very interesting police chases.

Metal “Claw” To Catch Criminals

SIR MALCOLM CAMPBELL, noted English auto racer, has invented a mechanical “claw” for autos that may be used by Scotland Yard. Operated from within the car, it can be moved in any desired direction and can be used to grab the spare wheel or bumper of the car it is pursuing. Device is being tested at Hendon Police College in England. If successful, the new device may be placed as standard equipment on the autos used by the police to aid apprehension of criminals.