Boys Build Oil Barrel Locomotive

A HOME-MADE locomotive, built by two 14-year-old boys from an old oil barrel, parts of a coaster wagon, bicycle sprocket and washing machine gear, startled residents as it whistled and chugged its way through the streets of Minneapolis.

The builders of the one-half horsepower steam engine are Marlon Nelson and Robert Wass. In the oil barrel they installed a small boiler coil and cut a door for a fire box. An old coal hod and a piece of stove pipe finished the boiler. The frame was made from an old iron bed.

Dynamite Blast Gives Niagara Falls Latest “Face Lifting”

THE gradual disintegration of the rock beneath Niagara Falls during the past year has resulted in numerous changes in the cliff over which the Niagara River plunges. Huge rock slides have crashed into the gorge below, radically altering the appearance of the falls, long the mecca of honeymooning couples.

Fortunately, most of the rock slides have occurred at night, endangering no one. However, to prevent possible danger during future crashes, engineers have surveyed the cliff carefully for signs of weakness, and where ever such spots are found, dynamite blasts anticipate the work of the river. Recently a dangerous lip overhanging Horseshoe Falls was blasted away in this manner.

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MATCH-MAKING – From LOG To LIGHT

by LIEUT. DON BENN OWENS

FORTY-ODD years ago, more than 1,500 persons, laboring 16 hours a day, were needed to turn out 2,000,000 finished match boxes. Today, with modern match box making machinery, two persons are capable of producing an identical number of match boxes in an eight-hour day.

Similarly, the modern match-making machine, requiring the services of but four workmen, turns out more than 100,000,000 finished matches in a single workday!

More striking, perhaps, is the fact that 3,000 odd persons on the payroll of the match manufacturers in this country, in 1929 earned for their employers more than $19,500,000.
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Automatic Betting Board Ousts ‘Bookie’ From Race Track

Practically eliminating the “bookie” of the race track, this automatic totalizer shows the betting odds on all horses racing, the total of races won and lost, and all details necessary to make a bet. The huge board is operated electrically from central controls, where reports of the races are received. A keyboard much like that of a typewriter regulates the rollers showing tallies. Reports are obtained by telephone directly from the judges’ stand.

THROW-AWAY FLASHLIGHT

Sealed inside transparent plastic, a tiny flashlight made by the Falge Engineering Service, Bethesda, Md., is intended to be discarded after its one cell is dead. Pressure on the plastic cover operates a switch. Produced primarily to carry an advertising message, like a packet of book matches, the lights are offered only to advertisers, in quantity lots, at a cost of approximately 26 cents each.

FREE COLLECTORS RARITY
Hitler’s GENERAL STAFF IDENTIFICATION PATCH
COLLECT RARE MILITARY SHOULDER PATCHES

Start a collection now of hard-to-get. famous U.S. and foreign military shoulder patches. Take your pick of Army, Navy. Marine, Air Force. German, Jap, RAF and other foreign insignia, in bright colors and fascinating designs. Send $1.00 for Famous Group of 20 patches plus free catalog illustrating hundreds of patches, and get free the famous patch illustrated. You may if you choose send only 10c for big catalog and price list.
THE PATCH KING, Dept. 206 P.O. Box 101f Madison Square Station. New York 10, N.Y.

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Selsyn-Powered Intercom

Spells Out Messages

SOME of those mysterious little gadgets that made certain war equipment seem almost like magic are finding their way to the sales counters as surplus goods. One of them is the selsyn, that onetime highly secret device used in antiaircraft weapons, bomb sights, and radar. Selsyns in small sizes can be picked up in dozens of stores now for between $3 and $5, and many of them will operate on ordinary 115-volt A.C.
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Asked to make a speech on motor safety, Williams invented this signaling device for drivers instead. A dry cell supplies current to light bulbs, one white and the other red, on the fingers.

FUTURE GI. Keyhole peek at what the atomic war’s fighting men may wear. New Army developments shown at Fort Ord, Cal., are this transistor-radio helmet, heat-resistant mask, nylon armored vest and automatic aluminum-alloy rifle that fires at a rate of 700 rounds a minute.

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Science in 1872

By Hal Borland

Its Growing Importance Brought About the Publication of Popular Science Monthly

IN 1872, the year Popular Science Monthly was founded, Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell were 25 years old. Edison had already improved the telegraph and was experimenting, in his Newark laboratory, with other uses for electricity. Bell was teaching phonetics for deaf pupils in Boston. Samuel F. B. Morse died that year, and in the first issue of The Popular Science Monthly an editorial note said that “his name and work will help to save our age from oblivion in the distant future.”
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Fingerprint “Lifted” on Film without Using a Camera

Two steps in the process of fingerprinting—the photographing of the original finger marks and development of the film—are eliminated by a simple method now being used. In this system the negative is not made photographically. The finger marks are powdered, then “lifted” on a jellylike transparent film. This is covered with another film which adheres to it, protecting the powder fingerprint and forming a negative.

Furniture Calculator Suspends Person in Mid-Air to Determine Contours

With a simple rig that suspends a person in mid-air, furniture designers can tailor-make a chair to fit the exact body contours of the subject. Rudolph Jegrt, an art instructor in Milwaukee, Wis., invented the contour delineator, which consists of two panels of steel mesh and some steel rods. The mesh panels are mounted two feet apart. A basic chair design is envisioned, and the rods pushed through the mesh to form the contour. The subject then climbs into the “chair” and the rods are shifted to match the subject’s body lines.