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The Bicycle Comes Back

In amazing revival of fad of the nineties

By John E. Lodge

THE bicycle is back. Four million Americans now pedal along streets and highways. And, last year, factories in the United States turned out 750,000 machines, nearly equaling the peak production of the gay nineties. News items from all parts of the country tell the story of this dramatic boom in popularity.

In Chicago, Ill., for instance, 165,000 persons recently signed a petition asking for cycling paths to be constructed in the city parks. In Washington, D. C, a huge crowd of enthusiastic spectators, last winter, braved frigid winds for hours to watch an amateur bike race. From coast to coast, cycling clubs are i springing up. The veteran League of American Wheelmen has come back to life. The Amateur Bicycle League of America has approximately ninety affiliated clubs; the Century Road Club, promoting amateur races, has twenty-five or thirty, and there are upwards of 300 unassociated clubs in the country.

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Movies For Passengers on Long Plane Hops
FULL-LENGTH movies, news-reels, or shorts can be shown to airplane passengers by a new self-contained projection unit (right). Developed by the Air Transport Command and Army Signal Corps, the outfit also provides radio broadcasts and recorded music from sound films, a program being heard either through a loudspeaker or individual headsets. Plane movies entertained many of the War wounded who were evacuated over thousands of miles by air.

Speedy Motor-Cycle Car Runs on Two Wheels
WHETHER it’s a car or a motor cycle would be hard to say, but the inventor of the novel vehicle above declares it has the advantages of both. In motion, it rides upon two wheels, guided by a steering wheel. The driver experiences a pleasant swaying sensation as the machine tips like a plane or motor cycle for the turns. When the driver stops, a pedal lowers a pair of small auxiliary wheels at the sides for support. The photograph shows the odd gas buggy being driven by a mechanic in a tryout run at Miami, Fla. Another model has a seat for a passenger mounted behind that of the driver.

WIRE REPLACES WAX IN NEW DICTATING MACHINE

Unusually clear reproduction is claimed for a new type of dictating machine invented in Germany. In this device the fluctuations of a speaker’s voice, conveyed electrically to electromagnets, leave a moving steel wire traveling through them more or less strongly magnetized according to the intensity of the voice at each instant. To play back the record, the wire is passed through a similar machine where the reverse process takes place and the voice is heard in a pair of headphones. The wire may then be run through a demagnetizer and used again. Wax records are dispensed with, since the wire takes their place. The wire is made of an alloy the nature of which the inventor is keeping secret, but upon which, he says, the success of his device depends. The machine is shown above.

This article was published less than a year after the tomb was discovered.

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TREASURES OF ANCIENT THEBES IN NEW-FOUND TOMB

By R.C. Folger

TREASURE that has been variously estimated to be worth from $15,000,000 to $40,000,000, has recently been brought to light upon the opening of a tomb believed to be that of Tutankhamen, who ruled in Egypt over 3,000 years ago.

The first objects to greet the eyes of the entrants to the tomb, were three magnificent state couches, each made of gilt wood with exquisite carvings and decorated with a lion’s head and other emblematic figures. On these rested gilt beds also beautifully carved and inlaid with ivory and jewels, and a number of boxes of rare workmanship. These boxes were inlaid with ivory and ebony with gilt inscriptions.

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Panorama an a Giant Screen

SIGHTSEEING “trips” to America’s beauty spots have been conducted right on the Chicago Railroad Fairground with a projection system that makes color pictures of Niagara Falls seem so real that you wonder why you can’t feel the mist on your face. Kodachrome transparencies are projected on the screen five at a time and, so perfectly aligned are the individual pictures, that the effect is of a giant, natural panorama.

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