ODD-SHAPED EYEGLASSES EXPRESS PERSONALITY

“Individualized” eyeglasses are becoming a fad in England, and makers, departing from the convention that lenses and frames must be round or oval, are producing them in bizarre patterns. A heart-shaped pair, for feminine wearer, is illustrated.

I love this question from one of the tests they made up:
“Define the following: Slander, libel, arson, jury, defendant, alias, accomplice, mutiny, oath, malice, search warrant.”

Mutiny? Doesn’t quite fit with the other words, does it? It sounds like some of the other kids decided that they wanted to take over the T.C.D.A and their coup was put down. Now everyone has to take a loyalty pledge to the bossman.

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High-School Sleuths Run Scientific Detective Agency

By IRWIN KOSTIN

“I WILL always obey my superiors. I will never steal. I will never tell a lie. I will obey all the laws of my country, my state, and my city. I will always respect the Tri-State Detective Agency and protect it.”

Thus runs the “Code of Conduct” of one of the most interesting and unusual organizations on earth, a boys’ detective agency with headquarters in the basement of a West Hartford, Conn., home and branches in various parts of the United States and Canada. Started a few years ago by four schoolboys, led by sixteen-year-old Roy D. Bassette, Jr., the organization now has an amazingly complete scientific crime-detection laboratory, a printing plant, a squad car, and an extensive library of criminological books and magazines. More than eighty-five boy detectives are members of the affiliated agencies.
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WATCH-CASE PHONOGRAPH
Called the world’s tiniest talking machine, a miniature phonograph has been built into the case of a watch. When wound by the watch stem, a small spring mechanism turns a midget record. Sound is reproduced through a diminutive horn.

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Stage Wonders Work of Hidden Toilers

Tinseled Fairylands Rise from Piles of Painted Drapes While Silent Wheels and Brilliant Lights Add Realism to Scene

TUCKED far behind the footlights of the stage, twenty-five tons of huge counterweights aid in controlling the movements of acres of spangled drops and curtains in the wonderlands of a production that is resorting to concealed machinery to increase the effects of theatrical arts. Instead of the usual painted canvas walls that rise and fall from high over the stage, tinseled and bronzed draperies, lacelike net works of metallic cloth, and shimmering fringed curtains are drawn from beneath the floor balanced by weighted chains and ropes. Figures impersonating gaudy birds of the wilds are sent up through the platform on silent elevators, to hurst suddenly from the midst of brilliant plumage into rays of light that rival the rainbow hues.
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New Noses in 40 Minutes

IN A forty-minute miracle of modern surgery, an unshapely nose now can be transformed in such a way as to change the owner’s face completely. Working entirely through the nostrils in order to leave no unsightly scar, the surgeon’s deft hands are guided almost exclusively by the sense of touch as he removes the hump and shortens the nose to normal proportions. Only a local anesthetic is used and the patient is conscious throughout the delicate operation. The complete transformation of the patient’s nose is accomplished in about forty minutes. In the accompanying photographs, a highspeed camera has caught the successive steps of the work in one of the most dramatic series of pictures ever made in an operating room.

CIRCUS “HIPPO” IS HARNESSED AND TRAINED TO DRAW CART

After considerable coaching at the hands of an animal trainer, “Lotus,” a circus hippopotamus enjoying winter quarters in California, was taught to haul a two-wheeled cart. A V-shaped tongue attached to a broad band around the creature’s back made traces unnecessary. A bridle of strong leather with the reins attached to the jaws completed the harness, and aided in directing the “river horse” which seemed to enjoy its “stunt” as it walked to its pool and back. Hippopotamuses are said usually to show little intelligence, but they are capable of great speed when in flight from an enemy, or while rushing to an attack after being wounded.

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Fun with Explosive Gases
Hydrocarbons Are a Subject for Many Spectacular Experiments in the Amateur’s Chemical Laboratory

By RAYMOND B. WAILES

WOULD you like to get gas from coal without heating the coal? To make an inflammable gas that will dissolve in certain liquids as easily as sugar does in coffee ? To produce a gas that burns with a flame you can hardly perceive? Or to create fiery bubbles of gas, jumping about like grasshoppers, from simple everyday chemicals? These are some of the curious and interesting experiments with hydrocarbon gases that any amateur chemist can easily perform.

Hydrocarbon gases are compounds of carbon and hydrogen. A large proportion of all natural gases, including methane, ethane, propane, and butane, belong to this group. Manufactured illuminating gas—both coal gas and water gas—contains hydrocarbon gases, together with non-hydrocarbons such as hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen.
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Water-Foils Support HYDROVANE Ship

FOR years builders of ocean liners have been refining the designs of their vessels until it seems that the ultimate speeds attainable by the conventional hulls have just about been reached.

Promise of ocean speeds approaching that of fast airplanes is held forth, however, by a modified hydroplane type of sea vessel designed by H. G. Allan of Glasgow, Scotland, and illustrated in the drawing below.

As shown, the unique craft is essentially a streamlined hull supported on steel hydrovanes. These hydrovanes, planes, or water wings, as they may be described, travel through the water, but virtually on the surface. Ordinary hydroplanes, which are designed to avoid wave-making resistance, attain remarkable speeds but are unseaworthy in rough water.
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Well, I guess we know now where that urban legend about alligators in the sewer started.

Plumbers Use Alligators To Open Clogged Pipes

Alligators kept as specimens at the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries aquarium in Washington, D.C, are being tried out as plumber’s assistants to open up clogged pipes. Placed in a length of pipe that is stopped up with silt and sediment, the reptile digs his way through, opening up a small hole which water later will widen by its pressure as it sweeps through.

You can view Abe’s one and only patent here.

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN AN INVENTOR, PATENT RECORDS REVEAL

WHILE every schoolboy is familiar with the life of Abraham Lincoln— a pioneer home, few books, hard labor at all the many trades of the frontiersman and the battle to save the Union and abolish slavery—few know that he also was an inventor.

To his genius as a statesman a united nation today bears witness, but only a rude model in the archives of the National Museum at Washington remains to give mute evidence that he possessed an inventive ability that alone, if followed, might have won him enduring fame.

Appearing as though it had been whittled out of a shingle and a cigar box, the model is about eighteen or twenty inches long, and bears the inscription: “6469, Abraham Lincoln, Springfield, Illinois. Improvement in method of lifting vessels over shoals. Patented May 22, 1849.”
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ENGLISH CAR HAS DOOR IN ITS TOP

Doors in roof and side admit a motorist to a new low-slung English car, recently exhibited in London. As the side door opens, a section of the top above the door automatically tilts upward, making entrance or exit easier. When the odd machine was placed on exhibition at the Olympia, not long ago, it attracted considerable attention, crowds gathering around the stand to watch the roof-door and the side-door work in unison.

Broadcasting Station Uses Novel Headset

WDAP, the broadcasting station of the Chicago Board of Trade, located at the Drake Hotel, Chicago, has a couple of novel headsets which are used to test the transmission from any point in the studio.

The set is a combination phone and receiver; the receiver unit is a 50-turn coil, wound on a bakelite tube firmly fastened to the head-hand, and connected to a small crystal detector screwed to a piece of wood spanning the top of the tube. With the headset on, the transmission of the concerts, lectures, etc., can be checked from any part of the studio or instrument room, without the necessity of sitting down at the standard receiving set. The connections are simple, and are shown in the upper detail of the illustration.