Tamed Humming-birds Sip Honey

TRAINING humming-birds to sip honey from his lips is the unusual accomplishment of Ralph Ayer, a farmer living near Eastonville, Colorado. These tiny birds have heretofore been considered untamable.

Perfume bottles filled with honey and flowers first attracted the birds. They now return each year.

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DON’T GET STUCK By STOCK GYPS

Want to make a buck in the market? You can be bilked of your dough.

By SIMON LEE GARTH

IN AN upstairs bedroom a woman lay dying of cancer. Downstairs in the living room her husband was talking business in low tones with a distinguished-looking stranger.

The stranger was Joseph H. Schoenberger, 70, and every inch of his well-groomed appearance suggested the prosperous, sincere businessman, the pillar of the community.

Their business completed, Schoenberger suggested, “Let us now bow our heads for a few moments in silent prayer for your afflicted wife.”

They did so. Then Schoenberger walked out of the house with the man’s last savings, $1,800, in his pocket.

Schoenberger is a swindler with a criminal record going back to 1930.

When he and four others were arrested and indicted as a result of an investigation by Post Office inspectors last month, Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield called them “five of this nation’s most callous confidence men.”

The Post Office, which made the charge that Schoenberger had swindled the dying cancer victim’s husband, said this gang, operating in Western New York State, had bilked 50 known suckers—most of them elderly people—of at least $330,000. Inspectors predicted the known total would be far higher when their investigations are completed.

These men were selling their victims oil leases at $20 per acre. The leases had cost 20 cents to 50 cents per acre—and that’s about what they were worth.

The victims of this particular gang were not unusual. Americans today may be too sophisticated to buy the Brooklyn Bridge—but if stock in it were offered to them at the right price . . .

There is more truth than jest in this, as newspaper headlines across the country amply testify.

“$50,000,000 Loss to Public Charged in Stock Promotion.” “Fraud of $6,000,000 Laid to Two Brokers.” “Mine Stock Cash Buys Lodge for Swindler.” “Charge $1,000,000 Swindle in Oil Stock.”

People throughout the country, on the trail of the fast buck-and the quick killing, are being taken by phony stock promoters as never before.

The victims are being swindled mainly by “boiler room” operations, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, a Federal agency which, among its other duties, polices securities transactions.

Although it is impossible to calculate how much money this confidence game operation snares from the public, the SEC notes that ten boiler room operations broken up recently caused an actual loss of over $100,000,000.

Just what is the boiler room and how does it operate?

A boiler room is a setup for obtaining inflated prices for virtually valueless stock.

The symbol of the boiler room operator is the telephone. Although the promoter may rent a small office in a choice location, such as New York’s Wall Street, it is usually just front for a backroom at a considerably less impressive address.

There the squads of high pressure salesmen, known as “loaders”, labor away at a battery of phones. Each man has his own cubicle with a hood over the telephone mouthpiece to guard his conversation from the surrounding noise. Long lists of suckers, potential customers, hang on the walls in front of them. The crowding and the heat often make the salesmen strip to the waist . . . thus the name of boiler room.

These operations are concentrated in New York, but 90% of their sales are made to customers in other cities. To keep down long distance phone bills, many salesmen use a three-minute egg timer to judge the length of the pitch. If the quarry isn’t hooked when the sand runs out, they just hang up.

Even using this device one firm which was closed down recently had phone bills averaging $45,000 a month.

After introducing himself as a friend of a friend the typical boiler room salesman tells his prospect that he’s letting him or her in on the ground floor of a special stock.

Assistant New York Attorney General Carl Madonick, an expert in the fight against security swindlers, describes it this way: “In a recent case, a Los Angeles promoter induced New York brokers to list fictitious quotations on a stock which then appeared in a legitimate publication, the National Daily Quotation Service. Stock was supplied to a securities firm in Denver which in turn supplied stock to two firms in New York … A market was made to appear for the stocks at the prices quoted . . . which was all the salesman needed.”

Then came the pitch. A well-to-do farmer in Iowa picks up his phone and hears a cultured voice saying: “Mr.———? This is Mr. Blank calling from New York. A friend of yours suggested I call you to let you in on a terrific stock my firm has at $1.75 a share. I’d like to offer you 1,000 shares, but I have only 200 shares I can allot to you at this price. . . .”

If the farmer is like too many other Americans, he grabs the 200 shares. Within a few days a souped-up progress report will be sent to him and then comes another phone call.

“Did you hear? Your stock is now $2.25.” Another heavy pitch is made and soon the sucker is thanking the salesman for the privilege of buying 500 more shares at $2.25 . . . and on and on till the saturation point is reached.

If the sucker wants to sell some of his stock, and is lucky enough to get an answer when he calls the New York office, he will be told that “there’s no market at present for the stock. We’ll call you.” And that’s the last he’ll hear.

False and misleading statements violate the anti-fraud provisions of Federal securities laws. But because the promoters sell by phone and avoid putting anything in writing, the SEC finds it tough to make a fraud charge stick.

“Misrepresentation of a stock over the phone is an awfully hard thing to prove,” Philip A. Loomis, chief of the SEC’s Trading and Exchange Division, said.

In a recent case prosecuted by New York Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz, it was found that 4,000 persons in the United States and Canada had been sold $1,000,000 worth of stock in Texas Union Oil Corporation.

Literature put out by two firms pushing the stock, Lefkowitz said, indicated that the company “had a vast potential which may result in tens of millions of dollars from oil reserves owned by the company.”

Actually, he said, the total amount of oil produced from the company’s oil fields in Estill County, Kentucky, was 87 barrels, worth $252.26.

The charge against the promoters read that “the only other producing property owned by the Texas Union Oil Corporation is a cow which, it has been testified, produces roughly six or seven quarts of milk a day for the purpose of providing for the food and thirst requirements of a caretaker by the name of O. R. Jones.”

This sounds much funnier to those who didn’t have stock in Texas Union Oil Corporation.

With so little risk for so much money, it was only a matter of time before gangsters moved into this lucrative con game.

Attorney General Lefkowitz charges that mob-dominated securities houses have been in the boiler room business in New York and 38 other states.

“We are satisfied that we have come across a network of people with criminal records in the securities business,” he said.

The pattern they use to get into the business was described by the Attorney General.

First, they seek out a legitimate, established firm that is having financial difficulties. Through a front they lend money, or even threaten bodily harm.

Secondly, they put one of their own men in as president.

Thirdly, they start operations as a boiler room.

In New York State a law has been passed barring persons convicted of certain crimes from dealing in securities, and all securities dealers must be registered with the Attorney General’s office.

The legislation was speeded when a notorious gangster still in jail was named as the man behind a boiler room operation. The racketeers can now be named.

Carmine Lombardozzi: An ex-convict, and a delegate to the infamous Apalachin convention who was jailed for refusing to reveal what happened at Apalachin, has been connected with the firm of Philip Newman Associates.

James C. Graye: Head of a -firm bearing his name which was banned for selling worthless stocks. He sometimes used the alias James Webb, has a criminal record dating back to 1927 and has been convicted of auto theft and robbery.

Murray Taylor: Named as sales manager of Lincoln Securities Corp., has been convicted of arson, conspiracy and served two years on a charge in connection with the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Dominick Mundo: Arrested recently on a boiler room charge, was on parole until 1972 on an assault and robbery conviction.

Arthur Tortorella: Found by the Attorney General’s men in the Philip Newman set-up and reported by them to be “a member of the Brooklyn mob as well as a henchman of Carmine Lombardozzi,” with a record of burglary and grand larceny convictions.

The list can go on and on. And it exists strictly because of our own greed. The quest for the quick dollar leads to long range grief.

This pattern was amply demonstrated this past summer in a swindle charged to a Long Island man. Here the profits were assured, insured and reassured. And the suckers believed it In papers filed against Jack Kissel, the prosecutors charged that the names of Queen Elizabeth and Captain Video had been used to promote stock sales aimed at a $5,000,000 killing.

The ventures were reported to include a non-existant harness racing track in Winnipeg, Canada, and the Spaceland Amusement Park in Garden City, New York.

The promoters were charged with making false representations, including statements that the Queen would officially open the track and that Captain Video—real name Al Hodge —would direct the amusement park.

Investors were told, according to the charges, that the races at the track would be fixed so that stockholders would be assured of large profits, and that the stock would be guaranteed by the Canadian government.

An additional charge of perjury has been placed against the promoter for telling the Attorney General’s Office he had never been convicted of a felony when in fact he had been convicted for bigamy and grand larceny.

Nothing is too far fetched for the stock promoter. Take the story told to suckers by Satiris Fassoulis. It involved a “dream” ship, a mythical corporation and counterfeit American Telephone and Telegraph bonds and it led to his arrest by the FBI.

The government charged that Fassoulis tried to boost his fortunes by underwriting the “Continental Chartering and Snipping Corporation” with a $350,000 loan from an Ohio bank.

Collateral was $346,000 in counterfeit AT&T bonds. A New York bank received the bonds as agent for the Ohio bank.

In promoting his scheme, Fassoulis told investors that the company had the Amerosia, a “dream” ship. Fassoulis also claimed to be backed by one James Eichler, whom he described as representative of a wealthy Greek shipping magnate. Eichler did not exist Neither did the ship.

The scheme collapsed when the New York bank discovered that the AT&T bonds were counterfeit. It had held them for three months.

Veteran stockbrokers know that it is difficult for the best of them to pick stocks that will result in windfalls. SEC Chairman Edward Gadsby points out that the fellow who rushes in to buy stocks because he got a hot tip somewhere “might just as well put his money at Laurel (the race track) or Las Vegas.”

Boiler rooms like to push stocks of dramatically named companies in glamorous fields. “Now, any stock with electronics in its name seems to have great appeal,” said an SEC spokesman. “Before that it was uranium and before that oil.”

In dealing with unknown stock salesmen, the SEC recommends, “evaluate their representations with an attitude of hard-headed skepticism.”

• Don’t deal with strange securities firms.

• Don’t buy on tips and rumors. Get all the facts.

• Tell the salesman to put the information in writing and mail it to you. Save it • Check up on his firm through your own bank.

The Better Business Bureau warns that the more insistent a salesman gets in using high-pressure sales tactics, or the more his tips or rumors are attributed to “inside” sources, the more cautious you should become.

Be suspicious of any attempt to high-pressure you into buying a security before you have had ample time to get all the facts you need about it. Be especially suspicious of attempts to sell you securities on the basis of “inside dope.”

The “dope” could turn out to be you. • • •

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One Woman’s Confession: I HATE SUBURBIA

Yes. I’ve been a long-term resident of the suburbs,” the attractive woman next to me replied in answer to my question. Her brown eyes seethed with excitement. “And I think the word ‘term’ is very appropriate. It’s been almost a jail sentence!”

We looked around us as we drove through the streets of one of the towns in a suburban area called The Five Towns, on Long Island. Neat little houses bordered the roads, each painted white and framed by shrubbery or forsythia, with the number of the house painted in script above the garage. Often, a car was parked in the driveway. It seemed to be Hollywood’s version of suburbia—a way of life to which every young woman facing marriage must aspire. A house—split-level, ranch or colonial style—in a suburb close enough to the city to offer entertainment on week-ends, yet far enough away to supply fresh air, a golf course, good schools for the children. It seemed to be the best of two possible worlds: a marriage of country life and city conveniences.

“It isn’t,” we were assured. “It has all of the drawbacks of living in the city—the crowds, the traffic, the exhaust fumes. And none of the advantages!” Here is the story she poured out to me, a story that had obviously been pent up inside her heart for years: When we moved out here it was beautiful. There were acres and acres of woodlands—elm trees, oak, birch and sassafras—and there were birds and wild life inhabiting them. Michael was two years old then. He’s twenty now, and off at Yale, so I guess that must have been in 1947.

Louis and I plunked down every penny we owned for this white colonial style house you see. Then Deena came along (she’s fifteen now) and Robbie (he’s seven). But by the time Robbie was born, our town had changed so much I couldn’t recognize it!

Instead of woodlands, there were houses—acres and acres of them. Each on its little 60 by 100 foot plot, each almost identical to the next. Back in the 50’s, a group of us got together and petitioned the city fathers to set aside part of the woodlands as a public park. We were defeated. A real estate developer bought the property and built 5,000 homes, one almost on top of the next. Each has a little plot of garden, each has a driveway, each has a garage which houses a car— often two, sometimes three. And every day, each of those cars from those 5,000 homes pours onto roads which weren’t meant to accommodate them. These days, getting from one place to another isn’t just a test of driving skill, it’s a test of patience and endurance! Sometimes when the crowds converge on those ugly shopping centers that have sprung up recently, it takes longer to get from one end of the Five Towns than it takes to drive to the city!

But I don’t object to that half as much as I object to the “sameness” of it all. I’m appalled by the lack of “difference” with which I live. Out here, people are almost all from the same income level, have the same interests, the same outlook, the same values. There’s just no difference in the houses, in the home furnishings, in the people you meet, in the children your children know, in the things you do day after day and week-end after week-end. It isn’t just monotony, it’s stagnation! A few years ago there was another woman in town who felt the way I do. We became friends. Every week, we’d drive into the city, parking our cars in another section each time and walking till our legs gave out. It was revitalizing just to see the differences! The differences in buildings, people, stores, sidewalks, streets. We’d spend hours in a strange food store, choosing things to take back home. Often, we’d strike up a conversation with the people we’d meet. Negroes. Puerto Ricans. Italians. I felt I was part of the world again!

These are the differences to which I was exposed as a child; but it is something my children will never know unless they come into contact with it later on. They certainly don’t see it in the town in which we live.

My Deena complains that she has only twenty skirts. Heaven forbid that she should have to wear the the same skirt twice in two weeks. Every once in a while I’m tempted to lecture to her, pointing out that there are children who’d be happy to have two skirts, let alone twenty. But then I catch myself. I realize that this is all she knows. Living out here all her life had done that to her!

She—and I—are limited by our neighbors. It’s so difficult to get around out here, and transportation is so time-consuming, that we don’t have the opportunity to choose our friends for their attributes and qualities, as we might if we were living in a city. We’re forced to select our friends for their geographic availability. Right now, Deena has a crush – on the boy next door. I think he’s materialistic, self-seeking, destructive—altogether not a person I would choose to have her know. But what can I tell her? He’s available, and the boy on the other side of town isn’t. He’s too young to drive.

And speaking of driving, that part of it is a pet peeve. We may have moved out here for the fresh air, but these days there’s so much gasoline exhaust in the air it could hardly be called “fresh.” No one walks an inch! Everyone here gets into a car if they have to so much as mail a letter. I’ve gotten so I do it myself! However, I do insist that my fifteen-year-old Deena walk to school. Most of her classmates get there by bus—sometimes with their mothers driving them to the bus stop in the morning—but I think a little walking is healthy. After all, why are we living in the suburbs?

I sometimes wonder. Each day, almost every day, seems to be spent running dozens of errands and doing things I don’t want to do. In most cases, they’re things I wouldn’t have to do if we were living in the city.

Take today as an example. Litte seven-year-old Robbie came running back home after I’d left him at the bus stop. He’d had a fight with another child, and wanted to tell me about it. I soothed him, drove him to the bus stop again, and waited till the bus picked him up for school.

Then I returned home. The phone rang. It was one of my friends, calling to ask whether I’d make a fourth at bridge. It was Thursday: she already has a canasta game scheduled for every Monday, bridge every Tuesday, mah jong every Wednesday—but on Thursdays she has nothing to do.

For the third Thursday this month, I declined, explaining that there was something I had to attend to in the city— and I did. I spent most of the afternoon tracking down books Deena needed from the library. They were impossible to borrow from our suburban library because it hasn’t kept pace with the growth of the community. (When we moved out here it was more than adequate. But now that our suburb has added three new schools and enlarged another, it’s almost impossible for a youngster to borrow a book suggested at school.) I found the books at the city’s main branch and drove home, just in time to see Robbie return from school. In a little while it was time to take Robbie to a Little League baseball game. Transportation is so difficult, and distances relatively so far, that any project: dancing class, violin lessons or a baseball game involves my acting as chauffeur. When I returned home it was time to start dinner.

The few times I’ve been unable to drive, I’ve come to grips with the taxi service. Leave a call for a pick-up at 7:30 a.m., for instance, and they’re apt to arrive at 7:15 (in which case you may not have your make-up on) or 7:45 (when you’re almost worn out with worry as to whether you’ll make the train, and your appointment, on time). It all depends on whether they’ve chosen to make you the first or the last pick-up on the list.

Evenings during the week are relaxing but hardly revitalizing. Before Louis and I became active in politics, which we both find rewarding, there was the P.T.A., work for the Community Chest or card games, with the women playing in one room, the men in another.

I’ve learned to dread the week-ends. Getting into the city for the theatre is an exercise in logistics: making the right train, taxiing to the theatre, taxiing back, racing to make the last train home. And Louis does so much driving during the week that I hate to expose him to the traffic and the train schedule on weekends.

Saturday morning, our friends start calling to ask, “What shall we do tonight?” The phone calls are unnecessary. We do what we always do. There are just three restaurants in town, so Saturday night is “Steak Night” at one of them. Sunday night is “Chinese dinner” night at another.

I happen to like small dinner parties of six or eight, where people are congenial and conversation flows. But I discovered that if I invited Betty and Harry I offended Jane and Bob, because all four were friends. And Betty and Harry expected to be invited every time.

It’s not always blessed to receive, either. For years I didn’t hear an invitation without a P.S.: “Please don’t tell Frances and Jim. I’m not inviting them.” Or Anita and Bill … or Ruth and Fred … or whoever.

It seemed as though we were making enemies by either extending an invitation or accepting one, so in our group, small dinner parties are “out.” Out of our lives.

What’s “in” is huge cocktails-and-buffet parties at which you can pay off all your social obligations at one time, and offend no one because you’ve invited everyone. The only trouble with them is that they aren’t any fun.

I can always predict who will be there, what will be served, how the evening will go. The lights will be dim, the hi-fi will be blasting away. Joe, the bartender everybody hires will be there. He’ll serve you your drink without asking your order, because he’s learned at previous parties what you drink.

There’ll be small talk and still smaller talk about clothes and golf clubs and trips. At about 11 o’clock the hostess will smile sweetly and say, “If anyone’s hungry, dinner’s ready!” I don’t have to look at the buffet table; I know what will be there. There’s only one caterer in town and everyone uses her menu. The hostess plans her Big Evening according to the date the caterer and her bartender will be free.

It’s become so little fun that Louis and I don’t go to them any more. We’re just as happy with our Saturday night steaks and Sunday night Chinese food.

This suburb, and others like it, I am told, is a community of status-seekers. The women parade their clothes. The men their golf and country clubs. And both of them, their trips. * We’ve been to Europe and Africa and Israel, Louis and I, but unless someone is genuinely interested in hearing about it, we don’t mention it. However, the other evening we were out at dinner, and everyone started talking about vacations and trips. After awhile, I just sat back and listened to the conversation. I was tempted to laugh. I’d never heard so much “travel dropping” in my life!

When we moved here, we thought it was wonderful that we were so close to a golf course. Louis would be able to play every week-end, we believed. Well, the golf course is just two blocks away, but Louis sees it only on Sunday mornings. I’m delighted to see him go, because he needs the relaxation. But Louis drives an* hour and a half to and from the city each day, just to have that golf course nearby. We once put our heads together and decided that even if he drove an hour to a golf course on Sunday, he’d still save over four hours a week!

Sometimes, Louis will try to fix the little things that go wrong with the house. Sometimes he’s successful; often not. When the faucet leaks or the sink gets stopped up it seems too unimportant to call in a plumber, whose bills are astronomical. So we wait until there’s a real catastrophe and everything goes at once. Most times, I’ve learned to cope with a leaky faucet and a stopped-up sink.

Living in this white-painted, wall-to-wall carpeted trap is expensive. Taxes have gone from $400 a year to $1200 a year, and membership in the country club almost drains the budget. In all, it’s far more costly than living in the city.

Two years ago, Deena had two bicycles stolen from her within the space of six months. One was taken while she was playing tennis, the other while she was at high school. Both times, the police were phlegmatic. They told us they were swamped with that sort of complaint, and worse. “The kids paint them up and fix them over, and you can’t tell one bicycle from another” we were told. ¦ Narcotics have become so important a problem in our Five Towns, that they’ve appointed a special board to try to find the solution. Everyone throws up his hands and says, “Poor things, they have no place to go.” All that our teen-agers do these days is to look for more and more types of recreation. I think they ought to find part-time jobs, get to work on community projects, try to make a contribution to the town. Right now, I think they’re just plain bored. Maybe we ought to have a board to study boredom in the suburbs.

However, there is one redeeming feature of this luxurious domestic trap in which I live: we can move out of it! Louis and I expect to, as soon as Deena , is ready for college. Maybe then I’ll long for the days of stopped-up sinks and leaky faucets, of congested traffic and a library with not enough books. Maybe I’ll miss the taxes, the parties, the Saturday night steaks and Sunday night Chinese food—but I doubt it very much!

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Gold from the Sea?

TEN years ago commercial extraction of any of the score of valuable elements present in the ocean was as impossible as alchemy. Today it is an accomplished fact in the production of bromine, a vital ingredient in the manufacture of anti-knock gasoline.

“And I feel safe in predicting that within the next decade—and possibly even within the next year—we will be able to recover gold, silver, radium and all the other untold wealth from the sea,” says Thomas Midgley, vice president of the Ethyl-Dow Chemical company, whose research promises this modern miracle.

Midgley, who received the William H. Nichols medal of the American Chemical Society for his discovery of knockless gasoline through the application of tetraethyl lead, then continued: “Now that we have made one dream a reality, it is only a matter of further technical development and refinement of processes before we make the sea loosen its hold on a fortune so fabulous that it staggers the imagination.

‘The process for taking gold from sea water is no more difficult a problem today than was the task of ex- tracting bromine ten years ago. Tomorrow we shall probably be wondering how we overlooked some simple discovery that will unlock the door.

“In fact, the sea is the greatest storehouse of wealth on the earth. Once the secret of tapping it is known, it will give man an inexhaustible treasure house of riches he will be able to draw on for thousands of years without striking bottom.”

Bromine is used in synthetic chemistry, medicine and the color industry, but its chief value at present is in the manufacture of what motorists know as “ethyl.’* It is a dark reddish-brown non-metallic liquid never found free in nature but occurring in spring waters, salt deposits and certain silver ores in addition to sea water. Heretofore it has been commercially prepared from bittern, the residue left after salt has crystallized. The Ethyl-Dow company has been working for years on the problem of producing bromine directly from sea water, its most logical source.

“As everyone knows, sea water is slightly alkaline,” Midgley explains. “To make it give up its bromine, it is only necessary to shift it to the acid side. In our plant we accomplish this by adding a small amount of sulphuric acid.”

The Ethyl-Dow plant for the production of bromine, near Wilmington, N. C, is a series of sealed chambers in which occurs an amazing metamorphosis through chemical prestidigitation. Located almost at the ocean’s edge, the plant draws its “raw material” through a large canal into which the sea water gushes and booms like the surf. In the first chamber the water receives its injection of sulphuric acid to make the subsequent transformation possible. Then, in another room, chlorine is added. Chlorine and bromine, which is in the water in the form of sodium bromide, are related. The chlorine, however, is the more active and soon joins with the sodium, “kicking the bromine out.”

As soon as the bromine starts to emerge in a combination of gas and solids looking something like smoke, the water is pumped to the top of the bromine towers and poured down in a fan-shaped shower. A current of air is forced through this shower, not strong enough to carry away the spray but sufficiently strong to blow the bromine fumes into another chamber. Here a shower of soda-ash solution is sprayed from the roof. The soda ash has an affinity for the bromine, precipitating bromide-bromate, which is commonly known as mining salt. This is pumped into the ethylene di-bromide building, where it is made into ethyl fluid.

One factor making the extraction of gold at the Ethyl-Dow plant a probability of the near future is the theory that in extracting the bromine, the gold content in the sea water becomes ionized, or electrically conductive. Since gold in its native state in the water exists in the form of a colloidal suspension, it is much more difficult to remove than bromine, but if it becomes ionized, it could be filtered by making it adhere to some cheap chemical substance.

One of the chief obstacles to the profitable extraction of gold from sea water has been the prohibitive cost of pumping. With the water already running through the plant for the elimination of bromine, gold could be made a by-product. The water pumped up in the course of one day in the bromine process contains more than $1,000 in gold. It also contains, in varying quantities, radium, silver and many other valuable elements.

There are 600,000,000 pounds of bromine in a cubic mile of water. In the Ethyl-Dow plant, 15,000 pounds a day are removed from 30,000,000 gallons of water, or approximately $2,000,000 worth of bromine annually. In that same cubic mile of water there is $10,000,000 in gold and there are approximately 300,000,000 cubic miles of water in the oceans of the world.

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Radio Power will Revolutionize the World

by NIKOLA TESLA As told to ALFRED ALBELLI

Tesla’s World of Tomorrow

“We are on the threshold of a gigantic revolution, based on the commercialization of the wireless transmission of power.

“Motion pictures will be flashed across limitless spaces . . .

“The same energy (wireless transmission of power) will drive airplanes and dirigibles from one central base.

“… In rocket-propelled machines . . . it will be practicable to attain speeds of nearly a mile a second (3600 m.p.h.) through the rarefied medium above the stratosphere.

“. . . We will be enabled to illuminate the whole sky at night . . . Eventually we will flash power in virtually unlimited amounts to planets.”

—Nikola Tesla.

THE world will soon enjoy the benefits of electricity transmitted by radio. Huge and expensive transmission lines will be unnecessary. Bulky and unsightly distribution systems will be done away with. A little receiving device in your home will give you all the power you can rise—and for only a fraction of present-day costs.

We will soon be communicating with other planets, where it is entirely possible that there is civilization far ahead of ours.

Tomorrow we will see rocket planes flying through stratosphere at a speed of a mile a second or 3600 miles an hour.

Fanciful dreams? No! Just conclusions based upon knowledge of what has been done, what is being done and what can be done in the future. I speak along practical lines and with a practical knowledge of what I am talking about.

Power transmission by radio is going to change our present civilization materially. The transmission of energy to another planet is now only a matter of engineering. I have solved the problem so well I no longer regard it as doubtful. I am also certain there are creatures on other planets whose ways are like ours. The new era will see amazing developments in interplanetary relations.

Every other planet has to pass through the same phase of existence this earth did, and life is started on them during that favorable phase by the rays of some sun. It develops in the presence of moisture, heat and light in much the same manner as life does here. We know that light propagates in straight lines, and consequently our perceptions of the forms through the images projected on the retina must be true.

Therefore, it should not be hard to establish intelligent exchange of ideas between two planets. The earth we inhabit might be the beneficiary. It is conceivable that there is civilization on other planets far ahead of ours. If communication could be established by the earth the benefits to human beings would be incalculable.

As far back as June, 1900, in discussing my experiments at the beginning of the century, I said that my measurements and calculations showed that it was perfectly practicable to produce on our globe an electrical movement of such magnitude that, without the slightest doubt, its effect would be perceptible on some of our nearer planets, as Venus and Mars.

Interplanetary Communication Probable Thus, from mere possibility, interplanetary communication has entered the stage of probability. In fact, that we can produce a distinct effect on one of these planets in this novel manner, namely, by disturbing the electrical condition of the earth, is beyond any doubt.

In order to make myself clearer I shall delve still further into the preliminary discoveries made in what I call my pioneering days, which was long before any other scientist had made any progress in this field. I have always chosen to remain in the background.

Some years ago I urged the experts engaged in the commercial application of the wireless art to employ very short waves, but for a long time my suggestions were not heeded. Eventually, though, this was done, and gradually the wave lengths were reduced to but a few meters.

Invariably it was found that these waves, just as those in the air, follow the curvature of the earth and bend around obstacles, a peculiarity exhibited to a much lesser degree by transverse vibrations in a solid.

Recently, however, ultra-short waves have been experimented with and the fact that they also have that same property was hailed as a great discovery, offering the stupendous promise of making wireless transmission infinitely simpler and cheaper.

It is of interest to know what wireless experts have expected, knowing that -waves a few meters long are transmitted clear to the antipodes. Is there any reason that they should behave radically different when their length is reduced to about half of one meter?

As the knowledge of this subject seems very limited, I may state that even waves only one or two millimeters long, which I produced thirty-four years ago, provided that they carry sufficient energy, can be transmitted around the globe. This is not so much due to refraction and reflection as to the properties of a gaseous medium and certain peculiar action.

Short Waves Provide Increased Channels

The chief object of employing very short waves is to provide an increased number of channels required satisfy the ever-growing demand for radio appliances. But this is only because the transmitting and receiving apparatus, as generally employed, is ill-conceived and not well adapted for selection.

Because of this and other shortcomings, I do not attach much importance to the employment of waves which are now being experimented with. Besides, I am contemplating the use of another principle which I have discovered and which is almost unlimited in the number of channels and in the energy three-electrode tubes.

This invention has been credited to others, but as a matter of fact it was brought out by me in 1892, the principle being transmitted.

It should enable us to obtain many important results heretofore considered impossible. With the knowledge of the facts before me, I do not think it hazardous to predict that we will be enabled to illuminate the whole sky at night and that eventually we will flash power in virtually unlimited amounts to planets.

I would not be surprised at all if an experiment to transmit thousands of horsepower to the moon by this new method were made in a few years from now. We must establish transmission of power in all its innumerable applications. This has been my life work, and although I am now close to 78, I unhesitatingly say that I hope to see its fruition.

I have been fortunate in the evolution of new ideas, and the thought that a number of them will be remembered by posterity makes me happy indeed. I am confident that my rotating field and induction motor and the wireless system I have given to the world will live long after I have gone.

You ask me about atomic energy? I experimented with the atom, and achieved similar ends, long before the wave of ballyhoo swept over the country in recent years. The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken a powerful hold on the mind and there are still some who believe it be be realizable.

Tesla’s Vacuum Tube

I have disintegrated atoms in my experiments with a high potential vacuum tube I brought out in 1896 which I consider one of my best inventions. I have operated it with pressures ranging from 4,000,000 to 18,000,000 volts. More recently I have designed an apparatus for 50,000,000 volts which should produce many results of great scientific importance.

But as to atomic energy, my experimental observations have shown that the process of disintegration is not accompanied by a liberation of such energy as might be expected from the present theories.

And as for the cosmic ray: I called attention to this radiation while investigating Roentgen rays and radioactivity. In 1899 I erected a broadcasting plant at Colorado Springs, the first and only wireless plant in existence at that time, and there confirmed my theory by actual observation. My findings are in disagreement with the theories more recently advanced.

I have satisfied myself that the rays are not generated by the formation of new matter in space, a process which would be like water running up hill. According to my observations, they come from all the suns of the universe and in such abundance that the part contributed by our own sun is very insignificant by percentage. Some of these rays are of such terrific power that they can traverse through thousands of miles of solid matter.

Properties of Solar Rays

They have, furthermore, other extraordinary properties. This ray, which I call the primary solar ray, gives rise to a secondary radiation by impact against the air and the cosmic dust scattered through space. It is now commonly called the cosmic ray, and comes, of course, equally from all directions in space. If radium could be screened effectively against this ray it would cease to be radioactive.

The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

I work every hour that I am awake but not with a feverish tempo. Although I live in the midst of the hustle and bustle of New York, I do not time my scientific experiments to the hectic, jazz rhythm of the hysterical metropolis. I work for the future— build for the future. Just as today I see the realization of experiments carried on fifty years ago, I am now working with a view toward still greater achievements which will come to pass a half century hence.

That is my method. After experiencing a desire to invent a certain thing, I go on for days, months, even years with the idea in the back of my head. Whenever I feel like it, I play around with the problem without giving it any deliberate consideration. This is the incubation period.

How Tesla Works

Next comes the stage of direct effort. At this point the solution is somewhere in my subconscious mind, although it may take some time before it reaches the level of consciousness.

As my conceived device begins to take form, I make mental changes in the construction, improvements are figured out, and I even operate it. All off this is preliminary work—all in my mind. When the machine itself is finished, I slip my imaginary job over it and find they coincide to the minutest detail.

A great development can be expected in rocket propelled machines for purposes of peace and war. With such machines it will be practicable to attain speeds of nearly a mile a second (3600 miles per hour), through the rarefied medium above the stratosphere.

I anticipate that such machines will be of tremendous importance in international conflicts of the future. I foresee that in times not too distant, wars between various countries will be carried on without a single combatant passing over the border.

Infernal Gas Machines

At this very time it is possible to construct infernal machines which will carry any desired quantity of poison gases and explosives, launch them against a target thousands of miles away and destroy a whole city or community.

If wars are not done away with, we are bound to come eventually to this kind of warfare, because it is the most economical means of inflicting injury and striking terror in the hearts of the enemy that has ever been imagined.

My paramount desire today, which guides me in everything I do, is an ambition to harness the forces of nature for the service of mankind. As I see it, we are on the threshold of a gigantic revolution based on the commercialization of the wireless transmission of power. The principles for this have been discovered by me.

As this wireless energy is converted into a commodity for the use of the masses, transport and transmission will be subjected to tremendous changes. Motion pictures will be flashed across limitless spaces by my system. The same energy will drive airplanes and dirigibles from one central base.

In this new era man will be able to travel safely, and at great speed, to any part of the world—the jungle—the arctic—the desert—mountain tops—over oceans. The instruments by which these wonders will be achieved will be amazingly simple.

These things will come to pass. Some of them are already within the realm of realization. But like those wonders which I predicted and helped perfect nearly fifty years ago—in the early 80’s—power transmission is just around the corner. It’s coming.

Today I repeat again what I said to contemporary scientists of those earlier pioneering days: The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter—for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way. He lives and labors and hopes.

Related posts

• Dr. Tesla Claims New Discoveries (Jul, 1934)

Battery-Operated Hearing Aid Is Easily Concealed

SO SMALL that it can be effectively concealed while in use, as shown in the photo at right, a newly developed battery-operated hearing aid is actually a miniature telephone of the most improved type. The device has an efficient “transmitter” which picks up sound waves regardless of whether the wearer is reclining, sitting or standing.

After the sound waves are amplified they are led into a miniature “receiver,” which repeats them instantly at the point where they may best actuate the organs of the inner ear. For this purpose, a diminutive receiver is carried in the outer ear or located against the head immediately behind the ear, where it transmits the sound vibrations through the bony structure. The new device is said to be economical in operation, requiring less frequent replacement of batteries than previous designs, according to the manufacturer.

People do have video crib monitors, solar panels are available, but are not quite efficient enough to power a house, as he predicted. Video phones are only now really practical because of the bandwidth limitations spelled out in the article. We don’t have ultrasonic washing machines in our houses, but ultrasonics are used in a number of areas for cleaning. We do (did) rent movies for our color VCRs, and there are megahertz range computers managing very complicated factory production with very little human intervention. Not to mention touch tone phones and microwave ovens. Plus, if you showed that picture of a flat screen tv on the first page to someone without any context they’d probably guess that someone had hacked an LCD monitor to look all “retro”. By the way, if you’re interested in flat screen TVs, you should check out this one from 1958.

I’ve actually been wanting to post this article for a few years. When I was posting this piece about a pocket transistor radio, I noticed that the author used the word “stereatronics”, which I’d never heard. I googled it and found the complete text of this article, with no pictures, here. After reading it I learned that stereatronics was a word created for this article, which they hoped would catch on. It didn’t. I thought it would be perfect to post to the site, so I tracked down a copy. Then when I got it I realized that Colliers magazine was 11×14″ and I couldn’t fit it on my scanner. However, I recently bought an 11×17″ scanner for the site, and so here it is.

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Stereatronics – A New Science that Will Change Your Way of Life

Tiny solids are turning the electronics industry upside down. Some vibrate, others change light to energy or energy to light, or direct current to alternating. Together, they spell revolution

A NEW science, stereatronics, has been creeping up on us in the last few years and has started to make major changes in the way we live. Few of us have noticed any difference; the changes have come so quietly that even many of the people who are closest to the new science are surprised at what it has been doing. Yet the evidences have been all about us.

—Television sets are a great deal less expensive now than they were a relatively few months ago.

—More and more tape recorders are being sold. Five years back, they were too costly for most people. Ten years ago, they weren’t to be had at any price.

—New phonographs sound better than models just a few years old. There are many reasons, but one important contribution is made by a new-style pickup.

—A recent innovation in automobiles is a headlight that dims automatically as another car approaches.

—Are you reading this magazine by fluorescent light? Its glowing tube was one of the first harbingers of the new science. The photoelectric cell that opens doors automatically was another.

The exciting fact is not only that these changes are occurring (they’re insignificant compared to what’s coming), but that they are caused by little bits and pieces of solid matter—tiny, brightly colored rings, wafers and blocks, many of them no larger than the letter “o” on this page.

Some of these devices are taking the place of complicated wire and metal electronic gadgets; others are performing jobs that are entirely new, even revolutionary.

These little objects, or stereatrons, are tipping the electronics industry upside down. New ways to use them are being discovered literally faster than they can be developed. Some of the solids give off power when light is applied. Others give off light when power is applied. Some vibrate with tremendous speed, a characteristic with great promise. Some change alternating to direct current, or amplify an electronic signal, or delay a signal for an instant—or remember it indefinitely.

In the latest television sets, certain stereatrons are replacing old-style rectifiers and transformers, at a considerable saving in cost (in addition, of course, the cost of TV sets has been cut sharply because of improved production techniques). The coating on the TV screen is composed of thousands of tiny stereatrons, and other stereatrons are beginning to take over the functions of the small tubes in all sorts of electronic equipment. The magnetic surface of the tape recorder, which “remembers” sounds fed to it, also consists of many tiny solids. Other solid devices are being used to help translate the vibrations of a phonograph needle into enjoyable sound.

Those are all present uses of the stereatron, and there are many more. The future uses—those expected in just a few years—are countless.

A dentist’s drill being developed consists principally of a piece of nickel, one of the vibrating stereatrons; by vibrating 29,000 times a second, it sets up sound waves which drill quietly and less painfully. In the next few years, another vibrating solid may be used to operate a washing machine in which it is the only important moving part; its vibrations will literally shake the dirt out of clothes. Through the use of tiny stereatrons, refrigerators and air conditioners with no moving parts whatever also may be developed. Another device under consideration is a television screen so thin that it can be hung on the wall like a picture. A new clinical thermometer being made available to doctors makes use of a stereatron that reacts to heat; powered by a tiny battery, it shows a patient’s temperature within seconds. Someday, not too many years from now, your house will light up automatically as the sun goes down—and the artificial illumination will come from the entire surface of your ceilings (or walls, or windows, if you wish), instead of from isolated bulbs.

Hundreds of other stereatronic devices are being planned which promise cheaper, more efficient, longer-lasting appliances, better communications, improved transportation, new kinds of entertainment—even a general rise in the standard of living, through stereatronically operated factories. One of the most exciting projects envisions a tiny portable radar set which may provide the blind with a “picture” of the obstacles that lie in their path.

Progress in the field has been so fast that the scientists working in stereatronics—electronics engineers, physicists, chemists, metallurgists, ceramicists and mathematicians, among others—haven’t even had time to compare notes. As a result, stereatronics hasn’t developed a language of its own, as sciences usually do. In fact, until recently the science itself didn’t have a name; physicists said they were working on “solid state physics,” chemists referred to “materials research,” and others used such names as “electronic solids,” “solid state electronics,” or simply “solid state.”

How the New Science Acquired Its Name.

While this report was being compiled, the word stereatronics (ster’e·a·tron’ics) was suggested by Collier’s to fill a need felt by all of these scientists. It was derived, after consultation with both electronics experts and etymologists, from the Greek word for solids, stereos, and the word electronics. Defined as, “the science of the controllable electronic performance of solids,” it is already in use among scientists in the field.

The lack of a name, according to some researchers, was a major handicap. It prevented co-operation among scientists working on various aspects of stereatronics, because they were unaware of the work being done by others. It added just one more complication to a science already beset by complexities.

“It takes nearly a full year of close teamwork on these solid devices,” Dr. Lloyd T. DeVore, chief of General Electric’s electronics laboratory, told me, “before our scientists and engineers can even begin to understand one another.”

Stereatronics is a difficult science largely because it deals with the electrical and mechanical properties of matter—properties which defied comprehension for years and which even now experts find astonishing. In its 40 years of existence, the electronics industry has produced a variety of complex tubes, coils, transformers and so on, which have made possible the marvel of modern radios, television sets, lighting and the like. Now scientists are finding that the stereatrons do many jobs just as well, and some a great deal better.

The ironical fact is that radio engineers stumbled on the first practical stereatron long before there was any such object as an electronic tube, but failed to realize its significance.

Do you remember the galena crystal in the “cat’s whisker” radio of the 1920s? Nobody knew why it worked, but it did unscramble radio waves as they came in on an antenna, and at the same time transmitted enough energy to vibrate the diaphragms in a pair of earphones, so the radio waves became audible sound. The galena crystal had major shortcomings as a radio receiver. It wouldn’t amplify the sound it received, and it was exasperatingly inefficient at pulling the right signal out of the ether; you might spend hours poking at it before getting the station you wanted. It ultimately was abandoned in favor of the more effective vacuum tubes.

“For all the years since,” said Dr. DeVore, “we’ve been inventing wonderful gadgets in glass, wire and metal to make all our electronic equipment work efficiently—while all the time, if we’d only known it, nature, with a little help from us, could have done the same jobs at a fraction of the power and cost.”

Today nature is getting a second chance. One of the most important results will be the miniaturization of all sorts of electronic apparatus, from bulky computers to portable radios.

Some of the computers now in use are so big they occupy whole buildings. The same machines, using stereatrons, will be packed into a space not much larger than a couple of filing cabinets. Furthermore, they’ll be more efficient, more economical and longer-lasting than any computer which can be made today.

Other examples are even more striking.

“Most modern electric-powered locomotives,” Dr. Paul Jordan of GE told me, “operate on alternating current because direct current is impractical to transmit for long distances. Alternating current is less effective than DC, though; the locomotive would be much more efficient if it could change the AC to DC before using it. But the rectifier required for the job would have to be ridiculously large—about the size of the locomotive itself. At least, it would have had to be that large once.” He reached for a box and sifted a dozen silver-colored wafers into his hand. “These will do the trick soon,” he said.

Dick Tracy’s Wrist Radio Was Prophetic.

Some years ago, cartoonist Chester Gould imaginatively presented his comic-strip character, Dick Tracy, with a portable radio which could be worn on the wrist. Today the electronics industry is catching up with Gould’s imagination; there’s scarcely a concern in the highly competitive industry that doesn’t have plans for a vest-pocket-sized radio receiver that will dispense with present-day tubes, wires, sockets, transformers and chassis.

“The innards of tomorrow’s little portable receiver,” Dr. Irving Wolff of RCA told me, “will be nothing more than a small loud-speaker and a plastic plate with some lines and bumps in it. The lines will be a printed electrical circuit—metal strips etched into the plastic—and the bumps will be the little solids that will do all the work. A tiny battery will run the whole works for a year.”

It will be some years before you can buy one of the little portables. They’re expensive—and military needs come first. Nearly every type of stereatronic device now being manufactured is going to the armed services. Solids are replacing various components in radio transmitters and receivers, radar sets, antiaircraft target calculators, weapons-control systems, submarine acoustical apparatus, aircraft computers, guided missiles and the like.

But once the requirements of the services have been filled you can expect a gradual flow of stereatronic equipment which, over the years, will touch on nearly every aspect of your life.

The greatest impact will occur in your home.

For years, there has been talk of a dream house that would be equipped with telephone-TV, ranges that cook meals in seconds, electronic temperature controls, automatic room lighting, and a long list of other highly desirable features.

“All of those advances have been technically possible for a long time,” Dr. Wolff said, “but they were impractical, physically and economically.” Hundreds of vacuum tubes, numerous metal components, miles of wire and great quantities of power would have been needed to make the equipment work—all at great cost.

Today the dream house has been made practical by stereatrons. Stereatron-studded wiring, strung inside your walls, will provide plugless and shock-less induction power; a stereatron touching the outside of the wall will pick up current without requiring an outlet. Electric power will be less expensive, too: stereatrons used by the power company will help cut the cost of producing electricity, and the stereatronic appliance in your home will need less power.

Some of the most important changes impending will be caused by the phosphor particle, a stereatron that gives off light when power is applied to it. A coating of phosphors is what makes the inside of a fluorescent light tube glow; and the same kind of coating, made bright in some places, dark in others, causes the picture to appear on your television screen.

A wall or ceiling panel coated with phosphors would become a source of light if an electric current were passed through it. Hook up a series of such panels to another of the stereatrons, one that reacts to the slightest change in outside light—and you have a setup that will turn on your house lights automatically as twilight falls, and keep increasing the intensity of the artificial light as the outside darkness increases.

Prospects for Picture-on-the-Wall TV.

A new method of carrying electronic impulses to the phosphors on your TV screen will ultimately make possible picture-on-the-wall television. Instead of the bulky picture tube which now comprises nearly half your TV set, you’ll have a flat screen that will be connected to your receiver by a few wires, and can be hung anywhere. The reason for today’s long tube is the need for a so-called electron gun at the small end; it bombards the phosphor-coated screen with impulses that cause the tiny stereatrons to glow. The new screens will have a network of hair-thin wires which intersect behind each phosphor dot; as a signal hits the point where the wires cross, the phosphor speck will light up to any degree of brightness that’s ordered. The pictures can be in full color, of course.

Stereatronic advances will bring down the cost of television sets so that it will be practical to have a number of receivers and screens in your house. They will provide not only entertainment, but closed-circuit communication within the home, when used in conjunction with small, portable TV cameras (RCA calls them TV Eyes). The new cameras, about half the size of a telephone directory and weighing only a few pounds, will let you keep an eye on Junior in the playroom at the flick of a switch, or check to see who’s calling when the front doorbell rings. The effectiveness of these midget cameras lies in a stereatronic coating on the face of a tube known as the Vidicon. This substance, a compound of antimony and sulphur, is sensitive to light. It also has certain properties which enable it to transmit as a TV signal the light variations (or pictures) it picks up—skipping a whole series of complicated amplifying operations required by large studio cameras.

The RCA Vidicon tube (other companies have cameras of their own, some employing the Vidicon) costs about $100 at present. The tube which does the same job in a studio camera is considerably more sensitive—but it’s also 15 times as expensive, partly because it’s so hard to manufacture that every second tube made has to be discarded because of imperfections. Of course, the Vidicon tube is only part of the camera; the complete Vidicon camera costs about $900, far too much for general household use. However, the addition of other stereatronic devices is expected to lower the price substantially—perhaps down to $150 or $200.

And that will be a bargain indeed—because besides watching the baby, the Vidicon camera can be adapted to take home movies on magnetic tape. No processing will be required and you won’t need a special projector. You’ll simply play the video tape back through the recording apparatus and see on your TV screen, in full color and with sound, the pictures you shot a few minutes before.

New Fields for Tape Recordings.

You’ll also be able to use your recording apparatus to tape your favorite television shows. Moreover, you’ll be able to buy video tape recordings of musical stage shows, just as you now purchase your phonograph records or 16-millimeter home movies.

Color video tape recording has already been developed experimentally, but for studio use only. The method is somewhat similar to standard sound-recording techniques on magnetic tape, but much more complicated.

The tape is covered with magnetic oxide particles. As it passes through the recorder, the tape picks up and stores away five signals, which comprise a sort of electronic shorthand. There’s one signal each for the three primary colors, another for the sound track and a fifth which synchronizes sight and sound (the tape “remembers” the five signals because the electronic impressions rearrange the form of the magnetic coating). When the video tape is played back, this compact code, like a punched music roll on an old-time player piano, reproduces all the signals simultaneously as sound-and-color TV. Right now the process requires a complicated battery of equipment which fills one whole wall, but in time, RCA Chairman David Sarnoff says, “low-cost video tape equipment of simpler and more compact design than the studio-type apparatus we now have can be made available.”

Television also will be adapted, eventually, for use in conjunction with the telephone. But that advance will take a while, perhaps 20 years or more. Sending a TV picture from one room to another is a fairly simple procedure. Sending it to the house down the block is somewhat more difficult, because no simple equipment now known will transmit a picture over any substantial distance without amplification. City-to-city transmissions require the use of coaxial cables; the latest cables are capable of carrying 3,600 voice signals (that is, 1,800 conversations) —but of the cable’s 3,600 channels, no less than 1,200 are needed to carry a television picture! To be sure, TV pictures can be transmitted through the air without the use of wires, but there simply aren’t enough frequencies in the spectrum to carry the number of pictures that would result from widespread use of TV-phones.

It’s a difficult problem, but not insoluble. As more and cheaper circuits come into existence and new transmission methods are developed, the videophone will become available. You’ll just have to wait a little longer than for some of the other stereatronic advances.

But you won’t have much of a wait for another telephonic development. By making use of the transistor (the most famous of the stereatrons, consisting of a tiny solid within a plastic or metal case), Bell Telephone engineers have already made direct long-distance dialing available in some communities, and they hope to have 20 exchanges converted to it by the end of this year.

The transistor will improve telephonic communication in other respects, too. Jack A. Morton, in charge of transistor development at Bell Laboratories, explained how.

“In a modern telephone switching office, to handle 10,000 subscribers at top speed we need 40,000 to 50,000 relays or switching units,” Morton told me. “We’d like to replace these metal units with vacuum tubes, which work 1,000 times as fast. But the average tube has a life expectancy of only a few thousand hours; with 40,000 tubes, we could expect one to fail every six minutes. And think of the heat the tubes would generate; obviously, tubes would be impractical.

“Transistors may solve the problem. They’ll do the same job as vacuum tubes, using only a fraction of the power. Unlike tubes, they need no warmup. And above all, they’re rugged: you can drop them or shoot them out of a gun—there’s nothing to break. Properly made, they should last years.”

Transistors for Smaller Hearing Aids.

Some transistors are already on the market, but they cost from $3.75 to $50. Ultimately they should be available for less than a dollar. Meanwhile, they are being built into at least one consumer product. Zenith, Sonotone and Maico have used the little solids to replace tubes in hearing aids; as a result, the appliances have been reduced to about the size of a cigarette lighter—small enough to be hidden in a woman’s hair.

Within the next few years, more and more transistors will be channeled into civilian production. That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to yank the tubes out of your radio and substitute the little stereatrons. New circuits will be needed; you’ll have to buy another radio. But—eventually, at least— transistorized radios and TV sets will be cheaper than present sets, and much longer-lasting.

Industry is already gearing up for the transistor bonanza. A number of electronic manufacturers— including such major firms as Raytheon, RCA, GE, Philco, Westinghouse, Sylvania and Western Electric—are producing transistors. Others, like Zenith, Capehart, Admiral, Arvin, Emerson, Crosley, Hallicrafter and Stromberg-Carlson, have teams of researchers at work developing experimental transistorized equipment.

“It’s like an Oklahoma land rush,” said Professor Frederick Seitz of the University of Illinois, one of the pioneer solid-state physicists. “Nobody can afford to lag behind.”

Bell Laboratories, which invented the transistor, recently announced another new device that’s even more spectacular (although of limited usefulness so far): the world’s first efficient solar power system.

The sun showers the earth with more than one quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) kilowatt-hours of energy daily—comparable to all the energy in the world’s reserves of coal, oil, natural gas and uranium—and almost every bit of it goes to waste. The greatest efficiency achieved up to now in converting sunlight directly into power has been about one per cent—for example, in the photoelectric cells in photographers’ light meters. Bell’s experimental solar power set (which, incidentally, is not much larger than a light meter) is six times more efficient.

The pocket-sized Bell solar energy converter is simply made. It consists of 10 razor-blade-thin wafers of specially treated silicon, each 2-1/4 inches long and half an inch wide. These sensitive strips are linked together with thin wires which run to two terminals. From the terminals the converter is connected to the power-consuming appliance.

When the sun’s rays hit the sensitive silicon, sufficient power is produced to run low-current equipment; in demonstration, the device ran a cigarette-pack-sized transistorized radio and a toy Ferris wheel. Although Bell scientists estimate that in its present experimental stage it would take about 25 square feet of silicon wafer to keep a 100-watt lamp burning, the efficiency of the device is expected to increase considerably. Even now, telephone engineers are considering using units to run low-power mobile equipment or as battery chargers for amplifiers in rural telephone systems.

To power a small home from the sun’s rays right now you’d need a silicon-surfaced roof covering a quarter acre or more—plus a battery so big it would fill two rooms, to store power for use at night. But scientists believe the solar-powered home may become practical someday, at least in parts of the world where conventional electrical power is now nonexistent or extremely expensive.

Although it’s doubtful that solar power will be cheap enough in our lifetime to power great factories, other stereatronic advances may revolutionize the operation of industry. Chief among these are the projected computers—small in size, efficient beyond anything now known, and cool in operation. Even the relatively clumsy computers of today are taking over many industrial chores, particularly in accounting, inventory-taking, and certain self-service operations. The streamlined “electronic brains” of the near future may take over the whole factory.

“Suppose,” said Dr. Samuel B. Batdorf of Westinghouse, “that a factory requires 100 machines to manufacture its product, all doing different jobs and running at differing speeds. Today, 100 operators are needed to watch the dials and regulate the speeds. In principle, one computing machine could do the job better, ‘reading’ one dial in a few millionths of a second, and instantly sending instructions to motors controlling the speeds. Then the same computer could turn its attention to the next machine, and so on. It would take about one second to control all 100 machines. One reason it hasn’t been tried so far is the limitations of the vacuum tubes. But solid devices make it possible.”

Devices That Will Benefit the Blind.

The new science of the solids seems certain to change the world in highly dramatic fashion. But what may be the most dramatic change of all will affect only a tiny minority of the world’s population: the blind.

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a team of scientists under the direction of Dr. Clifford M. Witcher—himself blind—is developing an electronic-stereatronic bag of tricks which eventually may make it possible for a blind man to “see” where he’s going through a series of impulses communicated to his hand. The scientists have most of the facts they need right now, but—as MIT’s Professor J. Earl Thomas puts it—”the blind man would need a trailerful of tubes, radar equipment and other components.” Stereatrons, by sharply reducing the size of the equipment required, will go a long way toward solving that problem.

At present Dr. Witcher is working on a preliminary device which indicates to a blind person the whereabouts of stairs, curbs and similar “step-down” obstacles. The blind man holds a boxlike apparatus with a light which scans his path; when it strikes something, the reflection causes the handle of the box to vibrate. “At the moment,” said Professor J. B. Wiesner, director of MIT’s electronics research laboratories, “the device is only experimental and years of development are needed before it can be made practical . . .”

“But eventually,” Professor Thomas told me, “by using all types of stereatronic devices, we’ll be able to produce a radar-type instrument which will paint a map in Braille for a blind person. My guess is that this apparatus will be about the size of a woman’s handbag. The blind person will place one hand on the outside of the bag and feel the whereabouts of everything in front of him.”

No one is more impressed by the tremendous new avenues of progress opened up by the stereatrons than are the scientists themselves. “You might sum up the significance of the new science this way,” said Dr. Henry O’Bryan, manager of Sylvania Electric’s physics department. “First came electricity, then electronics. Now we’re beyond electronics into something just as far-reaching.”

Or, as RCA’s General Sarnoff put it: “Science and electronics are moving so fast that in ten years everything we’re now seeing will be so obsolete that we won’t recognize them . . .”

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The Handy Uses of a Home Computer

* Planning a dinner menu
* Balancing bank accounts
* Doing school homework
* Figuring out income tax
* Printing invitations
* Keeping the budget

Computers for the home have been envisioned by science fiction writers and engineers ever since a huge, unwieldy prototype was developed 25 years ago. The whole futuristic age they prophesied, with an omnipotent electronic monster named Horace in every living room, is still a long way from realization, but compact consumer computers have quietly entered the household. While the market hardly rivals TV sets or refrigerators, the computer-as-home-appliance is now more than just a toy for the wealthy or a mysterious instrument for technical specialists.

Those pioneer families who have one, like the Theodore Rodmans of Ardmore, Pa., have discovered their obedient machine can perform a large variety of useful functions. Dr. Rodman originally brought it home for medical research, but then his family found it could also plan mortgage payments, help out with homework, even play with the children. Although the cost is still high, computers like theirs have come within possible reach of a two-car family budget. A small, self-contained model is available for $8,000, complete. The Rodmans’ computer system, called time-sharing, uses a Teletype terminal connected to a big central unit via telephone. It costs $110 a month to rent, plus $7.50 per hour of use.

The Rodmans’ computer is no anthropomorphic robot that can accomplish physical feats. It cannot flip the light switch, monitor the thermostat or do the cooking. Rather, it is a sophisticated mental appendage with a capacity for problem-solving that is limited only by the family’s imagination. Neither Dr. Rodman nor his family had ever operated, much less programmed, a computer before a terminal was installed in their home last August. Since then they have assigned it so many chores that Mrs. Rodman says, half seriously, “It’s really become a member of the family.”

For me, the main physical effect of having a computer at home is that I’m able to spend a lot more time with my family,” says Dr. Rodman, who is a lung specialist on the faculty of Temple University medical school in Philadelphia. “For all of us the real impact is mental. Programming a computer is like thinking in a foreign language. It forces you to approach problems with a high degree of logic. Because we always have a computer handy, we turn to it with problems we never would have thought of doing on one before.”

Mrs. Rodman heads the Department of Consumer Affairs in the Philadelphia public high schools. When the budget for which she is responsible failed to match the schools’ figures, her husband fed it to their computer. Then, armed with a lengthy print-out, she confronted her startled supervisor, who had been all set to explain her errors to her by using a print-out from his computer.

David, 14, the Rodmans’ oldest son, did a similar favor for his father one night. Seeing him struggle with pencil over the family bank account, David programmed it. The Rodmans now compare every bank statement against those prepared by their machine.

The youngest Rodman, Kevin, 11, is a picky eater with tastes limited to tossed salads, pies, steaks and sloppy joes. Some nights his mother made meals he would scarcely touch. This gave his older brother, Mitchell, 13, the idea for a computer program he named, appropriately, “Eat.” Mitchell first asked Kevin all the foods he was willing to eat and divided them into categories by course. He then wrote a program that can print out, at random, a weekly menu listing dishes for each meal and day. Three thousand different meal combinations are possible. (If Kevin would eat just one more kind of salad besides tossed, there would be 6,000 possibilities.) The print-out, after serving as Mrs. Rodman’s shopping list, is posted on the kitchen wall, always with the same message that Mitchell has instructed the computer to print at the bottom: NO SUBSTITUTIONS PLEASE UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

Although Kevin himself has not yet shown any interest in programming, he does interact with the machine through stored demonstration programs. One of them is the card game Black Jack. When Kevin activates the computer, it grants him an imaginary $500 to gamble with. The machine then “deals” by printing both its own and Kevin’s cards from a random selection. After totaling the visible cards, it asks if it should deal another. When each hand is finished, it computes how much of Kevin’s money is left and offers condolences if he has gone broke.

When he got the computer for his home, Dr. Rodman had no idea his family would become so involved with it. His original project, which he is still working on, was to write a program for diagnosing lung ailments through test readings. Because a successful program will mean instant written diagnoses and also teach interns, Temple University agreed to pay for it.

Because he was a novice at programming, Dr. Rodman required uninterrupted access to a computer. The service he purchases hooks his terminal, a standard Teletype, through his telephone to a large computer 90 miles away in Teaneck, N.J. When the central unit is dialed, it responds with an audio pitch. An electronic device connected to the Teletype translates the computer’s messages to print.

The computer costs $110 a month terminal rental, plus $7.50 to $11 an hour. Once a program is stored, the cost is negligible. “Eat,” for example, costs the Rodmans about 10c for a weekly run-through. The computer, of course, does the bookkeeping for the bill.

Dr. Rodman can also retrieve the program he writes at home by connecting a terminal in his office or anywhere else in the U.S. where there is a telephone. Through a time-sharing system, up to 200 remote terminals can use the central computer simultaneously because the actual time it needs to service each one is a fraction of a second. General Electric, from whom the Rodmans buy their time-sharing, also offers a library of stored prepared programs which range from the Black Jack game to stock purchase calculations. A real mass home market for computers awaits stored programs of broad practical use to homeowners.

Another impetus will come from kids who learn programming in school and accept the computer as a natural tool. Both Mitchell and David use it instead of pencil and paper to figure out their math homework. The teachers are pleased because it forces the two pupils to think out the problems. And classmates often call the boys up for assistance. Meanwhile at home spare-time programming, like “Eat,” has replaced TV as the boys’ major diversion. While both are bright, neither is an exceptional student. And as they grow older, explains Mitchell, “It would be silly not to use a computer if it’s easier and you’re used to it.”

Helping their father program is a regular household chore, and they are now better at it than he is. “One Sunday morning,” recalls Mrs. Rodman, “Ted had to plead with the boys to stop reading the funnies and please come explain to him what he was doing wrong. Since we got the computer,” she adds, “no one’s ever bored around here anymore. When the medical project is over, we’ve decided to buy our own terminal. It’s certainly a better investment than an automobile.”

Michael Shamberg

This is the most amazingly prescient article I’ve ever read. When people write about the future they are usually wrong. When people write about the future of computers, they are usually even more wrong. This article got everything right. If you changed the tense and a few bits of jargon, then handed to me and told me it was written by the EFF, I’d believe it.

Just to give you an idea of how right he was on even the basic computer stuff, here’s the second paragraph of the article. Keep in mind that this is what desktop computers looked like in 1967.

“The modern computer is more than a sophisticated indexing or adding machine, or a miniaturized library; it is the keystone for a new communications medium whose capacities and implications we are only beginning to realize. In the foreseeable future, computer systems will be tied together by television, satellites, and lasers, and we will move large quantities of information over vast distances in imperceptible units of time.”

Forty-one years ago Arthur R. Miller laid out all of the privacy threats that we face now. The power that credit reporting databases have over us. The illegal government use of our financial and phone records. The attempt to build a master database tying all of these together. The fact that the government might consider you a threat if you so much as sent a Christmas card to someone the government has on a watch list. It’s all here. He basically predicted and laid out all of the arguments against the Total Information Awareness program and the current NSA programs that have been so much in the news.

It’s nice to know there were people who were so ahead of the curve in trying to protect our rights, and it’s a tragedy that more people didn’t listen. I think it speaks strongly to the need to pay attention to this stuff now, because this problem will only get worse.

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THE NATIONAL DATA CENTER AND PERSONAL PRIVACY

by ARTHUR R. MILLER

The computer age is not to be stayed, as anyone knows who has been billed for another citizen’s charge account or has wondered what has happened to his paid-up magazine subscription. The computer science is already so advanced that experts envisage a huge National Data Center to speed and simplify the collection of pertinent information about Americans. Properly run, it could be a boon. But any person who has seen an FBI file or been party to a U.S. government “security check” has reason to know how the abuse or misuse of dossiers of unevaluated information can threaten an individual’s rights. A professor of law at the University of Michigan here discusses the precautions necessary to protect citizens from “governmental snooping and bureaucratic spinelessness or perfidy.” Professor Miller has testified on the subject before the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. On page 58, Bob and Ray show what can happen if the safeguards fail.

The modern computer is more than a sophisticated indexing or adding machine, or a miniaturized library; it is the keystone for a new communications medium whose capacities and implications we are only beginning to realize. In the foreseeable future, computer systems will be tied together by television, satellites, and lasers, and we will move large quantities of information over vast distances in imperceptible units of time.

The benefits to be derived from the new technology are many. In one medical center, doctors are already using computers to monitor heart patients in an attempt to isolate the changes in body chemistry that precede a heart attack. The search is for an “early warning system” so that treatment is not delayed until after the heart attack has struck. Elsewhere, plans are being made to establish a data bank in which vast amounts of medical information will be accessible through remote terminals to doctors thousands of miles away. A doctor will then be able to determine the antidote for various poisons or get the latest literature on a disease by dialing a telephone or typing an inquiry on a computer console.

A committee of the Bureau of the Budget has proposed that the federal government set up a National Data Center to compile statistical information on various facets of our society. Certainly the computer can help us simplify record-keeping by assigning everyone a “birth” number that will identify him for tax returns, banking, education, social security, the draft, and other purposes. This number could also serve as a telephone number, which, when used on modern communication mechanisms, would make it possible to reach its holder directly no matter where he might be.

But such a Data Center poses a grave threat to individual freedom and privacy. With its insatiable appetite for information, its inability to forget anything that has been put into it, a central computer might become the heart of a government surveillance system that would lay bare our finances, our associations, or our mental and physical health to government inquisitors or even to casual observers. Computer technology is moving so rapidly that a sharp line between statistical and intelligence systems is bound to be obliterated. Even the most innocuous of centers could provide the “foot in the door” for the development of an individualized computer-based federal snooping system.

Since a National Data Center would be augmented by numerous subsystems or satellites operated by state and local governments or by private organizations, comprehensive national regulation of computer communications, whether of federal or nonfederal origin, ultimately will become imperative.

Moreover, deliberations should not be conducted in terms of computer capability as it exists today. New computer hardware is constantly being spawned, machine storage capacity and speed are increasing geometrically, and costs are declining. Thus at present we cannot imagine what the dimensions, the sophistication, or the snooping ability of the National Data Center will turn out to be ten or twenty years from now. Nor can we predict what new techniques will be developed to pierce any safeguards that Congress may set up in order to protect people against those who manipulate or falsify information they extract from or put into the center.

Of course, it would be foolish to prohibit the use of data-processing technology to carry out important governmental operations simply because it might be abused. However, it is necessary to fashion an adequate legal structure to protect the public against misuse of information handling.

IN the past, privacy has been relatively easy to protect for a number of reasons. Large quantities of information about individuals have not been available. Generally decentralized, uncollected, and uncollated, the available information has been relatively superficial, access to it has been difficult to secure, and most people are unable to interpret it. During the hearings held recently by two of the congressional subcommittees investigating invasions of privacy, however, revelations concerning the widespread use of modern electronic and optical snooping devices shocked us.

In testimony before the House Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy, Edgar S. Dunn, Jr., a research analyst for Resources for the Future, Incorporated, pointed out that information in the center would not be intelligible to the snooper as are the contents of a manila folder. Computerized data require a machine, a code book, a set of instructions, and a technician in order to be comprehended. Presumably Mr. Dunn’s thesis is that if it is difficult or expensive to gain access to and interpret the data in the center, there is little likelihood of anyone’s trying to pry; if the snooper’s cost for unearthing a unit of dirt increases sufficiently, it will become too expensive for him to try to violate the center’s integrity.

Mr. Dunn’s logic fails to take into account other factors. First, if all the information gathered about an individual is in one place, the payoff for snooping is sharply enhanced. Thus, although the cost or difficulty of gaining access may be great, the amount of dirt available once access is gained is also great. Second, there is every reason to believe that the art of electronic surveillance will continue to become more efficient and economical. Third, governmental snooping is rarely deterred by cost.

Mr. Dunn also ignores a number of special dangers posed by a computerized National Data Center. Ever since the federal government’s entry into the taxation and social welfare spheres, increasing quantities of information have been recorded. Moreover, as recording processes have become mechanized and less cumbersome, there also has been centralization and collation of information. In something akin to Parkinson’s Law, the increase in information-handling capacity has created a tendency toward more extensive manipulation and analysis of recorded data, which, in turn, has required the collection of more and more data. The creation of the Data Center with electronic storage and retrieval capacity will accelerate this pattern.

Any increase in the amount of recorded information is certain to increase the risk of errors in reporting and recording and indexing. Information distortion also will be caused by machine malfunctioning. Moreover, people working with the data in Washington or at a distance through remote terminals can misuse the information. As information accumulates, the contents of an individual’s computerized dossier will appear more and more impressive and will impart a heightened sense of reliability to the user, which, coupled with the myth of computer infallibility, will make it less likely that the user will try to verify the recorded data. This will be true despite the “softness” or “imprecision” of much of the data. Our success or failure in life ultimately may turn on what other people decide to put into our files and on the programmer’s ability, or inability, to evaluate, process, and interrelate information. The great bulk of the information likely to find its way into the center will be gathered and processed by relatively unskilled and unimaginative people who lack discrimination and sensitivity. Furthermore, a computerized file has a certain indelible quality — adversities cannot be overcome simply by the passage of time.

There are further dangers. The very existence of a National Data Center may encourage certain federal officials to engage in questionable surveillance tactics. For example, optical scanners — devices with the capacity to read a variety of type fonts or handwriting at fantastic rates of speed — could be used to monitor our mail. By linking scanners with a computer system, the information drawn in by the scanner would be converted into machine-readable form and transferred into the subject’s file in the National Data Center.

Then, with sophisticated programming, the dossiers of all of the surveillance subject’s correspondents could be produced at the touch of a button, and an appropriate entry — perhaps “associates with known criminals” — could be added to all of them. As a result, someone who simply exchanges Christmas cards with a person whose mail is being monitored might find himself under surveillance or might be turned down when he applies for a job with the government or requests a government grant or applies for some other governmental benefit. An untested, impersonal, and erroneous computer entry such as “associates with known criminals” has marked him, and he is helpless to rectify the situation. Indeed, it is likely that he would not even be aware that the entry existed.

These tactics, as well as the possibility of coupling wiretapping and computer processing, undoubtedly will be extremely attractive to overzealous law-enforcement officers. Similarly, the ability to transfer into the National Data Center quantities of information maintained in nonfederal files — credit ratings, educational information from schools and universities, local and state tax information, and medical records — will enable governmental snoopers to obtain data that they have no authority to secure on their own.

The compilation of information by unskilled personnel also creates serious problems of accuracy. It is not simply a matter of the truth or falsity of what is recorded. Information can be entirely accurate and sufficient in one context and wholly incomplete and misleading in another. For example, the bare statement of an individual’s marital status has entirely different connotations to the selective service, a credit bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the social security administration. Consider a computer entry of “divorced” and the different embellishment that would be necessary in each of those contexts to portray an accurate picture of an individual’s situation.

The question of context is most graphically illustrated by the unexplained and incomplete arrest record. It is unlikely that a citizen whose file contains an entry “arrested, 6/1/42; convicted felony, 1/6/43; three years, federal penitentiary” would be given federal employment or be accorded the governmental courtesies accorded other citizens. Yet the subject may simply have been a conscientious objector. And what about the entry “arrested, disorderly conduct; sentenced six months Gotham City jail.” Without further explanation, who – would know that the person involved was a civil rights demonstrator whose conviction was reversed on appeal?

Finally, the risks to privacy created by a National Data Center lie not only in the misuse of the system by those who desire to injure others or who can obtain some personal advantage by doing so. There also is a legitimate concern that government employees in routine clerical positions will have the capacity to inflict damage through negligence, sloppiness, thoughtlessness, or sheer stupidity, by unintentionally rendering a record inaccurate, or losing it, or disseminating its contents to people not authorized to see it.

To ensure freedom from governmental intrusion, Congress must legislate reasonably precise standards regarding the information that can be recorded in the National Data Center. Certain types of information should not be recorded even if it is technically feasible to do so and a legitimate administrative objective exists. For example, it has long been “feasible,” and from some vantage points “desirable,” to require citizens to carry and display passports when traveling in this country, or to require universal fingerprinting. But we have not done so because these encroachments on our liberties are deemed inconsistent with the philosophical fiber of our society. Likewise, highly personal information, especially medical and psychiatric information, should not be permitted in the center unless human life depends upon recording it.

Legislation sharply limiting the information which federal agencies and officials can extract from private citizens is absolutely essential. To reinforce these limitations, the statute creating the Data Center should prohibit recording any information collected without specific congressional authorization. Until the quality of the center’s operations and the nature of its impact on individual privacy can be better perceived, the center’s activities should be restricted to the preservation of factual data.

The necessary procedural and technical safeguards seem to fall into two categories: those needed to guarantee the accuracy and integrity of the stored information, and those needed to control its dissemination.

To ensure the accuracy of the center’s files, an individual should have an opportunity to correct errors in information concerning him. Perhaps a print-out of his computer file should be sent to him once a year. Admittedly, this process would be expensive; some agencies will argue that the value of certain information will be lost if it is known that the government has it; and there might be squabbles between citizens and the Data Center concerning the accuracy of the file that would entail costly administrative proceedings. Nonetheless, the right of a citizen to be protected against governmental dissemination of misinformation is so important that we must be willing to pay some price to preserve it. Instead of an annual mailing, citizens could be given access to their files on request, perhaps through a network of remote computer terminals situated in government buildings throughout the country. What is necessary is a procedure for periodically determining when data are outmoded or should be removed from the file.

Turning to the question of access, the center’s computer hardware and software must be designed to limit access to the information. A medical history given to a government doctor in connection with an application for veteran’s benefits should not be available to federal employees not legitimately involved in processing the application. One solution may be to store information according to its sensitivity or its accessibility, or both. Then, governmental officials can be assigned access keys that will let them reach only those portions of the center’s files that are relevant to their particular governmental function.

Everyone directing an inquiry to the center or seeking to deposit information in it should be required to identify himself. Finger- or voice-prints ultimately may be the best form of identification. As snooping techniques become more sophisticated, systems may even be needed to counter the possibility of forgery or duplication; perhaps an answerback system or a combination of finger- and voice-prints will be necessary. In addition, the center should be equipped with protector files to record the identity of inquirers, and these files should be audited to unearth misuse of the system. It probably will also be necessary to audit the programs controlling the manipulation of the files and access to the system to make sure that no one has inserted a secret “door” or a password permitting entry to the data by unauthorized personnel. It is frightening to realize that at present there apparently is no foolproof way to prevent occasional “monitor intrusion” in large data-processing systems. Additional protection against these risks can be achieved by exercising great care in selecting programming personnel.

In the future, sophisticated connections between the center and federal offices throughout the country and between the federal center and numerous state, local, and private centers probably will exist. As a result, information will move into and out of the center over substantial distances by telephone lines or microwave relays. The center’s “network” character will require information to be protected against wiretapping and other forms of electronic eavesdropping. Transmission in the clear undoubtedly will have to be proscribed, and data in machine-readable form will have to be scrambled or further encoded so that they can be rendered intelligible only by a decoding process built into the system’s authorized terminals. Although it may not be worth the effort or expense to develop completely breakproof codes, sufficient scrambling or coding to make it expensive for an eavesdropper to intercept the center’s transmission will be necessary. If information in the center is arranged according to sensitivity or accessibility, the most efficient procedure may be to use codes of different degrees of complexity.

At a minimum, congressional action is necessary to establish the appropriate balance between the needs of the national government in accumulating, processing, and disseminating information and the right of individual privacy. This legislation must be reinforced by statutory civil remedies and penal sanctions.

Testimony before Congress concerning the intrusive activities of the Post Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service gives us cause to balk at delegating authority over the Data Center to any of the agencies that have a stake in the content of data collected by the government. Some federal personnel are already involved in mail-cover operations, electronic bugging, wiretapping, and other invasions of privacy, and undoubtedly they would try to crack the security of any Data Center that maintains information on an individual basis. Thus it would be folly to leave the center in the hands of any agency whose employees are known to engage in antiprivacy activities. Similarly, the center must be kept away from government officials who are likely to become so entranced with operating sophisticated machinery and manipulating large masses of data that they will not respect an individual’s right to privacy.

The conclusion seems inescapable: control over the center must be lodged outside existing channels. A new, completely independent agency, bureau, or office should be established — perhaps as an adjunct to the Census Bureau or the National Archives — to formulate policy under whatever legislative guidelines are enacted to ensure the privacy of all citizens. The organization would operate the center, regulate the nature of the information that can be recorded and stored, ensure its accuracy, and protect the center against breaches of security.

The new agency’s ability to avoid becoming a captive of the governmental units using the center would be crucial. Perhaps with proper staffing and well-delineated lines of authority to Congress or the President, the center could achieve the degree of independence needed to protect individuals against governmental or private misuse of information in the center. At the other end of the spectrum, the center cannot become an island unto itself, populated by technocrats whose conduct is shielded by the alleged omniscience of the machines they manage and who are neither responsive nor responsible to anyone.

The proposed agency should be established before the center is planned. To date, there has been virtually no meaningful exchange among scientists, technicians, legal experts, and government people on the implications of the center. The center also might consider supporting some of the planned nonfederal computer networks, such as the Inter-university Communications Council’s (EDUCOM) plan to link the major universities together, using them as models or operating laboratories to test procedures and hardware for the federal center.

To satisfy those who argue for the early establishment of a purely statistical Data Center, it might be possible for the proposed agency to set up a modest center in which information which does not invade privacy could be made available to government officials, educators, and private researchers. Other federal agencies might establish satellite centers that would contain information too sensitive to be recorded in the statistical center during that institution’s formative period, although the data in satellites ultimately might be transferred to the national center.

The threat to individual privacy posed by the computer comes from the private sector as well as the proposed federal Data Center. Each year state and local governments, educational institutions, trade associations, and industrial firms establish data centers that collect and store quantities of information about individuals. Because the high cost of computer installation forces many organizations to operate on a time-share basis, the nonfederal centers pose a special danger to privacy. Without effective screening and built-in security devices, one participant, accidentally or deliberately, may invade and extract or alter the computer files of another participant. Moreover, because many time-share systems operate over large geographic areas, their transmissions will be vulnerable to tapping or malicious destruction unless they are scrambled or encoded. Right now, a mailing list containing 150 to 170 million names, accompanied by addresses and financial data, is being compiled. The list is so structured that it yields sublists of people in various vocational and avocational categories. Where the necessary in- formation to produce this monster came from and how one gets off the list are mysteries.

Currently there are more than two thousand independent credit bureaus in the United States, many of whose files are being computerized. Eventually, these bureaus will make a network of their computers, creating a ready source of detailed information about an individual’s finances. The accuracy of these records will become increasingly crucial; an honest dispute between a consumer and a retailer over a bill may produce an unexplained and unexpungeable “no pay” evaluation in the computer and result in considerable damage to the buyer’s credit rating.

In testimony before the House subcommittee, the director of the New York State Identification and Intelligence System described a data bank containing files on “known” criminals that ultimately will contain millions of entries. He expressed a willingness to exchange information with police officials in other states as soon as the state systems could be meshed. If this system is tied into the National Data Center or New York’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles or welfare agencies, it would permit someone to direct an inquiry to the computer file of “known” criminals, find an entry under the name of his subject, and rely on that entry to the subject’s detriment without attempting to verify its accuracy.

Congress should consider the need for legislation setting standards to be met by nonfederal computer organizations in providing information about private persons and restraining federal officers from access to certain types of information from nonfederal data centers. Nonfederal systems should be required to install some protective devices and procedures. This is not to suggest that Congress should necessarily impose the same controls on nonfederal systems that it may choose to impose on the federal center. But a protector file to record the source of inquiries and modest encoding would probably prevent wide-scale abuse, although security needs vary from system to system. Since security may be facilitated by installing protective devices in the computer hardware itself, the possible need for regulation of certain aspects of computer manufacturing also should be taken into account.

The possibility of regulating transmission between federal and nonfederal centers and the interaction among nonfederal centers also should be considered. The specter of a federal agency, such as the Veterans’ Administration, reaching into a citizen’s medical file in a data center operated by a network of hospitals to augment the federal center’s file is a disturbing one. Regulating the security of the transmissions and imposing sanctions for noncompliance and eavesdropping would preserve individual privacy against governmental snooping and bureaucratic spinelessness or perfidy.

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• THE COMPUTER DATA BANK: WILL IT KILL YOUR FREEDOM? (Nov, 1967)

Animated Statue Smiles and Displays Her Dimples

ALMOST human is “SHE,” work of Courtenay Pollock, well known sculptor of London. With the aid of a small electric motor, “SHE” is smiling, coy, demure, or scornful as her master wills. Rolling her eyes about in an enchanting manner, she even displays a lovely set of dimples.

This “living” model is on display in one of the leading department stores of London. A cordon of police are required to keep the crowd moving and traffic clear in the streets.

The skull is made up of hinged sections, each of which are controlled separately through levers and switches. Gears and levers connect each part to the driving motor.

When a tinted rubber covering is slipped over the “skull,” eyebrows and hair attached, and a bit of cosmetics applied, “SHE” is transformed into a beautiful, vivacious young lady.

This first animated statue may herald a new era in sculpturing. It is not too much to expect that in a few years the works of our sculptors will all take on life—will frolic about and speak, imitating in every way the persons who posed as models.

CORN SUGAR IS MADE CHEAPLY TO COMPETE WITH CANE
Corn sugar, that costs no more than cane, has been turned out by a process developed by H. C. Gore, a department of agriculture chemist. It is said that the product can be melted and cast into molds, like the fondant made from cane or beet sugar, and used in the candy industry. The operation involves no unusual equipment, and consists essentially of mashing cornstarch, or hominy, with malt, which liquefies the product.

Robot Engine Built in Japan Is Driven by Remote Control

Automatic train control is understood to be a feature of a mysterious robot locomotive model built in Japan. Streamlined, but of a design unlike any conventional locomotive, the details of its mechanism have not been revealed. It is believed, however, that it will be operated electrically by remote control and will be equipped with a braking mechanism which will stop it automatically if the rails ahead become dangerous.

Some answers to this question seem clear, and others seem very uncertain. It is safe to predict that the 2002 person will be clothed with synthetic textiles which will not fade, shrink or wrinkle and in which the desired creases will stay put. Atomic energy will be in use for special, but not for general, power purposes. Gasoline will be coming more from oil shale than from oil wells, and may be already produced commercially from coal. Cancer may then be as well under control as tuberculosis is now. Television may have proved to be an instrument to perpetuate dictatorship, or to make the democratic process more effective, depending on the trends of control and public concern.

Cancer is certainly not under control, though we do have much better treatments and shale oil is only now starting to take off but he nailed clothes, atomic power and TV.

As an aside; the design of this article is really nice, however, for people who are supposed to predict the future I wish the PM’s designers would have shown a little consideration for schmucks like me who have to scan their articles. Why didn’t they realize that putting an illustration of balloons behind the text of the article would play havoc with my already finicky OCR software? (Lest you think I’m picking on PM, Modern Mechanix also had a nasty habit of doing this.

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SCIENCE ON THE MARCH
By Dr. Karl T. Compton

Chairman of the Corporation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology THE AMERICAN TRADITION of mechanical skill and inventiveness, often called “Yankee Ingenuity,” goes far back of the turn of this century. It grew out of the challenge of pioneer life to a people of high native intelligence engaged in forging a new way of life in an environment of rich but undeveloped resources. But our development of scientific knowledge and its useful applications is, despite a few notable predecessors like Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry and Thomas Edison, essentially an achievement of the last 50 years.

During the last five years of the preceding century, three epoch-making scientific discoveries had been made in Europe: X rays, radioactivity and electrons. As we shall see, these underlie much of the enormous scientific progress since that time. But first look at some of the general indices of scientific progress.

Fifty years ago the American Association for the Advancement of Science, with which are affiliated practically all the professional scientific groups, had a total membership of about 1900; today this membership has grown to 46,000. The first edition of American Men of Science, in 1906, contained the biographies of 4000 scientists; the latest edition, in 1949, contained 50,000.

In 1901 in an old barn in Schenectady, the General Electric Company established the first modern industrial-research laboratory. Its staff consisted of Dr. Willis R. Whitney and one assistant. Today there are some 2800 industrial-research laboratories, with aggregate staffs of at least 70,000.

I have been unable to locate any estimate of the national expenditure for research in the United States at the beginning of the century. The amount was probably too small to induce any agency to go to the trouble of assembling\the figures. In 1920 it was about $60,000,000. In 1930 it was $166,000,000; in 1940, $355,000,000; at present, certainly over $2,000,000,000.

What are some of the influences which have contributed to this remarkable increase in America’s, scientific activity? Basically, it is part and parcel of the similar worldwide trend. Every investigator who starts out to study one problem finds a half dozen new ones. Every scientist who publishes the results of his research stimulates critical and constructive thinking about his subject by thousands of fellow scientists all over the world, and many of them make his work as their starting point for new discoveries. Every development of a new scientific instrument or method opens the way for its application in new areas by the entire scientific fraternity. Thus scientific activity proceeds in compounded geometric progression. But there have been several stimulating influences which have been particularly effective in the progress of science in America during the past 50 years.

The first of these influences was the departure from almost total dependence on the old European universities for post-graduate training in research. When I did my postgraduate work in Princeton University in 1910-1913, I was one of the first substantial group of ambitious young scientists who sought their higher education in America, instead of going for it to Germany, England or France. To be sure, most of our professors had themselves been trained in, or imported from, Europe. But from about that date it became increasingly possible to secure in this country a quality of postgraduate education and indoctrination into the spirit and methods of research which was on a par with what had previously been available only to those few who had been able to seek them in Europe. A second influence was the stimulus provided by the exigencies of war. We were then faced with the necessity of mobilizing every resource to meet and overpower a highly skillful and technically competent adversary. Scientists and engineers were mobilized in teams and their abilities were extended to the limit to develop methods for handling chemical warfare, control of Artillery fire, the submarine menace, air combat, communications, new explosives and new materials for war production.

To do these things, every resource of science and technology was drawn upon and further developed. The results were so strikingly important that, for the first time in our history, the public became convinced that science was a resource worth exploiting for the national welfare as well as for the intellectual joy of discovery. The result was a significant increase in the prestige of science, and its financial support by government, industry and educational institutions. By and large, it can be stated that the great development of American chemical industry dates from the World War I period.

This type of stimulation of systematic group attack on technological problems was even more pronounced during World War II, with complete mobilization of the nation’s scientific resources under the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the military departments. Guided missiles, radar, bombsights and fire-control instruments, penicillin and hundreds of other developments culminating in the atomic bomb, are too freshly in mind to need comment. But the result of these successes is reflected in the great postwar movement to amplify still further the development of science and its applications for defense, industrial, agricultural and medical research. Recent evidences of this trend are the formation of the National Science Foundation and the doubling of the military appropriations for research and development. Other evidence is found in the strong support which many industrial corporations are now giving to scientific research and the training of research workers in our educational institutions.

One further important influence is the support given by the great foundations to the development of science through the education of outstanding young scientists. No small part of America’s progress in aviation is due to the opportunities created by the Guggenheim laboratories for aeronautical engineering at a selected group of universities and engineering schools. The Guggenheim fellowships and research grants from the Carnegie Corporation and others have been very helpful. Most significant of all was the establishment in the early 1920s by the Rockefeller Foundation of a great program of postgraduate fellowships, on a nationwide scale, in the physical, biological and medical sciences. This kind of program was undertaken for the purpose of building up the strength of the country in pure science, since World War I had interrupted the normal educational program and had diverted many scientists from their fundamental scientific fields into the work of practical applications. One proof of the effectiveness of this fellowship program is the very large proportion of the present heads of research organizations and university science departments, as well as the predominant leadership in World War II scientific work, supplied by former holders of these National Research Fellowships financed by Rockefeller.

With this background of the general progress of scientific activity during the past half century, especially in the United States, and of some of the contributing factors, we pass to the more specific consideration of major achievements. Whole libraries could be written, and have been written, on this subject. The story is told of a distinguished physicist of Oxford University whose large study is lined on all four walls with scientific books from floor to ceiling. A lady visitor, on being shown his study exclaimed, “Professor, how do you ever find time to read all these books?” He replied, “Madam, I don’t read them. I write them.” How can I hope to do justice to this subject in my few remaining remarks?

In August 1912, Popular Mechanics polled nearly a thousand scientists from all over the world to select The Seven Wonders of the Modern World. In the order of votes cast, these were selected as wireless telegraphy, telephone, airplane, radium, antiseptics and antitoxins, spectrum analysis and X ray. In 40 years’ retrospect, we can applaud the insight which then led to these selections, for much of scientific progress since those days has been by amplification of these scientific wonders.

Take, for example, the wireless telegraph and the telephone. Whereas in 1912 we could send dot-dash messages by wireless. we can now send voice conversation and pictures. In other words, we now have radio and television. By further development of wireless we now have radar, by which we can locate otherwise-unseen objects, do blind navigation, measure the distance to the ionosphere or the moon and do many other things. Similarly, the telephone of today is a far more powerful and flexible instrument than was the telephone of 1912. These developments have come principally from the tremendous advances in the art mathematical computers and countless other devices. Today I should group all such things together in a modern wonder of the world—electronics.

Similar is the story of radium. For 50 years after the discovery of radioactivity, its interest was purely scientific, except for a few practical uses like cancer therapy and luminous watch dials. It was the phenomenon whose study threw the most light on the inner constitution of atoms, just as spectrum analysis and X rays gave us our knowledge of their outer structure. But studies of radioactive substances led scientists to try various methods of prodding into the innermost secrets of the nuclei of atoms, and for this purpose were devised the various types of atom-smashing machines— high-voltage generators, cyclotrons, linear accelerators, betatrons and synchrotrons. With these it was found possible at will to realize the old dream of the alchemists: To transform atoms into different types of atoms. This has been the most fundamental scientific discovery of our generation.

But, out of this work with radioactivity, and guided by Einstein’s deduction from his famous theory of relativity that mass and energy were equivalent and interchangeable (if only means to effect the interchange could be found), came the atom bomb and the prospect of atomic power. Once the clue to the release of atomic energy through nuclear fission was given by the observations of Hahn and Strassman in 1939, the developments came with dazzling speed. Knowledge of this German discovery was brought to the United States promptly by the Danish scientist, Niels Bohr. Within a month after the original discovery, it had been verified and extended in several laboratories in this country and in at least three European countries. Within a year, more than a hundred scientific papers had been published on the subject, and there had been conferences on nuclear fission in Washington and, we are told, in Moscow. A few months later some possible military applications had been envisaged, secrecy was clamped down, thousands of Allied scientists were mobilized on the project, and on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped to devastate Hiroshima and bring the war to a speedy end in the Pacific.

Now our Atomic Energy Commission supervises the greatest scientific and engineering project of all time, and the governments of all nations of any significance have similar agencies, in some proportion to their means. Undoubtedly, we have as yet only a glimmering of the potentialities of this new science of nucleonics. Certainly, as of this date, atomic energy must be accorded a high place among the modern wonders of the world.

Space permits only mention of several other significant wonders. I have chosen to enlarge on those above, in order to illustrate the way in which such things come about. Equally interesting stories could be told about modern scientific wonders in other fields. I think of plastics and synthetic textile fibers; of antibiotics like penicillin, streptomycin, aureomycin and the others of this fast-growing group; of the sulfa drugs and others which fool a germ or virus into feeding on them to its destruction; of the discoveries in genetics which have led to the breeding of agricultural products of greater yield, food value and resistance to disease; of the role of enzymes in life processes; of the regulation of the endocrine glands by chemical agents (hormones) like insulin and cortisone; of our knowledge of the internal constitution of the stars and of the atomic fuel which keeps them hot; of the identification of new fundamental constituents of matter such as neutrons, positrons, mesons and photons; of the widening use of radioactive isotopes to study and control a great variety of scientific and industrial and medical phenomena; of catalysts and chemical-engineering techniques which permit mass production of essential chemicals.

If one were to evaluate new developments in terms of their impact on our ways of living rather than on the elegance and fundamental character of scientific discovery, then other wonders should be added to the list. The modern automobile—about which the Encyclopedia Britannica says: “Until 1909-1912 the automotive industry was in general chiefly concerned with developing a product that at least would operate”—has revolutionized our pattern of living and doing business outside of the home. Within the home, probably any housewife would say that the modern ways of preserving, packaging and distributing food have similarly revolutionized the feeding of the family.

All of these things, and more, are products of scientific research within the span of the 50 years during which Popular Mechanics has played its useful role of spreading information and creating interest and ambition in those things which are so significant in this rapidly expanding technological age. Many of these things are only the early stages of still more significant developments in the future.

What will these future developments be? If we could reverse our sights from 50 years of past achievement to the next 50 years of scientific progress, what would we see in the year 2002?

Some answers to this question seem clear, and others seem very uncertain. It is safe to predict that the 2002 person will be clothed with synthetic textiles which will not fade, shrink or wrinkle and in which the desired creases will stay put. Atomic energy will be in use for special, but not for general, power purposes. Gasoline will be coming more from oil shale than from oil wells, and may be already produced commercially from coal. Cancer may then be as well under control as tuberculosis is now. Television may have proved to be an instrument to perpetuate dictatorship, or to make the democratic process more effective, depending on the trends of control and public concern. But let me close with mention of one great threat which hovers over the uncertain future.

Certain to be critical, sooner or later, is the problem of overpopulation in a world of limited and diminishing natural resources. The conquest of disease, the elimination of famine, the hoped-for abolition of war all result in increasing the population and the demands for production of food and goods. Can technological progress in production and in discovery of substitutes for exhaustible natural resources keep ahead of these increasing demands? On the answer to this question, or, alternatively, to some intelligently applied social control of population growth, depends the fate of civilization on this planet.

Thus far technology has done pretty well in the race. Improved agricultural production and distribution now support a vastly larger world population than could have been fed by the techniques of a century ago. But without rapidly continued progress both in food production and in the arts of living together in crowded communities, population increase may have forced on our citizen of 2002 the beginnings of some terrific social upheavals.

Let me describe just one of several directions in which science may help us to keep ahead of overpopulation disaster. I refer to cultivation of the sea for food; not by stocking it with little fish, but by far more fundamental chemical and biological methods. Why should ways not be found to “farm the sea” with the same scientific skill with which we farm the land?

The bases of all sea life are the algae, vegetable organisms which provide the food for the small fish. The fish population is limited by the amount of this algae food, which in turn appears to be limited by the amount of nitrate salts in sea water illuminated by the sun. Hence one project for increasing the supply of fish is by fertilizing the sea with nitrates. This may produce useful results in restricted sea areas, but the sea is very big, and perhaps this proposal is too gigantic to be practical.

Another approach, which can probably be made practical, is to grow algae in transparent pipes or channels through which sea water is slowly pumped. These channels may cover any area exposed to the sun, and nitrates or other enriching chemicals may be added to the circulating sea water. The algae would be of strains specially selected to produce fats or proteins which can be extracted and processed.

What the economics of this type of farming may prove to be remains to be discovered as the method is developed and tested. All that can be said now is that sooner or later something radically new must be developed in the food-production line to keep ahead of population growth, and this scheme seems worth working on. In any case it illustrates the sort of new and unexpected technological development which may be stimulated by the problems of living 50 or more years hence.

Whether we look backward or forward, or examine the present situation we see that it is the continual concern with things yet to come which is the inspiration and motive power of the scientist.

“QUESTION SHOP” GIVES ANSWER TO ANY TELEPHONED QUERY

Offering to answer any reasonable question telephoned to its office, a firm dealing in general information is said to have set up business in New York City. Subscribers to the service are permitted to put as many queries to the “question shop” as they desire. Each patron is given a code name and. it is reported, can receive aid from the station at any hour of the day or night. It is also claimed that eighty per cent of the queries do not require more than two minutes for an answer.

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DOES GRASS HOLD SECRET of HIDDEN POWER?

“BOSS KET”

Charles F. Kettering, known as “Boss Ket” to his fellow workers, is chiefly interested in finding the answers to unanswered questions. Two of the foremost that have puzzled him are: “Why is grass green?” and “Why can we see through a pane of glass?”

Head of the General Motors Research Corporation, “Boss Ket” devotes practically all his time to research, to discovering how it can be done when experts and formulas say “It can’t be done.”

He was born on a farm near London-ville, Ohio, in 1876, educated in a country district school, and was graduated from Ohio State Engineering School in 1904. That same year he revolutionized cash register manufacturing by developing an electric motor to run cash registers. In 1912 he revolutionized the automobile industry and made driving a pleasure by perfecting the self-starter motor and modern lighting and ignition systems.

YOU want me to say something about research . . .? Well, before we set out on any such discussion as that, we should have a pretty fair idea what research is. There is a great deal of misconception about the term. People think research is something mysterious, something romantic. They are fooled by the array of test tubes and complicated apparatus they see in a laboratory.They speak of research as something in a class with sorcery.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There is nothing mysterious about research. It is not romantic in the popular sense of the word. The fact is, there’s not much difference between a laboratory and a blacksmith shop. The retorts and apparatus of the laboratory are just our anvils on which we shape new ideas into useful things. The word “laboratory” simply means “workshop.”

Research, properly understood is not a profession. It is not just a business. It is not a form of magic.

It is a state of mind.

I often define research by saying:Research is trying to find out what you are going to do when you can’t do what you are doing now.Research is that habit of thought which causes a man to question established ideas, to preserve an open mind toward new ideas, and to strike out on new and untried paths in persistent search of definite practical objectives, calculated to improve upon natural resources to the general gain of mankind.

Now, all that sounds very complicated and obscure. Let’s see if we can put the idea into simpler terms by quoting an example of true research—the career of John W. Hyatt.

John Hyatt was a man who perceived that the world was in need of something. He was not interested in any of the world’s great theoretical needs. No, the thing he was interested in was a very humble and comparatively unimportant necessity — an artificial billiard ball.

At that time billiard balls were made of real ivory, and this was costly. No material had ever been found which would give the same results as natural ivory, at a cost within the reach of thousands of people who wanted cheap billiard balls. Mr. Hyatt entered a contest for a prize offered for a good artificial ivory.

His quest for artificial ivory led him into a study of the rolling and bouncing qualities of balls made of various materials. One time he was called upon to make repairs on a machine for crushing sugar cane. And from his study of billiard balls and his work on the machine, he hit upon the idea which later was developed into the Hyatt roller bearing.

When he had invented the roller bearing, he returned to his original quest. Again, he sought an artificial ivory. And soon he stumbled upon a substance which he developed into celluloid.

He went further and invented a new type of camera film. Minor achievements followed along the way, but still Hyatt refused to be turned aside from his first objective—an artificial ivory billiard ball.

Year after year he worked. Finally, toward the close of his life he found the right material.

In his quest for this comparatively trivial improvement upon nature, John Hyatt had given life to new industries employing thousands of workers, and had invented new products of real importance to the world.

The story of John W. Hyatt exemplifies the chief characteristics of true research. First of all, research is always open-minded. It forces ideas to stand upon their own feet. It refuses to accept established ideas on the sole grounds that they are established. And it likewise refuses to condemn new ideas simply because they are new. It insists upon valuing all ideas at their intrinsic worth.

When Hyatt began his life-long adventure in research the idea prevailed that only ivory could be used for billiard balls. But Hyatt refused to honor this belief merely because of its venerable age. This “open-mindedness” is identical with what is sometimes called the “scientific spirit.” It is the spirit in which all progress, from the beginning of the world, has been made.

Industrial research must also be practical. It can not be isolated from life. When you strike out in search of some improvement upon nature, you must be sure that it is an improvement which somebody will want.

Millions of dollars have been wasted developing doomed ideas because their originators failed to consider the wants and needs of the other human beings who were to use their products. For example, a few years ago, America had a rash of “cycle cars.” A little group of automobile men jumped at the conclusion that because small, inexpensive, low-powered automobiles were popular in some parts of Europe, they would be welcome in the United States. They set out to revolutionize the automobile industry.And they failed.

If they had stopped to ask themselves “Who will want this kind of car?” they would never have made their venture. The truth is that very few people could be persuaded to buy the midget cars. The public did not want economy at the sacrifice of power, beauty, strength and the capacity to travel long distances in comfort. People wanted bigger cars, roomier cars, more rugged cars.

A third main characteristic of true research is its tenacity of purpose. True research sets out with a definite objective and follows that objective to the end. No matter what discoveries it may make along the way, it refuses to be permanently diverted from the original objective. Like John Hyatt searching for his artificial billiard ball, the true research engineer never gives up.

There is another essential of research which may sound strange to you.But when I describe it as an “essential” of research I choose that word deliberately.

Research must keep in touch with youth.

The spirit of research is essentially a youthful spirit. It is, after all, the same spirit (tempered by reason of course) which prompts the small child to make a personal test of the established idea that a hot stove must not be touched. It is the fresh, questioning, hopeful spirit of youth.

That is one reason why you must keep in touch with youth—why you must actually keep young—if you would succeed at modern research. But there is an additional and even more important reason why the research engineer must keep in touch with youth. And this reason has to do with the necessity of being practical.

When you were born, everybody in the world was older than you. Before you were a year old, there were more than two million people in the world younger than you. This ratio increases progressively. At 25, half the people in the world are younger than you. At 50 you are older than almost nine-tenths of your fellow human beings. You can see for yourself that when you have reached an age of maturity the product you turn out is going to be used mainly by people younger than yourself. And any research goal, therefore, must be chosen in reference to the wants and necessities of younger people. Youth dominates industry, art, and commerce, and it rules research.

This requirement in the true research engineer is particularly difficult to maintain, because it is human nature to let our thoughts fall into grooves. When a man gets along toward middle age, his ideas are apt to crystallize.The older he gets the more people he finds in the world whose ideas and habits are strange to him. As a sort of unconscious defense mechanism, he persuades himself that the old way (his way) of doing things is the only right way. He closes his mind to new ideas. If he’s in any business where success depends upon pleasing large masses of people, he fails.

I make a very strong personal effort to keep in touch with younger minds. I think it is a good thing to drop false dignity sometimes and come in contact with youth on an equal footing.

In the General Motors laboratories, we have many young men and many older men.

The young men give us new ideas and fresh slants on our problems. The older men contribute wisdom and the judgment born of experience. Neither group could get along very well without the other.

The old days of the professional inventor are past. The modern research engineer is a vastly different person. We no longer have inventors in our shops just to invent whatever they happen to think of. Invention has become a complex thing, a matter of team work among many men, rather than genius on the part of one. Chemists, metallurgists, engineers,mathematicians and physicists must all contribute their knowledge. Even the simplest of our problems demands the cooperative work of many minds.

The importance of invention to economic welfare is something which men began to realize only when the recent depression struck the world. I am no business man. I am a mechanic. But I believe that lack of new ideas, refusal to accept new ideas and the assumption that our civilization was a finished job, were major causes of the depression.

There were other causes, too, of course— unwise foreign loans, trade barriers between nations, and speculation, for example. But a big cause—and a peculiarly American cause —of the depression was standardization of ideas.

People found the prosperity of the 20’s so good that they refused to go forward for fear of losing it. They fitted products into the groove of mass production so solidly that the products could not change in response to human needs.

The whole thing was based on a fallacy— the fallacy that people want standardization.

It isn’t true. It is not the standard, it’s the new that people buy.

The immediate need is for new things which the public will feel it can not do without. We must recreate the desire to buy. The world is crying for new improvements on nature. And it is amazing how little we really know about the simplest natural things.

One of our biggest problems is to answer the simple question:”Why is the grass green?”

When men can answer that question thoroughly, they may have achieved something as important as the discovery of fire. For that question involves the whole vast mystery of how nature turns sunlight into energy.

All Energy Comes From Sun

You plant a kernel of corn or a seed of grass. In a few weeks or months you get a blade of grass or a corn stalk weighing many hundreds of times as much as the original seed. Then you can burn the stalk, put the ash back into the ground for fertilizer, plant another seed, and the whole marvelous process takes place again. Nature takes the sunlight and converts it into energy.

If we can find out exactly what reaction takes place between the blade of grass and the sunlight which beats down upon it, we may be able to transform sunlight into energy ourselves.

Every bit of energy used by mankind came originally from the sun. The sun, beating down on prehistoric forests, produced the coal which we burn in the boilers that turn our power generators. The sun, beating down on rivers and oceans, keeps in operation the continual circulation of water over the face of the earth which turns our turbines at Niagara or Keokuk.

Keep Trying for Success

But at present, not knowing the processes of nature, we have to let her take her own time. We can use only the energy which she has stored up. If we can find out exactly why the grass is green perhaps we can put the sun to work for us—and what vast wonders that may accomplish we can only guess.

Thus the future progress of civilization depends upon research. If civilization is to go steadily forward the research “state of mind,” must not be limited to the fields of mechanics and invention. It must spread into all fields of thought.

Try it out in your own life. Write “why?” after everything. Select an audacious goal, keep your mind open, and keep trying.

That is the way to success. And that is also the way, incidentally, to keep from growing old.

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OUTLAWS MAY USE SUPER-STATIONS at Sea

Broadcasting stations without a country seek new ways to flood the United States with radio advertising barred by federal commission. Two hundred outlaws face war by the government.

by MURPHY McHENRY

RADIO circles on the Pacific Coast were turned topsy turvy not long ago by the; continued presence of a radio pirate ship which had taken unto itself a very popular spot on the dial and started broadcasting without regard for the land stations with which it interfered.

The primary purpose of the unlicensed broadcast station was to advertise the gambling, liquor, and other dubious pleasure activities of the ship upon which it was built—all these activities beyond the 12-mile limit, of course. Thousands responded to the advertising and the owners waxed rich. They found other sundry rackets, such as a fortune telling program, which brought in additional money and finally assumed such an extensive program that one Los Angeles station was threatened with; a complete loss of audience and business because the ship’s radio signal was the more powerful of the two.

After numerous unsuccessful attempts of a local nature, the floating broadcasting establishment was silenced, but only after the state department at Washington, D. C, had made diplomatic representations which forced a Central American country to cancel the ship’s registry.

However, this ship had paved the way and now, with the United States making headway in its light to muzzle stations just south of the Rio Grande river, within the shelter of Mexico, it appears that soon floating broadcast palaces may be dotted here and there outside the 12 mile limit, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico.

There is little chance that the border broadcasters will give up without a struggle. Led by XER’s spectacular Dr. John R. Brinkley, formerly of Milford, Kansas, and now of Del Rio, Texas, they have found too many ways to gather in otherwise hard earned dollars to sit by complacently and be permanently hushed. Dr. Brinkley has made millions of dollars as a result of his broadcasts. Others, working along numerous lines, have taken in many more millions.

And that is why, in the face of possibilities that they may be driven out of Mexico, these promotional minded broadcasters – are putting up a brilliant struggle. That is also the reason why, as they battle for further privileges in Mexico, they are showing deep interest in the possibility of operating from beyond the 12 mile limit. To do so, they would have to secure ship registry from some nation, but it is well known that there are a number of Central and South American countries which would welcome the chance for added governmental revenue, for these broadcasters, barred from the United States, are accustomed to paying handsome taxes in Mexico.

All the so-called “radio pirates” are not across the border or out on the high seas. A. D. Ring, principal engineer of the-federal radio commission, says that at least 200 outlaw stations have been under surveillance in the United States alone.

Most of these stations operate on from one to five watts power and claim immunity from federal restrictions on the assertion that their radio waves do not travel from one state to another. However, supersensitive equipment employed by federal investigators has broken down this claim and as a consequence many such station operators have been indicted and held for trial in the federal courts.

In addition to the type of business indulged in, the stations in Mexico have stirred up great protest because they provide serious interference with many stations in the United States.

There never has been any radio treaty or agreement between the United States and Mexico, such as this country has with Canada. In many circles this has been accepted as a diplomatic insult and as a consequence almost anybody wanting to build a radio station can secure a permit from the Mexican government.

Quite naturally, this situation appeals most to those broadcasters who cannot carry on their operations in the United States. Men who have definitely been barred from radio privileges in this country have quickly turned to Mexico, built super-power stations and easily reached the millions of American homes possessing radio sets.

There is no known means of barring radio waves where they have sufficient force and power to cross political or physical boundaries.

Dr. Brinkley was one of the early border operators. He turned to Mexico when the federal radio commission closed his famous Station KFKB, at Milford, Kansas.

And now Dr. Brinkley, and others, may be forced to turn elsewhere, possibly to the high seas, in order to continue the radio invasion of the United States. For just as Dr. Brinkley was contemplating the increase of power on XER from 150,000 watts to 500,000 watts, the Mexican authorities issued new rules.

Dr. Brinkley, along with other border broadcasters, has started to fight in the courts of Mexico. For the rules, if enforced, would make it impossible to carry on profitably.

Specifically, they provide: 1. Discontinuance of remote control lines originating outside of Mexico.

2. Elimination of advertising of any medical product which is not approved by Mexican health authorities.

3. Discontinuance of mentalist acts, question and answer hours and the like, except by special permission from the Mexican radio department. 4. Designation of the Spanish language as the official language in which all broadcasts must be made, except in cases where special permission is obtained for broadcasts in another language, such as English.

Brinkley Minus Passport Dr. Brinkley is fighting. He is refused a passport into Mexico, ostensibly through the efforts of the American Medical Association, and elimination of his remote control line would make it impossible for him to talk on his own radio station. Without permission to advertise his medicines and gland operations, he would have little incentive to talk in such an expensive manner. Cancelling the question and answer program would deprive XER of about $10,000 a month.

If he is not successful in his fight to have the drastic new orders rescinded, Dr. Brinkley will not quit. That much is certain. He will be ready to build his station either on a ship or in some friendly Central American country which would appreciate added tax revenues. Other border broadcasters would no doubt follow suit, for they are more or less depending upon the leadership of Dr. Brinkley in this latest battle.

The doctor is right on the battle ground. He has closed his Milford, Kansas, establishment, and moved to Del Rio, Texas, with his full staff. Elimination of the intricate remote control line from Milford to the radio station in Mexico effected a saving of approximately $10,000 a month.

Closely watching every move made by Dr. Brinkley is Norman Baker, another well publicized broadcaster now exiled from the United States, so far as radio is concerned. Baker, who came into the toils of law through advertising and operation of a cancer clinic at Muscatine, Iowa, has his new 150,000 watt transmitter, XENT, nearing completion at Nuevo Laredo, just opposite the important border city of Laredo, Texas. Baker’s fate will largely depend upon Dr. Brinkley’s ability to invalidate the nonmedical advertising order.

Battle of Power Seen If Dr. Brinkley should increase his station’s power to 500,000 watts, it will place Mexico on a radio par with the United States, for WLW at Cincinnati is soon to begin operation on that strength. With two such high powered stations on the dial, many fear that numerous adjacent small stations will be drowned out by interference.

However, WLW will be under governmental regulations which require that it remain within five cycles of its assigned frequency. In all probability Mexico, for the protection of its own listening audiences, will invoke the same rule, which will in a measure alleviate much interference.

The proposal of Dr. Brinkley to float his station in the event of further trouble with Mexico, brings up the interesting possibility that several such stations might be constructed in favorable locations with proper credentials from a recognized government.

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Ancient Seer of Modern Marvels

Nylon and air-conditioning wouldn’t have surprised Sir Francis Bacon. He predicted them, along with most of our other present scientific wonders, over 300 years ago!

by Tyche Ayres

WILL we soon be broadcasting smells? Three centuries ago, when the Earl of Essex was flirting with Good Queen Bess of England, a genius sat down and wrote an amazing prediction of the wonders of science which were to be realized in our day.

Writing in an era of intellectual darkness, when alchemists and wizards practiced their black arts, this astounding man foresaw the airplane, television, movies, submarines, automobiles—almost the whole range of modern discoveries.

Recently a research scientist, digging through the latin script of this ancient work checked off the list of these three hundred-year-old predictions and found that every one of them had come true—except one!

The only scientific marvel foreseen in this work which has not yet been realized is the broadcasting of smells!

The author of this unbelievably clairvoyant treatise was Sir Francis Bacon. He. himself, led a life almost as fantastic as the scientific predictions he made. Today, Bacon is revered as the “father” of modern science. He was the first expounder and advocate of the experimental method in physical science.

But, besides his immense philosophical works, Bacon also found time to be Attorney General for Great Britain, Keeper of the Royal Seal, Lord Chancellor, and one of the prosecutors of the famous Earl of Essex, whose love affair with Queen Elizabeth was portrayed not long ago in the motion picture, “The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex.” Bacon became the storm center of a dispute over the authorship of the works of William Shakespeare—an argument which still rages to this day, in which many students maintain that Bacon truly wrote the masterpieces attributed to the Bard of Avon.

And, just to add spice to his varied career, Bacon wound up his public life locked in the Tower of London, guilty of accepting $200,000 in bribes!

Bacon’s amazing prophecy of modern inventions was made in an essay called “The New Atlantis,” published in the year 1620. Writing in a recent issue of the General Electric Company’s magazine, Mr. L. A. Hawkins called this work of Bacon’s “the world’s first experiment in the popularization of science.” “The New Atlantis,” in other words, was the direct progenitor of Mechanix Illustrated!

In order to appreciate fully the magnitude of Bacon’s intellectual accomplishment in “The New Atlantis,” one must remember that at the time he wrote this essay, there was no such thing as science. People of those dark days believed that serpents, worms, frogs and similar forms of life were magically “generated”‘ from mud and slime. All phenomena which they could not explain they ascribed to wizards and witchcraft. The dreaded Inquisition was still in existence, torturing and killing those brave souls for heresy who dared to expound new ideas.

Living in this morass of ignorance, then, Bacon wrote his essay. In it, he pictured a magic island, cut off from the rest of the world, where he found a race of people who had progressed beyond his times. He then proceeded to outline some of the wonders which this perfect people had created. It was his view of the future.

In New Atlantis, Bacon wrote, “Science is the civilizer which binds man to man.” Here was the first conception of the scientific state —the “new” dream of such modern philosophers as H. G. Wells.

Bacon wrote in stilted, academic Latin, and when his words are translated they sound colorless and dull, in themselves. But read a few excerpts from this ancient book and grasp the vivid imagination at work behind the musty words. As you read this passage, ask yourself whether Bacon was not describing the generation of electricity, electric light, television, the talking movies, amplification, the loud speaker, and the radio:

“We have artificial thunder and lightning. We have instruments which generate heat only by motion” (the dynamo?), “and we find, also, divers means, as yet unknown to you, of producing light, originally, from divers bodies.

“We have high towers, the highest about a half a mile, and some of them set upon mountains. We have houses where we make demonstrations of all light and radiations, and out of things uncolored and transparent we can represent to you all several colors and multiplications of light, which we carry to great distances, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. We procure means of seeing objects afar off, as in remote places.

“We have also houses of deceit of the senses, where we represent false apparitions and illusions. Also all delusions and deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions and colors; all demonstrations of shadows.

“We also have sound houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have divers strange instruments of music. We represent small sounds as great and deep” (amplification?) “and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times and some that give back the voice louder than it came” (loudspeaker?).

“We have all means to convey sound in trunks and pipes, in strange lines, and distances.”

Although skeptics will argue that Bacon was having a pipe dream, certainly the fundamental conception of a great many of today’s marvels is contained in that passage.

In his next paragraph, Bacon speaks of “violent streams and cataracts which serve us for many motions, and likewise engines for multiplying and enforcing the winds to set also on divers motions.” Did he foresee hydro-electrics? Were the “engines for multiplying the winds” the first conception of aerodynamics. It seems incredible that even as great a genius as Bacon could have had, in his age, any means of envisioning such wonders. But it is difficult to interpret his words otherwise.

In rapid succession, as among the miracles of New Atlantis, Bacon mentions:

“Carriages without horses.”

“Ships without sails.”

“Boats for going under water and brooking seas.”

“Mechanically made silks, linens and tissues.” (Did he mean rayon and nylon?)

“Glass of divers kinds, among them some metals vitrificated.” (What are modern plastics but “metal vitrificated?”)

Bacon’s list of miracles-to-come grows more astounding as it continues. Centuries before Mendel disclosed the principles of plant heredity, or Burbank produced his varieties, or the modern methods of plant “forcing” were discovered, Bacon spoke of the grafting and inoculating of trees, fruits and flowers, “which produceth many effects. We make by art, in the same orchards and gardens, trees and flowers to come earlier or later than their seasons. We make them by art much greater than their nature, and of differing taste, smell, color and figure than their nature.”

Bacon was three hundred years ahead of Dr. Alexis Carrel and his chicken heart which he has kept alive in the laboratory by artificial means. Bacon wrote of “places for animal dissection, wherein we find many strange effects, as continuing life in them though divers parts, which you account vital be perished and taken forth; resuscitating some that seem dead, and the like.”

Recently, there has been much discussion of the experiments by which cancer sufferers are placed in ice for treatment; yet Bacon, three centuries ago, wrote of the “prolonging of life and the curing of some diseases by refrigeration.”

On the subject of medical science, in addition, Bacon described the microscope and added, “we have houses wherein we make observations otherwise unseen in the blood and urine.”

The Hayden Planetarium was built in New York—three hundred years after Bacon described it. For in New Atlantis, he says, “We have great and spacious houses where we imitate and demonstrate the meteors.”

Air conditioning? Our most modern industry? See New Atlantis: “We have certain chambers called chambers of health, wherein we qualify the air as we think good and proper.”

In New Atlantis, Bacon said, “We have learned to imitate birds, and have a degree of flying!”

Bacon described “engines which go with the speed of guns, even as from muskets.”

The army’s new food concentrates are close to Bacon’s “drinks brewed of flesh, where some are of the effect of meat and drink both.” Fittingly enough, Sir Francis Bacon died as a direct result of his fervor for the new conception of experimentation. He spent much of his time outdoors during the last winter of his life. He was intrigued with another new idea: the preservation of fresh meat and foods by freezing! He contracted pneumonia from exposure, while packing meat into a snowdrift one night. He died anticipating our modern science of refrigeration!

All of Bacon’s fabulous predictions for the future have now been realized—with one exception.

“We have,” Bacon said, in closing, “houses wherein we have means of multiplying and sending distances smells and tastes.”

Who will be the first to broadcast smells and tastes, to add the final touch of realism to television? When will the record of Sir Francis Bacon’s three-century-old clairvoyance be completed?

AMBULANCE RADIO controls traffic

AMBULANCES are supposed to speed people to hospitals— but they can’t speed and they therefore can’t save some lives.

Traffic holds them back. Their average 35 mph is pretty slow.

But they may do 70 before long. A device now being patented by J. R. Schwarzkopf will put a radio transmitter in the ambulance. Traffic lights will contain tuned receivers with relays. The ambulance will streak along, its radio signalling—and all the lights will turn red and all traffic pull over to clear an open speedway.

RADIO SIGNALS GUIDE FARMER’S PLOW

Nearly seven years ago this magazine prophesied that farmers someday would do their plowing by radio. That prediction has now come true, at least on an experimental scale. Recently, J. J. Lynch, of Miles City, Mont., demonstrated his radio-controlled tractor before 200 electrical experts and business men. Steered from a closed car traveling behind, it plowed around a thirty-acre field. Radio relays beneath the empty driver’s seat operated it in response to a radio transmitter in the control car. The experiment brings nearer the dream that “automatic tractors will lumber across the fields and plow with quenchless ardor. The farmer . . . will loll coolly before his radio” (P. S. M., Mar. ‘25, p. 171)

Bus Rider Wears Gas Mask
LEADING a campaign to impress local bus operators with the need for some means of eliminating the monoxide fumes that produce headaches and cause passengers to suffer attacks of nausea, B. Palmer Davidson, of Montclair, N. J., wears a gas mask when commuting to his office. The mask is a type used by employees in industrial plants.

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ROOF-TOP HEAT TRAP STORES POWER FROM THE SUN

HEATING homes in January with the warmth of last summer’s sunshine —that is the exciting goal of research now under way at Cambridge, Mass. Not far from the Charles River, scientists of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently completed a white frame building, its sloping roof edged with a glistening battery of solar-heat traps.

These cells are formed of “sandwiches” of glass sheets, air spaces, and metal plates. The rays of the sun penetrate through the sheets of glass and strike a black metal plate at the bottom of each cell. It absorbs heat rapidly and the dead-air spaces between the glass panes act as insulators and keep the heat from dissipating outward. Beneath each metal plate, a maze of thin-walled tubes carries a flowing stream of water which is heated by contact with the metal and then conducted to an efficiently insulated storage tank in the basement of the building. Hot water can be stored in such tanks, it has been found, for weeks and eventually it is expected that “sunshine furnaces’ of the kind will be able to hoard summer heat for midwinter use.

For more than twenty centuries, experimenters have been striving to store up summer heat and trap the endless flow of power from the sun. Recent efforts to crack this age-old scientific nut range from Dr. C. C. Abbot’s solar furnace to the “sunshine sandwiches” of Dr. Bruno Lange, of Berlin, Germany. His photo-electric cells generate current when struck by the sun’s rays. Other experimenters have employed mirrors, titled by clockwork, and giant lenses, concentrating heat to melt metals.

Related posts

• Sun Supplies Heat For This House (Feb, 1940)
• Why Don’t We Have… SUN POWER (Feb, 1940)
• Rubber from the SUN – and Power Too! (Feb, 1940)
• Sun Furnace May Vaporize Diamonds (Feb, 1940)
• Solar Helmet (Feb, 1940)
• Big Bee-hive Gets Water From Air (Feb, 1940)

Two-Way Firemen’s Radio Is Carried on the Back

AS A result of months of research work by two New York firemen, Samuel Harmatuk and Arthur Meyerson, smoke eaters in America’s largest city soon will be directed in fire fighting and life saving by means of lightweight, back-pack radios. Weighing only fifteen pounds, the two-way units can be slipped on over heavy fire-fighting clothing, leaving the hands free for climbing. A flexible cable controls the switch which shifts the set from transmitting to receiving and back again. The microphone is located on one of the shoulder straps of the harness and the earphones, of soft rubber, can be worn under a helmet. Telescoping antennas are located on either side of the waterproof case which houses the set. Power for the unit is supplied by dry-cell batteries with a life of seventy hours. The specially designed condensers are not affected by heat. During tests recently conducted by the New York Fire Department, the sets proved they had a range of as much as a mile. In use, they will enable a fire chief to talk to smoke eaters at work inside a burning building.

Crowd Sees Speaker in New Address System

THRONGS of spectators may clearly view an orator, as well as hear him, through a new German public-address system based upon television principles. The installation presents an image of the speaker, magnified many times life size, upon an elevated screen in plain sight of the entire audience, while his voice is being heard through loudspeakers of conventional design.

Besides the customary microphones, a pair of large photo-electric cells or “electric eyes” flank the speaker’s stand. As the orator discourses, he faces a projector from which an almost invisible beam of green light plays back and forth inconspicuously across him. The photo-electric cells, which are sensitive to this light alone, respond to the rays reflected from his features by transmitting a series of electrical impulses. These are reconverted to light by a 20,000-volt cathode-ray tube, and a powerful lens throws the image upon the screen.

Originators of the system also predict its application in the theater to make every seat a good seat.

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Magnets Drive High Speed Suspension Trains Thru Air

ELEVATED trains whizzing at tremendous speed from city to city, powered solely by electromagnetic lines of force, is the new and startling method of rapid transportation now being developed by German engineers.

A war against friction losses has long been waged by scientists; and this electromagnetic rapid transit project now promises to end the conflict. No wheels are to be used for traction. The cars are drawn forward, in one scheme by powerful electromagnets, in the other by huge solenoids.

Cars on the solenoid railway are to be equipped with giant magnetic rings, as illustrated on the opposite page. Power is switched on to the solenoids automatically as the car progresses by means of photo-electric cells operating at moment beams are intercepted.

Speed of the electromagnet cars is regulated at the central power station by a revolving switch which cuts the magnets in the circuit like electric lights in a display sign. Connections through wireless enables operator to give stop or start signals.

LAWS ASKED FOR PROTECTION OF FLOWERS AND PLANTS

The success of Vermont in preserving wild flowers and plants, as game is protected, and preventing their extinction, has aroused an interest among botanists and lovers of wild flowers which may result in more legislation for their protection. Commercial collectors were found to be responsible for the extermination of wild flowers and rare plants. A law passed by the Vermont legislature prohibits commercial collecting and restricts botanists to two specimens of each plant in a year. The very existence of orchids, arbutus, and rare alpine plants was threatened. Other states are suffering from the same abuse. Such ferns as the climbing fern in Connecticut and the hart’s tongue in New York, are endangered by the draining of swamps and the opening of quarries.

Home Movies From Phonograph Records

PLAY a moving picture from a phonograph record!

When Baird, the English television experimenter, suggested this system several years ago, he did not realize how soon it would be before his prophecy would come true.

Those who have listened to television programs know that the signals become audible in the form of a shrill whistle in the loudspeaker. This whistle carries the picture elements in the form of modulated sound.

If we pass this sound through suitable apparatus it becomes capable of reproducing a picture. It is obvious, then, that we could record this sound on a phonograph record and “can” a picture just as we now “can” sound in the form of music.

The sound, in the form of electric current, is taken from the phonograph record by means of a specially designed electrical pick-up. From this point it is carried to an amplifier and thence to a television crater tube. At this point the image is thrown on the screen.

While much remains to be done to develop this apparatus, we may look forward to the day when our moving pictures will come in this new and convenient form.

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Living Germs from other worlds brought to Earth by Meteors

By Robert E. Martin

SPELLBOUND at a microscope, Prof. Charles B. Lipman, University of California biologist, recently gazed at what he believed to be the first living creatures from another world ever observed. Tiny germs—some round, some rod-shaped—swarmed beneath the lens. Despite their minute size, they were as fascinating to a scientist as any hypothetical man from Mars.

If Prof. Lipman has correctly explained the germs’ origin, they came to earth carried by a flaming meteorite from the voids beyond our planet! Here, after centuries of speculation, seems the first credible indication that life exists outside the earth. To test the possibility that living things might exist in other worlds, Prof. Lipman acquired a number of stone meteorites that had fallen on the earth. He proposed to grind these to powder and drop the powder in suitable culture media to see whether germs would grow. If so, evidence would be strong that the germs had survived the cold of the journey through space, the heat of the flaming meteor when it struck the earth’s atmosphere, and the years the meteoric stone had rested on the ground or in a museum case. Of course it would be necessary to take extraordinary precautions to make sure the meteorite was uncontami-nated by bacteria from the earth.

Wearing cheesecloth masks, like those used by surgeons, Prof. Lipman and his helpers sterilized their instruments and at each succeeding step took elaborate precautions to guard against earth-born bacteria, as shown in the illustration at the bottom of page 42. So drastic was this treatment that it probably killed some germs within the meteorite as well as outside, yet some survived and grew and reproduced beneath the experimenter’s eyes!

So startling is his conclusion that meteorites bring germs to earth, that bacteriologists cannot accept it until it is verified by future independent investigators. Doubts have already been raised. Yet Prof. Lipman himself answers many of them.

A flaming meteor may remain cold inside during its brief plunge to earth, so germs within it might survive; that they can survive passage through the extraordinary cold of outer space is also known, since recent tests at the University of Toronto showed germs could live after weeks of exposure in liquefied helium to a temperature of 450 below zero. Possible contamination from the soil? Some of the meteorites were picked up sterilized immediately after landing upon our earth.

If the germs rode to earth on meteors, where did they come from? Some meteorites are members of our own solar system; others may be strays from space beyond. Other evidence alone limits the absorbing speculation of where life might exist in the universe.

Of the nine planets now known in our own solar system, only the earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars could conceivably support life. The others are too cold, while Mercury may be virtually eliminated as too hot. Venus, recently discovered to have an appreciable atmosphere, might support creatures adapted to great heat. Mars is the most likely possibility, and recent tests of its temperature and atmosphere show it even more favorable to life than once imagined. There may be thousands of other solar systems like our own, each capable of supporting life and possibly human beings. Any attempt to imagine what sort of creatures inhabit these worlds has always been pure fancy; hence the unusual interest in the germs found by Prof. Lipman.

Could they be disease germs? Bacteriologists doubt that possibility; they point out there is less than one chance in a trillion that germs capable of attacking an earth-dwelling being might have evolved on other planets.

Bacteria look alike, but it is possible to identify and classify a new kind by delicate chemical and physiological tests. Dr. Lipman believes most of the germs he has found in meteorites are closely similar to those on earth, if not identical—an observation lending plausibility to the idea that other and higher forms of life outside our planet may be like our own. Tracing such forms of life, from the germs just found, will prove a thrilling adventure for the experimenters of the future, and will open new Velds of investigation.

Given what I’ve learned by watching the documentary series Heroes, I think it’s clear they succeeded.

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Sensational Study of HEREDITY May Produce New Race of Men
By Sterling Gleason

BLACK light, heat, and X-rays are being used by experimenters in sensational efforts to solve the mysteries of heredity. Workers in a score of laboratories in many different countries are delving for secrets locked in the living animal cell.

From their discoveries may emerge a new human race, stronger, more intelligent, and better able to resist disease. As the first step, they have produced an amazing chart by which the character of generations of flies yet unborn can be accurately foretold.

Radiations, the newest and most powerful tool of the physical sciences, are chief instruments in this biological study. Lightlike ether waves penetrate animal cells in the search for an M-ray that is asserted to control growth and death. Mysterious emanations of the human body, with the strange power to kill yeast, are being analyzed and compared with the flashes of energy given off when living cells are active or divide. Artificial races, laboratory-produced, grow for generations in the refrigerator while experimenters apply radiation from vacuum tubes or chemicals to produce types of life hitherto unknown.

In a pair of narrow-mouthed glass flasks, Dr. Calvin Bridges, an associate of Dr. Morgan famous cytologist, at California Institute of Technology, recently held in bottles two swarms of tiny gnat-like flies. From each flask he emptied hundreds of flies into small glass chambers filled with ether vapors. Succumbing instantly, the insects became motionless and were then poured out upon a gleaming white plate under the binocular microscope. Virgin females from one race and males from the other were selected for the start of a spectacular experiment. Into a tiny quartz tube Dr. Bridges put the males, then took them to the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory which houses the three-story X-ray tube producing the most penetrating rays ever controlled by man.

A low hum arose as giant oil-immersed transformers went into operation in the laboratory. A sharp hissing sound came faintly through concrete and lead walls as a million-volt flame of electricity crashed across spark gaps. A stream of invisible X-rays was being reflected from a target bidden in the cylinder of the tube which passed through the exposure room from floor to ceiling. Three seconds later, Dr. Bridges removed the X-rayed insects from their searing bath and placed them together in a flask containing a little agar, molasses, and yeast.

Within ten days, a new generation of the flies had been born. What mysterious rearrangement of the life-controlling elements, or genes, had been wrought by the influence of the X-rays? Placing the anesthetized insects under the microscope, Dr. Bridges sought the answer.

Striking abnormalities were at once apparent. The eyes of one male were bright vermilion instead of the normal dull brick red. The wings of another stood out stiffly at an angle from the body instead of folding back neatly along its sides. Still another had an extra pair of wings which no normal fly should have.

Into glass homes went the freak flies, to breed new generations of their kind. The results of these experiments were recorded by sticking push-pins with lettered heads into a tall, four-sided post, marked off by horizontal divisions. More knowledge had been added to the famous life-chart which graphically depicts how this species produces new kinds in bewildering variety.

In thick-walled vaults at California Institute of Technology, more than 700 distinct races of the tiny fly, known as Drosophila, live in refrigeratorlike vaults and reproduce their kind for the benefit of science. The insects go through their life cycle at the rate of three generators a month, thirty-six a year. Many of them have a recorded family tree which, if they were men instead of flies, would date back 15,000 years before Adam.

For forty years, scientists have known that characteristics are inherited according to a definite plan. But no one understood why freaks, unlike any known ancestor, sometimes occur. For example, there was a short-legged lamb which in the eighteenth century suddenly appeared in the flock of Seth Wright, a New England farmer, and was reared by him to produce the Ancon breed of sheep, favored because they are so short-legged they can not jump over an ordinary stone wall.

It was also known that the body contained two kinds of cells—body cells, and reproductive cells, the latter being the only link between one generation and the next. All cells multiply by division. In a growing child, each cell is believed to split at least once a day, producing millions in a month, billions in a year. But what mysterious change goes on in the reproductive cell to produce freaks, or “mutations”?

Dr. Morgan undertook to find out, using the tiny yeast fly as guinea pig. One day he made the exciting discovery that one of his flies had snow-white eyes instead of the normal brick-red. He bred the fly to produce a race of white-eyed flies and found the trait to be “sex-linked”; that is, it followed sex. Only the males of a particular generation had white eyes. Females were normal. Soon other sex-linked traits, as yellow body-color and miniature wings, appeared.

Why did these characteristics follow sex? Dr. Morgan said that whatever element in the germ cell determined sex also must contain something which caused the “mutations.”

Under the microscope the scientist could see the four pairs of rodlike chromosomes, like tiny punctuation marks. Chromosomes had already been studied intently for several decades without definite knowledge of their function. Experimenters knew them only “stainable bodies” in the central portion or nucleus of each cell. But now—Morgan was saying that one particular chromosome, which was different in males and females, must contain the genes which cause white eyes and other sex-linked characteristics, as well as sex itself.

His colleague, Dr. Bridges, soon discovered that certain freak flies with strange sex characteristics—flies half male, half female— were seen to have new con-figuration in their chromosomes. Certain freaks were remarkable in that no part of the fly was left unchanged. Bridges found that such flies had suffered accidents resulting in broken chromosomes, the loss of a whole section of chromosomes, or sometimes the gain of an extra piece. Thus he proved that the genes which produced the characteristics are actually parts of the chromosomes.

So tiny are the chromosomes that even under the most powerful of microscopes, they can be seen only indistinctly. Then came the startling discovery that in the salivary glands of the Drosophila larva, chromosomes grew to be sixty to seventy times bigger than ordinary. In these giant cells, experimenters could see the four pairs of rods with great detail. Their banded structures were clearly visible and the point at which the chromosomes had broken and recombined could now be accurately plotted on the life-map. Years of research showed that each part of each chromosome contained specific character determiners. Each controls the development of one characteristic of the fly. Thus the genes which Morgan had suspected, actually exist as minute groupings of the chromosome material itself.

Further research has now given the world a strange life-chart. Each side of the square post on which it is built represents one of the four chromosomes. Each button with which it is studded represents a gene, controlling some physical characteristic of the fly. The experimenter can read directly upon the map what proportion of grandchildren will show any given combination of traits. This actual mapping of the microscopic chromosomes created a sensation among scientists. In thirty or more laboratories all over the world, more than a hundred workers are spending their time in filling in blank spaces of the life-chart. Twice a year a special bulletin is issued by Drs. Bridges and Demerec as an international clearing house for information.

Even with the rapidly growing Droso-phila, experimenters might have worked for years without finding more than a few of the freak types which permit them to find the genes had it not been for X-rays. Nature produces few freaks, perhaps one in several thousand generations. But under bombardment with X-rays, mysterious changes occur in the germ cells. Chromosomes are shattered and recombined in new patterns producing freak flies at 150 times the normal rate.

WHY do body cells suddenly begin to run riot and multiply at an extraordinary rate, producing the mysterious disease known as cancer? In the chromosome of the mouse, Dr. Maud Slye, of the University of Chicago, has sought the answer, carrying her researches into the living germ cell of the little rodent in much the same way that Drs. Morgan and Bridges have probed the germ-cell of Drosophila. She has found that mice can inherit a susceptibility to cancer. For twenty-four years she has bred the animals for study, beginning with a pair mated in 1910. On the laboratory operating table, she has performed more than 116,000 mouse autopsies. Breeding tests have enabled her to narrow the source of the strange liability to cancer, to a single gene located in a chromosome of the mouse. Another gene, she discovered, has the power, if inherited, to protect its possessor against the disease.

Other experiments, revealing the effect of rays on plant life have produced results almost as spectacular as those conducted upon insects and animals. Magicians of the laboratory have altered the characters of plants, changed their time of blooming and produced new varieties by exposing them to the bombardment of invisible rays.

A few years ago, Dr. L. J. Stadler, of the Missouri College of Agriculture, employed a curious portable X-ray machine to study the effect of ths rays upon growing corn. Pushed up and down the rows like a hand cultivator, the apparatus bathed each stalk with X-rays before it passed on. As a result, Dr. Stadler found curious alterations took place in the growing plants. Through his researches, he hopes to develop new and better varieties of corn and other grains.

In Berlin, Germany, scientists in a unique ray laboratory have been employing fourteen kinds of X-ray machines, as well as other curious apparatus, to study the relation of rays and plant life. Besides the X-ray aids, they have installed apparatus for producing heat rays, ultraviolet rays, light rays, as well as the super-penetrating emanations of radium. Seaweed and other forms of marine plants as well as the more familiar plants of the fields have been subjected to exhaustive tests. On the roof of the building which houses the laboratory, automatic apparatus keeps tab on the exact amount of ultra-violet reaching the earth. These researches, it is expected, will prove beneficial by giving a clearer insight into the relation of growth and rays.

Far more mysterious than man-made rays are those of nature. The light of the sun seems to engender in certain plants the power to kill the Japanese beetle. Plants are known to give off potent radiations. Prof. Lieske of Mulheim, Germany, found that certain deposits of peatlike brown coal had the power to speed growth of flowers and to bring rats and mice to swift maturity. Mysterious mitogenetic rays given off by certain growing plants seem necessary for cell division and growth. Fantastic though such experiments may seem, they open up marvelous opportunities. X-rays are harnessed to halt the ravages of cancer. Radio waves generate artificial fevers which break the grip of malaria. Electrical currents stimulate cell activity and speed circulation to ward off pneumonia. Will other unknown rays, in combination with a life-chart like Morgan’s, enable man to analyze and rearrange the genes of mankind and build a new race of supermen?

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Deadly Smoke Menace ATTACKED ON WIDE FRONT

Cities Unite in Concerted Thrive Against Air Laden with Health-Destroying Impurities

AWAKE at last to the menace of smoke as a destroyer of health and property, great cities of the United States have opened campaigns against it. Medical authorities now realize that an ever-increasing proportion of cases of respiratory diseases is directly traceable to smoke particles floating in city air. Their baneful effect does not end here; for, blanketing the sky, they form a curtain through which only a part of the ultraviolet rays can filter.

Attacking the stone of skyscrapers, the sulphurous fumes that belch from smokestacks eat into the stone and cause it eventually to crumble. Huge cleaning bills for clothes and buildings, in great industrial cities, are the result of volumes of smoke polluting the air. Sometimes its depredations take spectacular form. Thus a New York farmer’s $3,000 crop of spinach was ruined by smoke from nearby factories.

Simply banishing preventable smoke, Henry Obermeyer, New York public utilities official, states in his recently-published book, “Stop That Smoke!” will bring about the following benefits: reduction of the country’s death rate by one-sixth; twenty to fifty percent more sunshine in cities; half a billion dollars’ worth of property damage prevented annually, and the country’s fuel bill cut by one-fifth.