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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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One of the rare precursors to the modern conservation movement.
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.
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This reminds me of the RCA Selectavision system.
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.
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Apparently we discovered alien life in 1933. Nobody every bothered to tell me.
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.
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This article is all over the place, but the last sentence is pretty prescient considering that the discovery of DNA was still 20 years away:
“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?
Given what I’ve learned by watching the documentary series Heroes, I think it’s clear they succeeded.
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.
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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.
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