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.

Compton gives a nice history of the rise of American science and engineering prowess as well as making some pretty good predictions here.

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.
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What they don’t mention is that the fellow in the picture is named Marcus Googlethorpe.

“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.”
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Using offshore systems to subvert a communication network to deliver ads for gambling, controlled substances and quack cures. Sure sounds like spam to me.

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »

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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