Can We Meet the Robot’s Threat?
How Automatic Weapons Are Changing Warfare
Crewless planes . . . mechanical brains that think faster than man . . . remote-controlled bombs with new, superpower explosives . . . vengeance-wreaking automatons designed for mass murder… guns that can’t miss … instruments that see through clouds and darkness —these new terrors imperil the peace of the future.
By ALDEN P. ARMAGNAC
Drawings by B. G. SEIELSTAD
WILL death-dealing automatons, sooner or later, imperil the lives of everyone? Long-secret war weapons, now brought into the open, raise the startling question. They see through clouds and the darkness of night, when human eyes are blind. Faster than a man can think, their mechanical brains perform intricate calculations and aim guns against swiftly moving targets. They blast objectives with a ton or more of high explosives from more than 150 miles away.
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New Efforts May Harness SUN LIGHT
By Robert E. Martin
SUNSHINE, our greatest source of potential power, is now largely wasted. It is highly probable, however, that a few years hence science will find a way to harness the mighty energy of the sun’s radiation. Solar engines and solar heating apparatus will then make it economically practicable for us to use at least a small portion of our now-wasted sunshine to run our factories, light our streets, cook our food, and warm our houses. In the United States we use, each year, something like a half billion tons of coal, a half billion barrels of oil, and fifty billion horsepower hours of water power for heat, light, and power.
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“Balloon Cops” May Clear Traffic Jams
THE traffic tangles caused by major football games has become a problem of great importance to those cities that have the larger stadiums within their bounds. For hours before and after the games the police are compelled to work at top speed to restore the normal movement of traffic, being called upon at times to handle some fifty thousand additional cars.
At the various traffic conventions held about the country this problem has received much attention but it was only recently that a plausible solution to the matter was offered.
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Berlin to New York in less than One Hour!
By HUGO GERNSBACK
IT is a curious failing of human natrue that it is inclined to pooh-pooh new and scientific ideas, particularly if they deal with high speeds. If you had told that master of extravagant imagination, Jules Verne, at the time he wrote his story “Around the World in Eighty Days,” that in 1931 flyers would circle the earth in nine days, he probably would have taken it as a good joke. Nevertheless, facts speak for themselves; and the circumnavigation of the globe has actually been accomplished in nine days. That it will soon be circled in twenty-four hours, no one now doubts.
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Very interesting article about pollution in the nations bodies of water. It would be another 34 years before the clean water act was passed. No doubt if you dig deep enough you’ll find that it was Prescott Bush and his faithful advisor Pappy Rove who caused this problem with their “Healthy Rivers” act.
Death Lurks in the River
by Huntington Stone
Cellulose and sawdust pollution in the North Atlantic, acid pollution in the Middle Atlantic, malaria in the Coastal plain, soil erosion in the Piedmont plateau, unpalatable water in the South East—this is the dangerous condition of our coastal and inland waterways. This story tells what the government’s special floating laboratory is doing about it
WE HEAR much about pollution. Conservationists inform us that the defiling of our inland and coastal water is causing a serious health menace to human as well as to aquatic life at an alarming rate. The life or death of every type of American fresh water fish is involved: bass, trout, pickerel, pike, perch, crappie, catfish, carp, sturgeon, salmon, whitefish and many others. Our own health, particularly that of our children, is involved.
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The census department had some serious technical chops in 1950. Census workers were given maps and aerial photos of their districts so they could find all of the residences. The punch card counting machines seem pretty advanced as well with data validation circuits that would reject, for example, a two year old with six kids. I wonder how many kids they considered it alright for a two year old to have?
COUNT OFF, AMERICANS…
By Richard F. Dempewolff
For A house-to-house canvass that will make all the brush salesmen in the world look like an army of pikers, wait until you see the one that gets under way April first. Yup, it’s time for the 1950 decennial census, Uncle Sam’s national inventory of noses—the biggest quiz show, most mammoth tabulating phenomenon and most accurate poll in history.
It’s a job that has taxed the ingenuity of a harried Census Bureau every zero year since 1790. At that time 17 U. S. marshals and 600 assistants knocked on colonial doors, asked five questions of whoever answered, then tacked their lists on the walls of local taverns, so that people who’d been skipped could add their names or Xs when they dropped by for a flagon of ale. Results were mailed to the President.
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Why Don’t We Have… BATTLEVISION
Tomorrow’s generals may be able to tune in on the battlefield courtesy of television, relayed to headquarters by battle-going TV Seeing Eyes.
By Colonel Robert Hertzberg
Signal Corps, USAR
THIS is no fantastic rambling of science-fiction!
If there is another war, it will provide definite opportunities for the use of modern television miracles.
TV set owners now enjoy better views of athletic contests than do most people right on the scene. Powerful telephoto lenses reach across playing fields and give spectacular close-ups of a runner dashing for the goal line or of a fielder snatching a high fly. Wide-angle lenses broaden the view and produce panoramic effects of great sweep.
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This tube is about the same size as an entire modern hearing aid.
Tiny Tube for Hearing Aids
Only 3/4-inch long and 3/8-inch wide, tubes like this powered such war devices as walkie-talkies and mine detectors. Now their maker, Sonotone, is using them in hearing devices. Three of them go into Sonotone’s latest instrument, which can be used for either low- or high-powered amplification.
Miami Has an Electric Nervous System
CAPTAIN Verner Smith pushed the attitude lever and nosed the blimp down closer to the water. Now it was within 50 feet of choppy Biscayne Bay off Miami, Fla., so close that the trailing landing lines of the huge powered balloon almost touched the water. A loudspeaker in the cabin blared: “This is Miami Communications, Vern. What’s happening?”
The sun-browned pilot pulled a control and the blimp nosed up again. “He’s still struggling. Trying to hold onto his boat. Get the patrol boat here—fast.”
The loudspeaker talked again. “The police boat radios that he’s coming over. Stay directly overhead. He’ll sight on you.”
“Check.”
Guided by the blimp, a patrol boat of the Miami Police Department scudded to the rescue scene.
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Putting Nature’s Power to Work
Methods of Harnessing Natural Energy Described by DICK COLE
Upward of 40,000 inventions a year are granted patents by Uncle Sam, but not one of these offers a practical solution of the problem which scientists agree is the most pressing of them all— that is, how to harness natural sources of energy for power. Mr. Cole does not profess to have solved the problem, but the methods he describes here point out the trend of probable development.
WHAT is the most needed invention? Not television—not new kinds of airplanes—not speedier automobiles. Men of science are agreed that what the world needs most is a motor which converts the sun’s rays and other forms of natural energy into usable power. Orville Wright, Lee De Forest, Elihu Thomson, and other leading scientists are among those who proclaim the need for a new motor.
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Radio Pen writes letters of fire on far-away screen
By George H. Waltz, Jr.
CATHODE-RAY tube, having a phosphorescent screen, makes it possible to broadcast to a distance messages that can be read as fast as written
SWEEPING across a mysterious screen like an invisible pencil, a beam of electrons recently penned the message of welcome that opened the National Electrical and Radio Exposition in New York City.
Seated before a small black box, Clarence L. Law, president of the New York Electrical Association, wrote his official greeting with a pencil-shaped stylus. Simultaneously, in a far corner of the exposition hall, the words of his message flashed across a screen in glowing script. As though guided by some unseen hand, a weird green spot traced out the luminous letters of fire just as they were written. This was the first public demonstration of the latest wonder of science—the cathode-ray pen.
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