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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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Batteries of Robots Scoop Power From Sea With Shovels

A ROBOT wave motor designed to use the tremendous unharnessed power of waves at sea for generating eleetric power at low cost has been invented by Chester E. Shuler of Los Angeles.

Robot-like machines built in the sea on concrete foundations have huge metal shovel arms which are lifted upward by onrushing waves. The counter-balanced arms drive electric dynamos through speed-multiplying gears, so that a small movement of the arms spins the generators at high speed. Ratchets permit the shovels to drop down freely as the waves pass on, to be in readiness for following waves.

When a battery of these machines are installed to be operated together, the shovel arms are all inter-connected and belted to huge flywheels either on shore or in a powerhouse built in the ocean. Each on-rushing wave lifting the shovels would give a new impulse to the flywheels. The dynamos could thus run at almost constant speed.

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Can Sex in Humans Be Changed?

By Donald Furthman Wickets

ALL the old landmarks are going, nothing is static, everything flows. Old dreams and old nightmares become realities. Life is created in the laboratory. Sex is no longer immutable. Recently the astonishing news made the rounds that science had actually succeeded in changing the gender of two female athletes. The miracle was accomplished by surgery and duly acknowledged by law.

Mary Weston, who held (and still holds) the shotput record for women in Great Britain, is Case No. One. In 1926 Mary won the British javelin championship of her sex. “She” also, at one time or another, represented her country’s womanhood at the Olympic Games. Today, Mary Weston, now known as Mark Weston, is a young man legally and is happily married to a normal young woman. Dr. L. R. Broster, a London surgeon, certifies: “that Mark Weston, who has always been brought up as a female, is a male and should continue to live as such.” Discussing his athletic records before his transformation, Weston insists that he believed at the time that he was a woman.
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Motorized Wheel Chairs Step Over Curbs and Climb Stairs

Two inventors—Ove Hauschild of Copenhagen, Denmark, and R. E. Church of Elkin, N. C.—have similar ideas about giving the wheel-chair patient more mobility. The Danish invention is an electric stair-climbing chair. Three small wheels connected by a vee belt rotate around each end of the axle. The chair will go up or down the steepest stairs, although an attendant is needed to steady the device. The
American vehicle is powered by a two-horsepower gasoline engine and enables the operator to ride over curbs, climb steep grades and negotiate twTo or three steps at a time—all without outside aid. On each side, a large wheel at the front is connected to a small rear wheel by a vee belt. In normal-travel position the vehicle rides on the two main wheels and a center tail wheel which turns for steering.

Bike Side Car for Baby Passenger

AT A rally of bicycling enthusiasts held recently at Hedgerly, Buckinghamshire, England, a novel bicycle side car was demonstrated which makes it possible for parents to take along their infant offspring when they go for a ride in the country. This side car, shown above, is equipped with a single bike wheel, has a bed-shaped body, and is attached to the bike frame with a metal rod.

I have no idea if this worked, or if it was even real, but it sure does look cool. Recently Boston Dynamics has made a robot pack-mule that is somewhat similar.

Here is a later article in Mechanix Illustrated with little tanks that look somewhat similar.

HORSE OF STEEL RUNS ACROSS FIELDS

A MECHANICAL horse that trots and gallops on steel-pipe legs, under the impulse of a gasoline engine, is the recent product of an Italian inventor. With this horse, he declares, children may be trained to ride. The iron Dobbin is said to canter along a road or across a rough field with equal ease. Its design recalls the attempts of inventors, before the days of the automobile, to imitate nature and produce a mechanical steed capable of drawing a wagon.

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Radio Robot Squirts Out 3 a Minute

A COMPLETE radio set every 20 seconds is the production goal of this new British automatic machine known as ECME (Electronic Circuit Making Equipment). Nearing completion at the research laboratories of Sargrove Electronics, Ltd., this automaton uses the sprayed-circuit technique to do the jobs of a double line of skilled workers. Wiring mistakes are eliminated, and the machine even makes its own tests, signaling the location of any defects in the circuit.

Plastic plates are fed into each end of the two parallel rows of electronic units shown in the photograph at the top of p. 160. As the plates move down the line, all the necessary inductances, capacitors, resistors, and potentiometer tracks are “built up.” After lacquering, other units automatically insert rivets, eyelets, and studs. When two plates are joined together at the end of the line, they form a complete radio receiver except for a few parts such as electrolytic condensers, tubes, and loudspeaker, which are added by hand. It is claimed that the sets will be both lighter and sturdier than those made with wired circuits.

This is a pretty fun article that does a pretty mediocre job of predicting the future. Must have been those damn labor-unions that held everything back. My favorite prediction is that used underwear will be recycled into candy.

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Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years

By Waldemar Kaempffert

Science Editor, The New York Times

WHAT WILL the world be like in A.D. 2000? You can read the answer in your home, in the streets, in the trains and cars that carry you to your work, in the bargain basement of every department store. You don’t realize what is happening because it is a piecemeal process. The jet-propelled plane is one piece, the latest insect killer is another. Thousands of such pieces are automatically dropping into their places to form the pattern of tomorrow’s world.

The only obstacles to accurate prophecy are the vested interests, which may retard progress for economic reasons, tradition, conservatism, labor-union policies and legislation. If we confine ourselves to processes and inventions that are now being hatched in the laboratory, we shall not wander too far from reality.
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Usually old articles of the form “Your x of tomorrow” be it house, car, phone, city, plane, etc are full of ideas that are wildly off the mark or just plain ridiculous. This article about the future of phones is remarkable because virtually everything in it has come true. Worldwide Direct Touchtone Dialing, Transistorized Switching, Audio/Video data compression, Voice Recognition and rampant miniaturization. All true. Not to mention that a tiny, touchtone, color videophone you can watch TV on is a pretty accurate description of my Motorola RAZR.

I also love the idea that everyone will get a phone number at birth and keep it for the rest of their life. If you call someone and they don’t pick up, you’ll know they’re dead. Or perhaps just sleeping.

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Your Telephone Of Tomorrow

Future may bring push-button dialing, videophones, direct calls anywhere on earth and pocket-size sets.

By Robert G. Beason

ON SOME night in the future a young man walking along Market Street in San Francisco may suddenly think of a friend in Rome. Reaching into his pocket, he will pull out a watch-size disc with a set of buttons on one side. He will punch ten times. Turning the device over, he will hear his friend’s voice and see his face on a tiny screen, in color and 3-D. At the same moment his friend in Rome will see and hear him.

The disc will be a telephone, a miniature model equipped for both audio and video service. Back in 1952, Harold S. Osborne, retiring chief engineer of American Telephone & Telegraph, envisioned this tiny instrument as the ultimate shape of the phone. In the future, said Mr. Osborne, a telephone number will be given at birth to every baby in the world. It will be his for life. When he wants to call anyone, no matter where, he will merely push the buttons on his Lilliputian phone.
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MONORAIL Comes of Age

By PHIL GLANZER

IMAGINE boarding a sleek, gleaming car and speeding to your office or home at 200 miles an hour—noiselessly and without a jar! Imagine living out in the wide open spaces where you’ve always wanted to live, away from the crowds and smoke and noise of cities—even a hundred miles distant from your work, yet only a half-hour commuting-time away.

Imagine crossing the continent in nine hours at 300 miles an hour, at a cost of not more than a cent a mile!
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ROBOT PLOWS WHILE FARMER RESTS
While its owner sits comfortably on his porch, a new farm tractor operated by radio control plows his field for him. Radio impulses governing the tractor’s movements are supplied by an automatic radio transmitter, and are picked up by an antenna on the tractor. A receiving set starts the tractor’s engine, works the throttle and controls the steering. The new robot, exhibited at the Chicago World’s Fair, is an improved model developed after earlier experiments.