Pastry Baked From Inside Out

PERHAPS the only pastry which bakes from the inside to the exterior is the Tree Cake produced in the pastry kitchen of a Chicago hotel. In making the cake, the hatter mixture is poured on a revolving spit. When gas jets have baked or toasted it to a delicate brown, more batter is poured on and this in turn is browned. The process is continued until the spit takes on the shape of a tree trunk becoming more and more uneven with each additional layer.

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The Most Dangerous Place in the WORLD

By WALTER E. STEWART

NAME six neighboring families. In your own, or one of these, this year will be committed at least one disabling accident. If past records hold good, it will cost you or your neighbor $148 to pay the doctor and for lost wages. The National Safety Council’s records show that in 1933 accidents in the home accounted for 29,500 deaths, a close second to the 30,500 deaths causes by automobiles. If you are an average citizen, the rugs on your floors are the cause of seventeen times as many accidents as all the electricity in your home. Small rugs skid on slippery floors, worn spots hook unwary heels, and curling edges stub the lifting toe. Vacuum cups or non-slip pads under small rugs, judicious mending for the worn spots, and a bit of proper reinforcing for the curling edge are the remedies.
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Tiny Prompter for Public Speakers

A PROMPTING device consisting of a reel of paper, on which notes are typed, contained in a case small enough to be held unseen in the palm of the hand, has been patented by a railway official who was embarrassed by lack of notes in making public addresses. A small wheel turned by the thumb operates the paper reel.

House on Wheels Towed by Auto

A NEW mobile house, just invented, can be towed over the highways on detachable wheels to any site chosen by the owner. As delivered to the purchaser, the dwelling, in outside dimensions, would be smaller than many motor trucks now in use, according to Corwin Willson, housing research specialist of Flint, Mich., the inventor. Read the rest of this entry »

The logical successor to the Wagon Wheel Chandelier

Chandelier From Auto Wheel
A SERVICEABLE chandelier for the cabin or camp can be made from a discarded auto wheel, as shown in the photo below. Insert a length of electric light wire through the holes drilled in the rim of the wheel to receive the bolts which hold the tire rim on. Ordinary electric light sockets are then screwed to the rim and wired up in the usual way, spaced to suit your taste. A hole is punched through the hub cap and a socket inserted therefor the center light. As shown in the photo, seven bulbs are easily accommodated.

Strapping your kid into the bathtub just seems like a bad idea. How about they just change the first sentence to: “It’s dangerous to leave a small baby unattended in the bathtub, so don’t do it.”

Safety Belt Moors Baby in the Bathtub

It’s dangerous to leave a small baby unattended in the bathtub, and yet, when the telephone rings or the doorbell must be answered, it is sometimes inconvenient not to be able to do so. Carl H. Fischer, a Council Bluffs, Iowa, engineer and father of three youngsters, solved this problem with the ingenious device pictured at the left. The baby is strapped in a harness that is attached to a metal bar. When the bar is turned, rubber pads threaded to the ends press tightly against the sides of the tub and hold the safety bar firmly in place.

Mud Skyscrapers of Desert Built Long before Log Cabin
Mud skyscrapers that were hundreds of years old when log cabins began to dot the American wilderness still stand in the ancient city of Shibam in southern Arabia. The modern steel skyscraper is only fifty years old. Shibam was a thriving city of tall buildings in the time of the Queen of Sheba, and still is a busy desert metropolis today. So constructed as to withstand the raids of hostile Arab tribesmen, with windows high above the ground, the Shibam skyscrapers were of mud mixed with straw and maize, dried and hardened by the desert sun.

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SKYSCRAPERS DOOMED by UNDERGROUND CITIES?

by WILLIAM JENNINGS

SAFE from bomb attacks—free from disease and changing temperatures—living in cities a mile beneath the surface of the earth—such is the dream of science for the man of the future, a not impractical dream which may doom the towers of Manhattan and every other large city to destruction.

Despite its towering skyline, the trend of building construction in New York City has been ever downward. Today the island of Manhattan and its surroundings are honeycombed with a vast network of underground facilities. There are more than 130 tunnels and underground areas in the metropolitan district; more than 2800 miles in the subterranean sewage system, and about GOO miles of subway trackage carrying 5,000,000 passengers every day. Read the rest of this entry »

Diagonal Bathtub Is Revolutionary

THE introduction of a new diagonal bathtub marks the first major change in bathtub design since the first installation in 1841.

Though the new tub is but four feet square, it has just as much room for bathing as the rectangular tubs. The bathing recess extends diagonally across the corners, with two seats in opposite corners. Mothers can sit comfortably while bathing children. The seat in the rear is very convenient to use while taking a shower. All plumbing is concealed under the rim.

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SERVANTS from the Laboratories

TEN pounds of clothes are washed, rinsed and damp-dried in 30 minutes by the Akka automatic washer, at right. The machine swishes soapy water through the clothes 144 times a minute. When the washer is done, a rubber lining in the lower half of the sphere hydraulically presses the clothes against the washer’s perforated top and removes 92 per cent of the soap. Then the washer rinses out the rest with cold water and, finally, squeezes water from the clothes.
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Hot-tub dome
Hot tubs and whirlpools might use less energy if they were covered with this 14-ft dia. plastic dome. Its 10 side panels and four top panels are formed of 1/8-in.-thick Uvex. Solarium, Inc. (2901 John, Troy, Mich. 48084) makes the free-standing structure.

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Grotesque Figures Carved on Modern Skyscrapers

A BOY with a bean shooter, a lone fisherman, rats climbing up hawsers are among the strange objects that be found upon modern skyscrapers or apartment houses. Thousands of people have passed through the buildings thus adorned without ever having seen these figures, or if seen there was no recognition of their purpose. Sometimes the architect has played a joke upon the unsuspecting owner, installing a queer figure in so inaccessible a place that only a person with a telescope could examine it. Read the rest of this entry »