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Let a Franchise Put Money in Your Pocket

If you’re an inventor with a product to sell, or a man who wants his own business, franchising could be your way to wealth.

BY JAMES JOSEPH

WHETHER you’re an inventor who has brainstormed a marketable product, or a fellow yearning to plunge into a business of your own, experts nowadays are apt to prescribe the same means of success: franchising.

Franchising your brainstormed product or service and you lease its use—and marketing —to dozens, even hundreds, of in-business-for-themselves franchisees, dealers who pay you a use fee or royalty, or both, for the privilege of cashing in on your success-laden idea. (Franchise fees range from $10 to $100,000, with the average from $6000 to $10,000; royalties run from 1% to 10% of gross sales.)

Advantages for You, the franchisor? At little or no cost, you get nationwide, sometimes worldwide, distribution and sales through a closely-knit chain of licensed-to-use dealers—and a continuing cut of your franchisees’ gross. An example:

Back in 1952, A. L. Tunick, an Illinois scrap dealer, bought a defunct plant that had been making an odd-ball product—electric conduction cookers. Tunick couldn’t find any cooker customers, but he did find that chicken done up brown in the gadgets tasted good, so he set up a take-out chicken dinner place. The result was almost instant success.

Franchising this proven success (and conduction cookers) to others eager to follow in his profitable footsteps, Tunick’s Chicken Delight, Inc., currently licenses about 270 independent quick-dinner take-out food places in 45 states and Canada and reaps a multi-million dollar annual gross.

Eager franchisees invest about $12,500 ($7000 cash) for an exclusive territory, conduction-cookers, remodeling of a take-out-dinner place—plus on-job training and supervision. Chicken Delight, 2211 Third Ave., Rock Island, 111., profits from the equipment and packaging it sells franchisees, including a special batter. Many of the company’s fran chisees net upwards of $15,000 a year.

Buy a Franchise and you buy the use of a profit-proven product or service. And you get on-job training, supervision by the franchisor, his money-making secrets and operational methods, and more. You plunge into a business of your own with most of the risk wrung out of it. The parent organization which hands you its profit formula sees to it (if only for the sake of its own cut from your profits) that you make good. Some will, in fact, refund all or much of your original investment if the “package” doesn’t please you or if you don’t reap the profits you should.

Another example: For just a modest investment of $1890—just under $600 down—you can move into one of the most lucrative businesses in the franchise field, on-location carpet and furniture cleaning.

A pioneer in this field since 1930, Dura-clean Co., Deerfield, Ill., trains you for a week at the company’s tuition-free school, provides you with all the special equipment you need, and backs you with a huge national advertising campaign.

Many Duraclean Franchises are taking home $10,000 or more every year. One reason for this is that the Duraclean dealer has little or no overhead. He doesn’t need a shop; his home can be his office. And all the work is done on the customer’s premises.

Better yet, the market is still almost untapped. Every homeowner is a prospective customer—and every theater, church, business, or school. The U. S. Department of Commerce reports there’s a $750-million potential in the home cleaning field alone; right now, only about 3% of it is being realized.

Another example: Rayco Manufacturing Co. (auto seat covers, convertible tops, mufflers) , with more than 150 outlets nationwide, builds a Rayco store (its experts select the just-right site), leases it to you, and sees that you profit (you get expert sales help, market- ing reports, intensive training, and are backed by research and advertising). Rayco, which claims it’s never lost an operator, asks a minimum $30,000 for letting you cash in on its name, know-how, and ready-made market.

Franchising? It’s Snowballing. Since the end of World War II, more than 100,000 franchisees—many of them business neophytes— have jumped onto the bandwagon.

Says a happy owner of a franchised doughnut shop in California, ”I made money from the day I opened. Going it alone, though; I’d probably have flunked out . . . fast.”

Underlining his why-franchises appraisal is a sobering report by Bank of America’s Small Business Advisory Service, which finds that 90.8% of all small-business failures are due to “inexperience . . . and incompetence.”

But pick with caution a first-rate franchise deal, and you all but eliminate 90% of the hurdles: The franchisor makes up for your inexperience with his experience. You can, moreover, pick from more than 400 franchisors: • Want to boss a potato production line? You can, as a caterer of pre-cut, packaged, and ready-to-cook potatoes to restaurants, hotels, and quick-order eateries. Minimum $2000 franchise fee, plus perhaps $12,000-$15,000 (part cash, part financed) for equipment, buys exclusive territory, training, process secrets, sales advertising training. Company, Redi-Spuds of America (6218 May-wood Ave., Bell, Calif.) claims your profits can be upwards of $18,000 yearly.

• No fee or royalty payment is presently asked for exclusive territories to sell predrawn commercial artist’s reference art conceived by commercial sketcher Bill Williams (Art Aids, Inc., 3422 Lake Mendota Drive, Madison 5, Wis.). Williams says the sale of one art system a day should bring an average $1500 monthly, on a commission basis.

Franchising Is Not New. Some of the nation’s biggest, most successful chains—Ben Franklin Variety Stores, with 2400 stores in 50 cities; Western Auto Supply, with 3717 dealer-stores; Midas Muffler, with more than 400 shops; Howard Johnson restaurants,, and nearly every one of the country’s new-car dealerships—are franchised, with a kind of economic charter from a parent company.

But, in one profitable respect, franchising is new: Now hundreds of more modest enterprises offer the investor with only a small grubstake a chance to cash-in.

How can you cash-in, either as a franchisor or franchisee?

You might—as did Glenn H. Freeman and Joseph D. Keating—prove that the impossible is not only possible, but profitable: that a three-year-old business open only two days a week can net you better than $25,000 a year.

Their first Glen-Joe packaged-meat store was as maverick as its specialty: freezer-quantities of tenderized steaks, pre-packaged “hotel style,” each steak weighing precisely the same, usually 8 or 10 oz., and sold only in 5- to 10-lb. cartons. Not only must housewives buy big (average purchase about $14, although many plunk down $40, even $60, for packaged meats), but they must shop from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fridays or 9 to 3 on Saturdays—or not at all. Those are Glen-Joe’s only open-for-business days. Freeman, who like his partner was 38 when the meat-by-the-carton idea struck, says: “We ran a market survey. Seventy per cent of the average market’s meat business comes on Friday and Saturday. We figured it silly—and uneconomic—to be open Monday through Thursday simply to grab off 30% of the potential shoppers. Better, we thought, to cater to the more profitable 70%.

Success Formula. Behind Glen-Joe, Inc.’s, bonanza stands a formula which, if you in- tend to franchise an invention, product, or service, must one way or another be duplicated. To be franchisable, what you offer must be (1) different, (2) available nowhere else, and (3) profitable.

Consider Glen-Joe’s basic offering—tenderized, pre-portioned meat, with emphasis on steaks. Tenderized by a secret-formula recipe in the company’s Long Beach, Calif., processing plant, the steaks can not be duplicated. The liquid tenderizer isn’t for sale. Moreover, it permits relatively low grades of cheaper beef to be served up as T-bones and New Yorkers. Thus, Glen-Joe’s tenderized product is at least 30% cheaper—pound for pound—than what the average supermarket sells.

With four stores of their own operating profitably (and serving as training centers for franchisees), Freeman and Keating could have expanded.

As with most franchises, however, the problem was finding competent store managers. In-business-for-themselves franchisees deliver —make profits for themselves and the franchisor. Hired managers often don’t.

So Freeman and Keating put together a “franchise package.” They offered, in return for about a $7500 franchise fee, to set up a Glen-Joe, outfit it with a walk-in freezer, refrigerated display cases, neon signs—the works, plus on-job training. Franchisees were expected to foot their own rent and operational expenses out of profits and buy all their meat from Glen-Joe’s plant. (Glen-Joe processes, cuts, and packages more than 750,000 lbs. a year, figures to make at least $50 weekly per franchised store, with a franchise grossing at least $800-$1000 a week.) And the company offered even more—an opportunity which required but two days a week, thus permitted a wage earner to keep his regular job while he and his wife took turns clerking over the weekend.

No Successful Stumbling. Freeman and Keating did not just stumble blindly into success, though. Both had been high-paid executives with a firm specializing in food seasonings. Both, in fact, had pioneered the sale of liquid tenderizer to big meat process plants. When they quit their jobs, they had the basic knowledge to succeed, their new tenderizer— and the packaged, pre-weighed, pre-tender-ized concept that was their brainstorm. The whole business was launched with less than $10,000 capital.

But be wary. All of franchisedom’s glitter isn’t gold. The franchise boom—mushrooming especially during the past three years and annually attracting more than 20,000 investors—is riddled with fly-by-night operators who, failing in their own enterprises, seek to recoup their losses by selling franchises to the gullible.

In a recent effort to clean house, some 80 big national franchisors have organized the International Franchise Assn. (549 W. Randolph St., Chicago 6), their avowed purpose to put the “Seal of Good Practice” on approved franchise operations. The monthly National Franchise Reports ($12 a year, 333 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago 1) serves up all that’s new and available in franchised opportunity. So does Modern Franchising, a new quarterly magazine ($2 a year, 320 Fifth Ave., New York City 1).

“Packaged” Success. Moreover, at least a half dozen consultants make it their business to turn profitable business ventures into franchisable “packages.” Among such consultants: International Franchise Consultants (369 White Plains Rd., Eastchester, N. Y.), National Franchise Development Corp. (1048 Kane Concourse, Miami Beach 54, Fla.), and Aaron Rothenberg and Associates (8845 W. Olympic Blvd., Beverly Hills, Calif.) Here are three of the most common types of “packages”: • Co-Ownership Franchises. You “buy” half ownership in a potentially profitable business, sharing ownership and profits 50-50 with the franchisor. Typical is TraveLodge, Inc., (3045 Moore St, San Diego, Calif.), with 195 motels coast-to-coast in the States, four in Canada, one in France, and 10 in Australia. Co-owners invest $35,000-$175,000 in a 35- to 150-room unit, manage the motel, earn a manager’s salary, get swank living quarters—and half the profits.

• Co-Managership Franchises. You buy the privilege of managing a franchisor-owned business—and earn a share or all of the profits. Some, such as International House of Pancake, Inc., managerships, are very profitable. Co-managers may invest $20,000 in an International Pancake House (home office: 6837 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood, Calif.), have sometimes earned twice that on first-year operations.

• Area Franchises. You buy an exclusive franchise area. Typical is a vended trip-insurance operation—Secure-Ur-Trip, Inc., (home base: 271 Church St., New York City). Secure-Ur-Trip of California (8845 W. Olympic Blvd., Beverly Hills), which holds a state franchise, re-franchises to smaller franchisees who invest about $180 per vending machine ($3600 for a minimum 20 units), place them in their franchised territory, turn over half of each vended trip-policy’s 50c fee to the franchisor.

Says Rothenberg: “Franchising makes sense both sides of the economic street. It often is as profitable for the individual who wants to set up big-time sales and distribution at minimum cost as it is for the fellow who wants a business of his own with both minimum investment and minimum risk.”

And One Success Story after another proves it:
• E. B. Smith and Dwight Patton began in 1948 with a hole-in-the-wall tool rental shop in Lincoln, Neb. Today their 250 United Rent-Alls franchisees in 46 states have boomed them into the heady brackets of success.

• Four years ago, 38-year-old Alvin Roth-stein and Sheldon Mermelstein, 36, roaded their first ice cream sales wagon in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. Today, their Dairy Dan, Inc., has some 460 franchised rigs on U. S. streets.

• Back in 1954, the idea of a specialized auto-muffler shop was only a glimmer of an idea when 32-year-old Gordon Sherman set up his first Midas Muffler shop in Chicago. If you’re a car owner, you know the rest: Midas Muffler’s franchised shopmen operate everywhere, earn sizable incomes for themselves and a multi-million gross for Midas, Inc.

Franchising? Never has the opportunity been riper for the man with a bright idea.

A Sampling of Franchise Opportunities…

Fast Profit.
One-Hour Martinizing dry cleaning (Ross and Section Road, Cincinnati, Ohio). Over 1500 franchised cash and carry dry cleaning stores in all states, Republic of Panama, Puerto Rico, and Canada. No previous experience required. Investment of about $9000 includes store location, planning, and layout; plus equipment, fixtures and signs, technical service, advertising and training. Franchise fee $500 with nominal annual renewal.

Clean-Up with Carpets.
Servicemaster (2117 N. Wayne Ave., Chicago 14) sells on-location carpet and furniture cleaning gear and know-how, asks an investment of $1995 (includes $695 for special equipment leasing, training, and chemicals good for $12,000 worth of business). You buy in for $995 down, with $70 a month for 18 months. Company gets 10% royalty on your gross, says you can net upwards of $10,000 annually.

Money in Cans.
A cash-and-carry paint store is the no-franchise-fee, exclusive-territory deal by Mary Carter Paint Co. (Tampa 7, Fla ). Company says many of its 600 franchisees began with minimum inventory (about $5450), now pocket $10,000-$30,000 yearly, thanks to company’s store-site selection, co-op advertising, and “Buy 1 Can, Get 1 FREE” sales method. Besides starting inventory, you need capital to rent and outfit store.

Sunny Profits.
A flow-on process (and applicator) that plastic-coats Sun-stricken home and store windows, reducing or eliminating glare, is franchised under name Sun-Stop by Transparent Glass Coatings Co. (533 N. La Cienega Blvd., Los Angeles 48, Calif.). No franchise fee; depending on size, an exclusive territory with equipment, materials, sales manual takes $3000-$5000.

Rewards from Music.
Recorded music lessons for piano, accordion, and guitar put top “instructor” from Vavro School of Music (South St. Paul, Minn.) in a student’s home. Ten-lesson beginner’s course on a 12-in. LP sells for $4.98. Twenty-four lessons on two records, $9.95. Complete course, $39.75. A $2,500 initial outlay buys the franchisee complete how-to, record players, records, promotion material. Company claims average franchisee earns $10,000-$15,000 a year.

Collect from Doctors.
Medical Management, Inc. (500 W. Second St., Dayton 2, Ohio), sets you up in a territory to acquire doctor-clients and provide them business services such as billing, collections, and simplified accounting. Cost of franchise is $4500, which includes $1000 prepaid processing, training, and initial supplies. You charge doctors about $1000 a year. Company says to expect $10,000 income yearly, you need an area with 100,000 or more population.

Doughnuts for Dough.
Mister Donut of America, Inc. (91 Providence Hwy., Westwood, Mass.), a mostly-Eastern-localed chain features 44 kinds of doughnuts. Cost of an owner-operator franchise is about $10,000. Company says operator who grosses $1250 weekly nets about $15,-000 a year, gets benefit of ad campaigns, promotions, training, and recipes. This new, lower-cost franchise package is for a Mister Donut Jr., a smaller version of larger packages.

Mobile Money.
“Soft” ice cream, with 30 assorted toppings, is sold in neighborhoods by a “factory on wheels” franchised by Mister Softee (Runnemede, N. J.). Claimed typical eight-month season gross is about $21,000; net (after truck depreciation, other expenses) is $9,000-$13,000. Truck life is seven to 10 years, and franchisee gets free repaint job every three years if in that period he buys 10,000 gals, of mix. About $2500 down to start, but total truck cost (about $9000) may be financed.

Profit from Rentals.
United Rent-Alls (2627 N. 27th St., Lincoln, Neb.) has 304 franchisees in 48 states, claims they gross $40,000-$ 100,000 yearly and net from $15,000-$20,000 on a $40,000-gross. Rents such things as tools, appliances, home medical essentials. Company charges $500 franchise fee, 10% royalty on rentals, helps pick site, shows you how to operate, sells you rental items wholesale. You build or lease your store. A $6000 investment buys franchise and minimum inventory; another $1500 rents and remakes store.

Before You Sign a Franchise Contract . . . Check These Points

1. What’s the reputation of the company or individuals offering the franchise? Check to see how long the firm’s been in business and how many franchises it has sold in your area. Double-check its net worth (with Dun and Bradstreet; your local Better Business Bureau; The National Better Business Bureau, Chrysler Bldg., New York 17, or with the International Franchise Assn., 549 Randolph St., Chicago 6).

2. Are you buying a proven business? Check on the franchisor’s own success. How many years, pre-franchise, was he in business? How well did he do? Visit nearby franchisees to see how they’re doing, if they’re satisfied, if the franchisor has lived up to his promises (verbal and contractual).

3. Beware the franchise contract which:
a. Asks you to pay an “advance fee” to hold a franchise opening.
b. Permits the franchisor to cancel the contract whenever he wants.
c. Holds you to a rigid sales quota, else you lose your franchise.
d. Prohibits you from reselling your franchise.
e. Fails to grant you a specific and exclusive territory. Be sure to know what “exclusive” stands for: state, county, town, an area of a town, or what. If the contract doesn’t grant you an exclusive territory, don’t sign.
f. Permits the franchisor to set up, under another name, a new but directly-competing franchise operation in your territory.
g. Fails to spell out specifically what obligations the franchisor has to you, and you to him. Contract should list precisely what you’re getting for your franchise fee —so much merchandise, so many weeks of training at a specific school, the price you’re to pay for the franchisor’s merchandise, and all other obligation. All this should be specified in writing and in minute detail.

4. Be cautious of vending franchises. They can be treacherous. Seldom can they be turned to profit, regardless of glowing promises, except by vending experts. Rule of thumb: Don’t buy a vending franchise unless you check it out with franchisees operating under the same franchise set-up.

5. Suspect any deal that’s too inexpensive, that let’s you in on apparent big profits for peanuts. Trend in franchise fees is steeply upwards. With the cheap deals, you’ll probably find you’re asked to stock up on some product and, in fact, that you’re not buying a franchise but simply the right to peddle the manufacturer’s product.

6. Does the franchisor really offer something you can’t get elsewhere for free? Does he really train his franchisees, guide their businesses, let them in on his success secrets? Or does he merely accept their franchise and forget them? Some do.

7. Be sure you have surveyed all offers in your area of interest. Study publications in the franchise field, such as National Franchise Reports, for current listings and descriptions.

8. Finally… make “caution” your guiding word. Any time you’re offering to hand somebody $100-$ 100,000, you’ll find plenty of takers. What you want is a lucrative franchise that’ll return your money… and a handsome profit besides. That, and a franchisor who stands to lose if you lose, profit if you profit.

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How a Sign is Painted

A water-color drawing, scaled one inch to the foot, is squared off by the pictorial painter for his own guidance in putting such outsize art work on a board with raw paint. This is shown below, overlaid on an outline sketch of picture and lettering that is keyed to serve as a color chart.

Neck-craners who watch skyscraper artists often wonder how they work out the big painted boards. These pictures of the jumbo sign above Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street show the successive steps. (1) First, the old sign is blocked out. This is done by a crew (five men) that puts up the scaffolding and gives the entire area one heavy coat of gray paint or, in the case of a rush job, a coat of quick-drying white. This crew also delivers in a metal box all the cans of colored paints needed for the new sign. (2) Then a pictorial painter and a helper, who does the lettering, take over. They square off the board and, with chalk and indelible pencil, sketch the picture and lettering of the new sign. (3) These scaffold Rembrandts carry only their brushes and a few tubes of paste colors that the pictorial man may need to bring out highlights in the art. (4) The 41-by-51-foot sign (below), completed in four days, will retain high visibility for at least six months. Arrow points to the box of paints.

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Find Your Fortune in a New Career

America is back to the era where that knocking on your door could be opportunity.

By Lester David

NOT too long ago, Mel Hedrick was a gangling farm kid who rose sleepily way ahead of the sun to do the chores on his dad’s farm in West Salem, Ill. But Mel had an idea that he wanted to be a scientist. So he went to grade and high school in his home town, then to the state university.

Finally, as a full-fledged man of science, Mel got a job with the central research division of the Monsanto Chemical Co. in Dayton, Ohio. Right off the bat, he was asked what he’d like to do most. “Something helpful to farmers,” Mel replied. So he was signed to research work on soil conditioners.

A few months ago, just four years after he started, came the payoff. Monsanto proudly announced a development which stunned the scientific world—the invention of a synthetic resin called Krilium for the conditioning of soil. A small amount of the substance will convert impoverished land to the consistency of rich loam. It was a gold mine for farmers, with undreamed-of possibilities. Co-developer with Dr. D. T. Mowry was the young scientist, Ross Melvin Hedrick, who milked cows and lugged wood on his father’s farm not many years before.

The story of Mel Hedrick is being written many times over with a variety of different plots in the country’s industrial establishments. Because industry is hungry —voraciously, unappeasingly, continually hungry—for job hunters.

Look at the picture: the greatest wave of industrial expansion in the U.S. history is under way right now. This year, companies are laying out over $21 billion in capital goods—more than ever before. Mobilization for defense has a lot to do with it, but a continuing boom is forecast by economists after the leveling off comes.

That means just one thing—jobs, plenty of them, at good pay and for a long, long time.

Where are these golden opportunities? What’s the pay? And the prospect for the future?

Well, the first big, almost desperate need is for engineers. There is a serious shortage which will become more and more acute as time goes on. The Aircraft Industries Association of America has just tossed this bombshell: “The greatest long range threat to aircraft production is the engineering shortage; it may seriously impede future production rates.”

Recent studies indicate that 30,000 new engineers will be needed each year by the government and ‘industry, and that less than half that number will be graduated by engineering colleges in the next five years. During the school year, companies scrounge like mad, sending recruiting officers to the colleges before graduation to snap up likely prospects. A panel of eight General Electric engineers recently revealed at an educational conference in Schenectady, N. Y. that all industries are bidding at a high competitive level for engineers. They are even promising bright students funds with which to continue graduate studies. Westinghouse and Bausch & Lomb are just two firms which have scholarship plans.

According to most recent reports, the average monthly starting salary for engineers is between $300 and $400 per month. Starting rates, however, differ widely according to the type of engineer, and they climb steadily and steeply as experience is gained.

How steeply? MI checked a number of employment agencies and here is just a smattering of the jobs open: chief electronic engineer, $12,000; production engineer, $12,000; chemical plant engineer, $15,000; assistant chief engineer to design heavy machinery, $9,000; mechanical engineer to supervise industrial plant design, $20,000; steam power plant superintendent, $14,500; mining engineer, $15,000.

Aircraft employes are in tremendous demand too, with many jobs going unfilled. The industry is short between 30,000 and 60,000 trained technicians, in addition to engineers. Recruiting efforts are under way in every state. Companies are unable to find enough screw machine operators, turret lathe men, production planners, foundry workers, grinders, inspectors, model builders, painters, radio and radar technicians, research lab mechanics and a dozen other specialists.

Many of these jobs require only two years or less of training and average weekly earnings, according to the Aircraft Industries Association, are $78.68. Pay zooms much higher for experts. And you don’t have to worry about how long the job’s going to last—it will last as long as man’s desire to surpass the speed of sound, to send rockets into space and as long as aggressive nations are on the prowl.

Here are other job opportunities in the country’s big plants—jobs waiting to be filled. This dope comes to you straight from the most official source you could desire— the U.S. Department of Labor which, in cooperation with the Veterans Administration, has gathered the latest data on the occupational outlook.

Tool and die makers: excellent long-range employment prospects. This is the highest paid machine-shop occupation in the nation, averaging about $2 an hour. Tool and die makers often rise to better jobs such as shop superintendent or tool designer, says the Labor Department. And still another avenue of opportunity is to open, after a while, your own small tool and die shop.

Chemists: tremendous demand, with earnings ranging to $400 for beginners and limitless opportunity for advancement. Total expenditures for research and development by government and private industry are expected to remain high indefinitely. Employment in the chemical manufacturing industries is also expected to stay well above pre-World War II levels. Corporation executives are frequently culled from the ranks of the chemists —I. M. Colbeth, for instance, president of the Baker Castor Oil Co., was a chemist for many years.

Shipbuilding and ship repair men: in view of the military procurement program, employment is expected to rise substantially. Nearly two-thirds of the shipyards are on the Atlantic coast. Every yard of any size offers employment in a wide variety of crafts, chiefly metal working and woodworking. In July, 1950, according to the last survey taken, the average production worker in shipbuilding and repair got $64 for a 37.8-hour week. Since then the pay has gone up—high up—for the more skilled and supervisory personnel.

Seamen: an official of the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy declares fledgling seamen have no trouble landing berths. “All they need do is go down to the shipping companies and ask,” he says. Senior year students, he states, have jobs even before they graduate. Starting pay is high—the academy reports that seagoing grads can expect paychecks of $400 a month to start, with quarters and board.

All-round machinists: job openings will be plentiful dueling the next few years. Average straight-time earnings are $1.72 an hour and prospects for promotion are good. Many advance to foreman of a section in a shop or other supervisory jobs, some develop into tool and die makers and others open and run small machine shops of their own.

Boilermakers: they’re the ones who fabricate, assemble and repair boilers, tanks, vats, smoke stacks and other products made of heavy steel plate. When the latest survey was taken, earnings ranged from $1.74 to $2.39 an hour—but that was a couple of years ago and wages have risen quite a bit since.

Instrument makers: small but growing field of skilled mechanics who build scientific and industrial instruments, including optical, electrical, mechanical, aeronautical, electronic and gyroscopic. The development of new and improved instruments for industrial and military purposes is of vital importance to defense. Earnings vary widely because of skill differences. In the last survey, hourly earnings averaged about $2, and the annual salaries in the Federal government ranged up to $6,400.

Radio and television technicians: a strong demand exists and will increase. Men are needed to repair home- radio and television sets and in manufacturing and servicing military, industrial and other types of electronics equipment. Apprentices and helpers earn up to $60 weekly while supervisors and foremen get up to $120.

Lens grinders and polishers: they grind and polish optical elements for binoculars, microscopes, range finders, photographic equipment and other highly accurate optical instruments such as spectrographs and contour projectors. The degree of skill required varies widely. Hourly rates range to $2 and higher and many highly skilled workers go into business for themselves, doing custom work for various industries.

But, the list of jobs hunting for people is long. Bosses are also seeking physicists, mathematicians, geologists and geophysicists, social workers, technical librarians, maintenance mechanics, tinsmiths, miners, coppersmiths and sheet metal workers, stenographers and secretaries, electricians, pattern and model makers, draftsmen, lumbermen, raftsmen and woodchoppers.

If you want the full dope on any of these occupations—exactly what the job entails, whether the work is available near your home town, how you can break in, what apprenticeship or training is required, what your earnings are going to be—get the Occupational Outlook Handbook (Bulletin No. 998) published by the Department of Labor (Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C.). It contains almost 600 pages of vital information. Price is $3. If you are interested in scholarships offered by industry to bright young men, send the Government Printing Office 55 cents for the fact-filled Scholarships and Fellowships (Bulletin 1951 No. 16) of the Office of Education.

But, suppose you’re a fortune hunter who is aiming real high, seeking new frontiers to conquer in a business of your own. What are your chances? Well, Lowel Wakefield of Seattle, Wash., went fishing. He hooked a fortune, too.

Lowel knew that king crabs, many up to six feet across, lay in abundance in the Bering Sea. But the sea is 5,000 miles from American markets and the waters are mean and cruel. He got plenty of sage advice to stay away, but Wakefield was obsessed with the idea of bringing them to U.S. tables in ocean-fresh condition. So, he borrowed capital and set up his Deep Sea Fishing Company.

Wakefield installed the latest mechanical and scientific equipment and fought the problem for four tough years. Finally, he licked it. He caught crabs by the tens of thousands where nobody had ever fished before, and he froze them the moment they were pulled from the ocean, thus preserving their freshness over the long voyage home. So, Wakefield found his fortune in the ocean.

In Boston, the Fulham brothers also found gold in the briny. After their father died and left them a small, struggling fishing business, the boys held counsel. There were thousands of commercial fishermen. How about thinking up something new? And then came the idea— wouldn’t customers jump at the chance of getting neatly packaged, frozen fish, untouched by any hands from the time they left the processing plant? The customers would and did. The one-pound packs of frozen, boneless fillets they put up are now selling by the millions. Today, the brothers own a huge pier in Boston and have opened a new plant in Portland, Me.

If you want to find your fortune in the ocean, the U.S. government is now going all-out to help fishermen find new commercial areas of conquest. A fleet of U.S. Fish and Wildlife vessels has been exploring the high seas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. One craft recently found red shrimp in large commercial quantities at depths of 1,000 to 1,500 feet. No one had ever known they were there. Another ship located new tuna schools off New England.

Wilbert M. Chapman, U. S. fisheries expert and a special assistant to the Under-Secretary of State says, “The vast ocean expanses today offer a new frontier as fabulous in untouched wealth as the old frontiers of the West.”

There’s still fabulous wealth in the earth of these United States, too. Sure, big time mining companies of every kind have dug and scraped for generations, but they haven’t taken everything that’s there by any means. Charles F. Kettering, the famed director and research consultant of General Motors Corporation, says that only five per cent of the coal has been taken from our mines, 90 per cent of the petroleum is still underground. The same is true, he declares, for natural gas.

Dorcie Calhoun found that out. Calhoun, a 45-year-old farmer, convinced that there was natural gas under his mother’s farm not far from Renova, Pa., got hold of some secondhand drilling apparatus and convinced some of his friends and neighbors to back his ven- ture. Month after month they drilled. The rickety rig broke down constantly, but Dorcie patched it up and kept going down.

Once a representative of a big gas company inspected his machinery, laughed raucously: “Why that thing isn’t designed to go down over 2,000 feet,” he scoffed. One of Calhoun’s friends remarked: “That’s funny. It’s down to 4,000 feet already.”

And then it happened. Calhoun struck a gusher and became wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. There’s a fortune underground—maybe under that little campsite you bought for a few hundred dollars, maybe under your farm. Dorcie Calhoun found natural gas. What can you find?

Fortunes have been made in plastics, and many more fortunes will continue to be made. Don’t get the idea that plastics are old hat— new synthetics are being developed all the time. One man is now experimenting with an all-plastic refrigerator; an Ohio firm is talking about making plastic house trailers. There is a new crab trap of wire mesh coated with plastic resins that resist corrosion by fresh or salt water; there are even small boats made entirely of reinforced plastics.

What uses can you dream up for plastics? They may be your future.

The magic word electronics has brought new empires into being. Waldo Kliever of the Minneapolis-Honeywell Regulator Co. declares that before long, practically everything people do will be done, or at least assisted, by electronics. He envisions electronic thermostats that will detect temperature and humidity changes in the air-conditioning equipment. Dr. Moulton of the Brookings Institution believes that through electronics we will be able to increase the yield of plant seeds, produce smoother milk, ice cream and mayonnaise, and also help to age whisky five years in a matter of days.

Electronics will bring fantastic changes in people’s living and working habits, and whenever such changes occur, there lie opportunities for fortunes. If your aim is big money, heed the advice of General Sarnoff of RCA: “Hitch your wagon to an electron.”

These are just a few of the opportunities that lie ahead for you. This is the age of new careers, of new fortunes in the making. Dr. Karl Compton of M.I.T. says: “I believe that the man of ideas, ability and ambition can look forward to the greatest opportunities in history.”

You’ve heard the knocking before—if you listen, you can hear it now again. Are you going to do something about it?

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our business is GOING TO THE DOGS

By Bob Swaner

I never realized until I joined the Navy what a problem it could be to keep a big dog supplied with good, nourishing food.

What has the Navy got to do with it? Well, I was an officer in the Shipbuilding Division of the Bureau of Ships, and my job kept me traveling a great deal. Of course I brought my family with me, including Tigue, our German Shepherd. He’s a real dog, tough and with the appetite of a lion. And there was my problem… feeding the critter.

Anyone who has a dog knows that a dog’s diet has to be kept pretty constant if the animal’s digestive system is to be kept up to par. New foods tend to throw the system all out of whack. Any changes of diet have to be introduced slowly. And here we were dashing from place to place meeting with some new brand of dog food in almost every different city. So a germ of an idea started to take hold… and I let it grow.

When I got out of the Navy I grabbed my brother Bill and we put our heads together. When we came up, there it was … the K-9 Food Service, catering to man’s best friend.

What we do is simple. We buy good meat, prepare it and deliver it, either fresh or frozen, to homes all over Westchester County.

We started with a small amount of capital from our savings, about $4,800. Our main trouble in those shortage-ridden days immediately after the war was to find the equipment we needed. We located a small butcher’s ice box to preserve the meat, a grinder, a meat block, cutting tools, and a delivery truck. All of them were used; we couldn’t get new stuff. This was a modest beginning, but it was sound. With that equipment we were able to start our business and set up our first routes.

We knew the people we had to sell to— dog owners. The first thing we did was to get a list of them from the license clerks in town and city halls in our area. Next we sent these people a circularized inquiry. We simply asked whether they would be interested in having fresh, government-inspected meat for their dogs delivered regularly at super-market prices. In other words, we had two appeals: economy and service. This was no frenzied sales appeal, but it was immediately plain that we were offering to fill a genuine need. The response was astonishing. Most direct mail campaigns are considered good if they draw as , much as two per cent in replies. We got nearly forty. There was no question but that our idea was sound.

We used personal canvassing, too, to find customers. Once a customer placed his order with us, his worries about feeding his pet were over; our truck delivered his dog’s food as often as twice a week if he wished.

Our first two years were the tough ones. We were getting business, but we needed more, for volume is required to furnish a real income. During those first years we slaved long hours. We had to do everything ourselves. We had to buy our meats, prepare them, deliver them to our customers and drum up new business. We worked out a lot of good selling techniques. Contacts with veterinarians and kennels were found particularly valuable. We sold to these at our regular prices, and they were so well satisfied that they sent us customers from their clients.

As we increased our business we began to expand. Our first expansion was financed by a G.I. loan, but once we really got rolling, we were able to finance all additional items from our profits.

Today, after five years in business, we have eight trucks, employ thirteen men besides ourselves, and feed more than 4,000 dogs. With new customers being added every month, we feel that we are far from the end of our expansion.

We buy only U. S. Government-inspected meat. The beef we get from the regular packers, and the horse meat comes from special horse meat packing houses. The meat is delivered boned, and we place it in the first cooler on hooks suspended from steel tracks overhead. It is put in through one door, and taken out through an exit door on the opposite end. As additional deliveries are made, the meat already in the cooler naturally is pushed back toward the exit door from which it is to be taken for .processing. This insures that the oldest meat (and we make certain we never have it more than three days) is used first.

We also sell a number of well-known standard brands of dog food, both dry and canned, including biscuits, meal, and so on.

We have just started a new promotion piece, a monthly bulletin which we call the “Growl.” It contains news of dog shows, articles on canine nutrition and other items of general interest to dog lovers.

Our business has its hazards, too. Every once in a while a route salesman will get bitten. To avoid trouble our men must know each one of their “customers” intimately.

For example, our route salesmen know all about Peter. He’s a huge St. Bernard. He never molests anyone approaching his house, but there’s only one way to leave! The salesman must put down his hand. Peter takes it in his mouth and gravely, gently escorts him to the gate. It’s the only way to deal with two hundred pounds of dog.

There are many areas in the United States which can make good locations for dog-food services. Conservative estimates of the canine population of the United States range between 17 and 20 million. That’s a lot of dogs, and they eat a lot of dog food. Try it with our blessing. We’re going to the dogs in Westchester, and have enough on our hands.

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HOW TO GROW A BEARD

It takes more than hair on your chin—you need a thick skin. But this man thinks it’s worth it.

By J. Robert Connor

THE male beard, lying fallow for the past 60 years, is emerging once again in all its hairy glory. Despite the prejudice that exists against the jungled jowl there is today a definite trend away from the razor. The man with the fluff beneath his chin is becoming more and more conspicuous on the city streets. Newspaper and magazine ads abound with facial foliage and the tufted chin of the serious conductor and the jazz musician attests to the growing revival of the beaver.

Perhaps the most prominent beard in the public eye today is the magnificent russet growth that enhances the appearance of Commander Edward Whitehead, the Schweppes man. Whitehead, who served with the British Royal Navy during World War II, vowed during the second year of hostilities not to shave until peace came. Then he tossed his razor overboard. He says, “After having known the delights of the beard I just couldn’t think of giving it up.”

Students of the beard hail Whitehead’s growth as a fine example of the Liederkranz style. Exponents of other styles are TV-man Skitch Henderson, whose trim Van Dyke is familiar to millions of viewers, and musician Mitch Miller who sports a snappy Sforza, a type generally thought to go well with horns and a tail. Rex Stout, author of the popular Nero Wolfe detective yarns, wears an under-the-chin style known sinee the War of Secession as a Shenandoah.

Undoubtedly a part of the fascination of beards for men is the fact that with a beard you can to some extent control what you look like; ‘you can cut your foliage to fit one of the styles mentioned above, or find another style that suits you better, or just play it by ear— improvise. There is hardly a man alive who has not wondered what sort of luxuriance he could achieve if he allowed his whiskers to sprout. It is a soul-satisfying experience to watch this mark of manhood blossom as nature intended it should.

Your MI editors, always anxious to keep our readers abreast of the latest developments, have looked into the current upsurge in beards to see just what lurks behind the bush. Resolutely, and to get firsthand information on the subject, I volunteered to grow a crop of chin spinach.

The first comment I received was a mild one—”What’s the matter, you stand too far from the razor this morning?” But criticisms grow more violent as your intentions become more obvious.

The most obnoxious character is the one who blandly remarks after three weeks that you’ve got practically nothing on your chin that he couldn’t raise in three days.

You get this treatment at the time when the most encouragement is needed. First, you don’t know if the damned thing will grow. Second, wherever you travel your beard becomes the object of prolonged stares by all and sundry, until you feel like pulling it off and stamping on it. Strangers will stop and ask why you are growing it.

They’ll ask such questions as “Are you in the movies?” and “Wassamatta, ya lose a bet?” On the road unknown motorists will pull up alongside your car and give you a savage glare.

But beard growing isn’t all agony. The number of women who affect distaste for the beard is more than compensated for by those who go for it as cats go for catnip. Two out of five women are unable to contain their enthusiasm. They stare at a beard in joyous fascination; if allowed to they will stroke it as the minutes fly by.

A prominent example of the modern beard-loving woman is Jet MacDonald, wife of William Johnson who appears in the Broadway musical Pipe Dream.” Johnson sports a growth about which Jet says, “It’s soft and warm, like kissing a precious little cocker spaniel.”

The leaders in the back-to-the-beard movement all report great satisfaction with their manly adornments. Folk singer Burl Ives says, “The first three weeks that I had a beard I thought it took courage to keep it. Now, when I look at the hairless, bare faces of the men on the street I know it is they, the exposed ones, who need courage. Every man should try one. They grow on you.”

The enthusiast with a medium beard can achieve satisfactory results in about seven weeks. A more hairy specimen may obtain a decent growth in about a month. Don’t be discouraged and return to the razor after two weeks when the hairs on your chin seem betwixt and between and your face looks like a plundered nest. This is just a passing stage through which the novice beard-grower can only mark time.

There is nothing you can put on your beard to make it grow faster, according to Charles De Zemler, an authority on beards who runs a barber shop in New York’s Rockefeller Center. Mr. De Zemler also says that, once full grown, the beard may be treated with a little wax to train it but otherwise water is sufficient to maintain its good looks aside from grooming. Hair tonics, pomades, etc., are taboo. Mr. De Zemler recommends professional care if you want a fine beard. The price of a facial trim in New York varies from 75 cents to $1.75. If you do go to a barber make sure he knows his business; beard trimming is a specialized art.

If you live where there are no beard masters, you had best trim your own. There is much pleasure in this and it’s easier than trying to give yourself a crewcut. Remember that while pruning your growth is not to be taken lightheartedly, a certain boldness is necessary. Look before you snip, then snip like a man. Your crop will require at first a comb—when it reaches the half-inch length it can be tamed considerably with this simple implement. A pair of small scissors—manicure scissors preferably—will do for pruning. The razor is retained to mow around the outer fringe of the design after you have clipped it. Shaving around this fringe must be done with great care and caution applied with the lather.

Now the question arises: What style of beard would you like to grow? Bop? Balzac? Viennese Fleck? A husky McClellan? There are over 100 types of beards that you can cultivate. By making a few innovations on your own you can increase the number.

A tumultuous history stands behind the tufted chin. Men have fought over beards, died for them and been honored for them. From the earliest times they were a mark of distinction among men. Religion and, later, politics and fashion determined these differences.

The ancient Lacedemonians and Egyptians considered chin fluff a symbol of wisdom and in order to obtain a favor from a Greek, you only had to touch his beaver.

To touch anyone’s beard, or to cut off a bit of it was, among the earlier French, the most sacred pledge of protection and confidence. For a long time all letters that came from the sovereign had three hairs from his royal foliage in the seal, for greater sanction.

Alexander the Great kept his embellished jaw but ordered his soldiers’ crops to be trimmed for fear that the enemy might seize them and lop off their heads with a keen-edged sword.

Russia’s Peter the Great, in an attempt to Westernize his subjects, put a tax on their bristles and ordered the upper classes to pay 100 kopecks to retain them. The lower classes had a one-kopeck fine hung on their chins.

Laurels for the longest beard in history may not go to Hans Steininger but his growth was certainly spectacular. Steininger lived during the 15th century in Germany and is reputed to have tripped over his beard while going down a flight of stairs, breaking his neck. Since he had no more use for his growth it was removed and given to the museum of Braunau, Austria, where it is said to be on display today and to measure eight feet nine inches.

As for the beard’s new popularity— beyond man’s instinctive yearning for it, there is no valid explanation. The movement runs head-on into opposition, as Gerald Barnes, a transit operator in the Atlanta, Ga., Transit System will testify. Barnes was fired from his job and insists it is because of his beard. He recently filed a $25,000 suit against his employers charging violation of his civil rights to “have and enjoy chin whiskers.”

“Chin whiskers” is, of course, inaccurate as whiskers do not grow on the chin. They grow on the sides and are otherwise known as mutton-chops, Dun-drearies and sideburns.

Part of the enjoyment of owning a beard is to stroke it, a very relaxing pastime which also helps to train it. Since it is an ornament you will find that it appeals to your vanity and you’ll fuss over it and give yourself admiring glances in the mirror. This is fun. As one Who has grown a beard, I have found it a very stimulating experience, especially as my wife is of the anti-beard faction. But I’m used to sleeping in the attic now and am determined that my beard shall stay.

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Cellophane is Born

By A. P. PECK

1. From forest giant to Cellophane is a long stride made possible by chemical research. For the manufacture of Cellophane, the Du Pont Company buys wood pulp—purified cellulose—in square sheets, soaks them in a caustic soda solution (above); the result is “alkali cellulose”.

2. Damp alkali cellulose is shredded into small fluffy particles, aged for two to three days in order that later steps in production may be carried out successfully. Above: Unloading ground-up chemically treated cellulose from shredder.

3. Aged alkali cellulose is treated with carbon disulfide, result of the reaction being cellulose xanthate. This compound, dissolved in caustic soda, becomes viscose, which in turn is aged or ripened in battery of tanks shown above.

4 Viscose ripened under controlled conditions, checked to insure uniformity, is filtered and re-filtered to remove all solid particles. Ripened viscose emerges from a narrow slot in a casting machine as a thin, weak sheet (right), is treated with dilute sulfuric acid and sodium sulfate.

5. Viscose regenerated in one or more acid baths becomes cellulose again, gains strength in sheet form. After several washing and bleaching operations to remove all chemicals, the sheet passes through a glycerin and water bath and through heavy squeeze rolls (above). In the last bath the film absorbs enough glycerin to keep it pliable.

6. If colored Cellophane is being produced, the sheet is dyed before the glycerin bath. Above: The finished Cellophane film being wound on large cores. Winding was proceeding at full speed when photograph was taken. The next step is cutting the finished film to length.

7. Rolls of Cellophane are run off onto huge drums (below) and then cut to length. Moisture-proof Cellophane is produced by passing a moist film through a moisture-proofing solution and drying. Both sides of the Cellophane are so treated simultaneously.

8 Cellophane wrapped in Cellophane (below), to protect the rolls from moisture. The film may be embossed between pressure rolls in any desired design.

9. Keen-eyed girls (right) are employed to assort and inspect sheets of Cellophane, cut from long strips made by the process described, at the Richmond, Virginia, plant of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. Cellophane film is usually made about .0009 or .0013 of an inch thick, some being made .0018 of an inch thick. Thicker sheets than this are made by cementing several thin sheets together, since it is difficult in production to make a single sheet thicker than .0018 of an inch.

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How to Get the Things YOU Want

a five-year plan that anybody can use By Emmet Crozier

TAKE a pencil and a sheet of paper and write down your aims in life. Don’t be too specific, but let your imagination ramble a bit. Think of the years ahead. Make a list of the things you want most; then check back to see if you’ve missed anything. The job should take about three minutes—not more than five—and when you’ve finished you will probably lean back and survey the penciled program with hopeful pride.

Now get ready for a tumble. I’m going to tell you—if you’re an average person—just what you’ve written: You want to be financially independent; You want to be your own boss; You want to travel—China, India, the South Sea Islands; You want money enough to take care of your relatives and dependents; You want to have a family, to own your own home, with a big yard for the youngsters, belong to a country club, and have plenty of opportunity for recreation.

No, I’m not a mind reader. If I am correct about those aims, the credit belongs to Newman L. Hoopingarner, professor of business psychology at New York University. The professor has made a study of the daydreams we all indulge in about the future. He has questioned more than 10,000 men and women. He knows the answers we all give.

I watched him make that simple “What-do-you-want” test in a class of nearly a hundred students in his course in Personality Improvement. That course is Professor Hoopingarner’s own creation. He started it, wrote the textbooks, prepared the 105-minute lectures, and braved the scorn and indifference of pedagogic tradition in making it part of a college curriculum.

A plump, round man, as broad as a barn door, he told the members of the class to write down their aims in life, and when they had finished he told them substantially what they had written. A shrill minority piped up with a few special aims, but, by and large, the professor had hit the nail on the head. There was an embarrassed silence. Professor Hoopingarner walked over to the window, where he stood for a while taking a leisurely view of Washington Square. When he turned to face the class again, his voice was tinged with irony.

“The benches out there in the park,” he said, “are lined with down-and-out men who have the same aims. They want money. They want to be their own bosses. They want to travel and have a good time. All the same—vague and hazy and hopeful. But—” And now the professor paused. He searched intent faces before him. He doubled up one fist and brought it down with a smack against an open palm.

” Not two per cent of the people in this world,” he said, “actually have a goal!”

“Come, come, Professor,” I said, a little later, “do you mean to imply that 98 per cent of us are just ambling along through life without any definite notion of where we are headed?”

That, replied Professor Hoopingarner, is exactly what he meant. To back it up, he told me about studies he has made of 100,000 men and women. College students, army recruits in the selective draft, shop foremen and workers, salesmen, business executives—all these have come under his scrutiny. By groups, individual interviews, questionnaires, he has studied a huge cross section of us under the psychological microscope. Two per cent are headed somewhere— the rest of us are drifting.

But he is not satisfied merely to jolt his students out of their classroom complacency by quoting figures. By the time they have finished the professor’s unique course in Personality Improvement, each of his students has constructed a Personal Five-Year Plan to guide his life. This plan may be short and to the point, or it may be long and involved. But it is specific; it is orderly. It visualizes a definite goal and traces the logical steps necessary to reach that goal.

A FEW weeks ago I attended a series of Professor Hoopingarner’s lectures.

“What do you know about yourselves?” he demanded of his audience. “Row do you measure up in physique, mental alertness, skill, aptitudes, temperament? What are your weak points? Your strong ones? What is your goal?”

Youngsters of seventeen and eighteen, women in their early thirties, tired clerks and bookkeepers struggling for a new deal, sales managers and executives up to sixty-eight years old, all seated in rows of hard, classroom benches, followed the crisp challenge of his words. Sometimes they squirmed uneasily as he scored a touch on some tender sensibility. On occasion they opened their notebooks and wrote feverishly to catch a significant phrase on the wing. Now and then they were brought up sharp by an arresting statement such as this: “Success in life is due 15 per cent to technical knowledge, 85 per cent to personality!”

That statement was the starting point in Newman L. Hoopingarner’s new theory of education. He ran across it ten years ago in the report of a survey for the Carnegie Foundation, made to discover the factors of success in business. Most of the educators and business men who read the report promptly forgot it.

But not Hoopingarner. If success in life was attributable 85 per cent to personality and only 15 per cent to technical knowledge, why should colleges and universities continue to devote their efforts and resources to that narrow 15 per cent? Hoopingarner figured that the larger field was worth exploring, so he rolled up his sleeves and started after it.

The result is a definite system by which he aids men and women to take stock of their personalities, strengthen their weak points, and chart the future course of their efforts accordingly.

“FORTY-ONE years old, Hoopingarner is broad, beaming, easy to talk to. Behind his rotund amiability, however, he is as earnest as a preacher and as hard-headed as a Wall Street banker. Listening to the professor expound his theories of personality improvement and life-planning, in fact, I caught some of the earnestness that old-time ministers used to get into their sermons on Hell Fire. He comes by that gift honestly.

His father was a Methodist evangelist. With his family of five children (Newman L.—named for Bishop Newman— was the third) the elder Hoopingarner traveled the Middle-Western Corn Belt in the eighties and nineties.

At the age of fourteen the boy Newman found himself running a 240-acre farm near Enid, Okla. His father’s health had failed, the two older brothers had married and moved away. For two years he plowed, harvested, milked cows, and bossed a couple of farm hands. The things he remembers best from that period are a cavernous appetite, a healthy fatigue that made him fall asleep about the time his second shoe hit the floor, and an unquenchable curiosity about the source and persistence of Oklahoma winds.

The family moved on to Texas, a climate better suited to the elder Hoopingarner’s recurring asthma. Looking backward over their restless migrations, Hoopingarner says they worked through a new climate about every four years. Southern Texas was in the throes of a land boom, and the younger Hoopingarner, now sixteen, caught the fever from a land agent and passed it along to an elderly farmer from Kansas with such enthusiasm that he made a thousand-dollar sales commission.

Retiring from the field of active evangelism, the Rev. Mr. Hoopingarner took his brood to Austin, Texas, where Newman and his brother Dwight finished high school and entered the University of Texas.

IN THE university Newman displayed so much aptitude for psychology that even before he was graduated he was given a job on the university extension staff, carrying study courses to the farmers and farmers’ sons in rural Texas.

On the trail of more psychology, Newman went to Columbia University in 1917, then to Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh a year later as a major research fellow in the Bureau of Salesmanship. It was in Pittsburgh, working with business executives, sales managers, and shop foremen that the broad field of human psychology narrowed to a study of personality in its relation to business success. The World War gave him an opportunity to put the theory to practical use. At a Georgia army camp he had charge of over 50,000 personnel assignments for the Ordnance Department.

After the war he worked for a time as a specialist in adjusting disabled soldiers to civilian life, and in 1922 New York University placed him in the School of Commerce as assistant professor of business psychology. Last year he was made a full professor.

HOOPINGARNER gives his students no formula for easily attained success. He holds out no hope for quick and drastic changes in personality. No psychological miracle can transform overnight, he says, a maladjusted Mr. Hyde into a useful Doctor Jekyll. But he does believe that an understanding of personality will make our problems easier and will smooth a good many rough places out of the path ahead.

Well, just what is personality? When he started out to track it down more than ten years ago, Professor Hoopingarner found that everybody had a hazy definition, but nobody knew much, specifically, about it. Elinor Glyn called personality “It” and let it go at that. Some people said it was the difference between the girl at the telephone switchboard and a movie star. Again, it was something after-dinner speakers had and other people lacked. It was a kind of shining armor handed down by your ancestors which you put on at birth and wore blithely through life.

None of these definitions satisfied Hoopingarner. He dug deeper. By and by he found what he was after. Personality, he concluded, was not a trait nor a magic gift heritage. It was not the way you combed your hair nor the art of telling funny stories. Personality was human effectiveness, human performance; the sum total of a man’s abilities translated into action.

“It might be said,” Hoopingarner explained to me, “that there is no such ‘thing’ as personality, just as it might be said there is no such thing as performance in an automobile aside from the composite result of the interworkings of the various parts. To explain, to analyze, attain, or improve this performance or result, it is necessary to understand the parts of the car and improve their workings. Some parts may be considered more important than others, but every essential has its function, and its importance varies according to the results desired. So it is with personality.”

HIS next step was to divide the personality of the individual into its several parts. Hoopingarner dissected personality into five qualities:
1. Physique
2. Mental Alertness
3. Skill
4. Aptitudes
5. Temperament

All of us possess those qualities in varying degrees. But that analysis was a little too broad, too general. So he divided it further into twelve traits, which we can all recognize and measure:

1. Impressiveness
2. Initiative
3. Thoroughness
4. Observation
5. Constructive Imagination
6. Concentration
7. Decision
8. Adaptability
9. Leadership
10. Organizing Ability
11. Expression
12. Knowledge.

If the genial professor had been content to rest there, we would have a pretty good bird’s-eye view of Personality in general, but we wouldn’t know quite what to do with it, or, specifically, how to put it to work to make our own lives richer and fuller. So he devised a series of tests with which any of us can measure ourselves and find out what we’ve got and what we lack Elsewhere in this article are a number of these tests. Try them on yourself, and see if they do not suggest to you some definite, workable plan of strengthening your weak points and improving your good ones.

Each of Hoopingarner’s students must take the entire series of tests, after which he walks before a motion-picture camera for a screen test. He can read from a prepared manuscript or speak extemporaneously. Or he can just stand there and grin. But the camera records faithfully all his unconscious mannerisms, the awkward things he does with his hands, the presence or lack of poise. Then comes a voice test on a recording phonograph.

The screen test—about 33 feet of film containing more than 400 separate exposures—is later shown to the student in private, and Professor Hoopingarner comments on his gestures and manner. Likewise with the voice test.

WHEN I had seen dozens of these tests made in Professor Hoopingarner’s classes, he took me to his private office and showed me shelves piled with notebooks, papers, and bulky envelopes— a heterogeneous mass of documents rising almost to the ceiling. These were the records of his curious experiment in education. He pointed out a five-foot shelf of case histories: fragmentary, groping stories of men and women who had come to him for help in changing their lives. He reached into that mass of documents and brought forth a leather-bound notebook.

Here was the five-year plan of a building superintendent, one of last year’s students. Charged with supervision of janitors, window cleaners, inspectors, and repair men for a group of buildings operated by a large corporation, he has a fairly secure position and a comfortable income. But that isn’t enough. As a student in the Personality Improvement course he has made a survey of his future, his job, himself. And here, in a 47-page notebook, he sets forth his five-year plan.

He is going to make himself a better building superintendent by studying building construction. He is going to train men under him to accept responsibility and think for themselves. He has a definite program of reading, study, savings.

TOURING the fall and winter (1932) he is going to read the messages and papers of Presidents of the United States. As an avocation he is going to try his hand at writing books for children. For 1933: “January to June: Experimentation with promoting of ideas for children’s storybooks.

” June to Sept.: Study of business English and grammar.

“Sept. to Dec.: Reading of literature and biographies.”

Professor Hoopingarner told me that this student thus far has faithfully followed the plan for 1932. He has already made considerable progress with his idea for children’s books, at the same time widening knowledge of his own job.

The professor turned to the shelves again and brought out another five-year plan. Here was a shopkeeper, a retailer of women’s dresses, mapping his course: “I intend to strengthen the present organization of my store so that I can delegate to others a great deal of the work I am doing. I also have in mind, in the event of opening another store, to have a nucleus of trained executives to carry out my ideas.

“In this present period of depression, the opening of a new store is unwise and almost impossible through lack of capital. Bearing in mind the need of capital at some future time, I am trying to enlarge my circle of friends and acquaintances, as ultimately it will be from this source that the capital will originate.”

Concerning his personal finances: “Of course, in these chaotic times, with salary cuts and economic difficulties, it is not easy to adhere to some methodical and systematic manner of saving. But here is a plan I mean to carry out: A certain percentage of my weekly salary must be put aside regularly and deposited in a bank. With every $100 I will buy some good bond, in all likelihood some United States bond. When I have accumulated about $50,000 worth of this security, I shall go to some good bank and invest in an annuity. As I recall my experiences and those of many of my friends—of the fortunes made and lost and the utter helplessness of these people—I think the wisest thing any person can do is to put a definite amount out of the firing line—out of reach of temptation.”

But—the merchant’s five-year plan goes on to say: “After all, success in life cannot be measured by mere dollars alone. I am also planning to get some grasp on Philosophy. … I have a very definite plan for enlarging my spiritual horizon. I shall read the Bible for an hour every day.”

“That man finished the course more than a year ago,” Hoopingarner told me, “but he still drops in to see me occasionally. Recently I checked up on his plan for the current year. In spite of increased financial problems in his particular business, he has kept methodically to his program of savings. He has widened his social horizon. And, just as important, he is reading the Bible every day!”

AND now the professor reached up among his shelves and brought down a sheaf of papers. They looked like English themes. For the most part they were handwritten. All bore the same heading: “My Own Problem as I See It Now.”

This is the subject of one of the first papers the Personality Improvement student must hand in.

Professor Hoopingarner lives at Rockville Center, nineteen miles east of Manhattan on semi-rural Long Island. A thirty-five minute train trip gives him the opportunity to observe the personalities of Long Island commuters twice each day. He plays golf occasionally, more to study human behavior on the links than to break 90. For recreation, he would rather pitch horseshoes than play any of the modern games. Most people take their bridge too seriously, he believes, and therefore it is not a healthy recreation.

In summer, he tinkers with an outboard motor on Huntington Bay, Long Island, where he has a log cabin near the water’s edge, and explores the beach near by, observing, with his thirteen-year-old son, the habits and behavior of crustaceans and other forms of marine life.

Even his small son has a five-year plan. He is going to be a surgeon, and, as a part of his preliminary training, he spends an hour a day running scales on the piano. Music and medicine? One of the most important things in a surgeon’s equipment, Hoopingarner pointed out, is a pair of supple, pliable hands and wrists. How better acquire them than by taking piano lessons?

“Look here,” I said to Professor Hoopingarner, “this course in Personality Improvement and Life Planning is all very well for the people who come here to the university and take the course under your guidance. They have the stimulus of your lectures and your instruction to prod them along. But how about the people who have left the classroom behind them?

” I have a brother-in-law in Chicago who never went to college and never heard of your course. How can he tackle the personality problem and make his own five-year plan?”

“Easiest thing in the world!” said the professor. “First, let him consider his job, his working field. What is its future? What branches of it are along the main stream; which ones are merely overhead? What are the requirements for success in that field? Anybody can answer those questions sensibly and honestly about his own work.

“The next step is to measure his own personality in relation to his job. He tests himself in the twelve traits, beginning with Impressiveness and ending with Knowledge. Here is the mirror in which a man surveys himself, check and double check.

“He knows by now that certain definite things are needed for him to attain success. After discovering his own personal deficiencies and his natural gifts, he writes out a simple program to strengthen the weak points and improve the strong ones. And the last step is to follow that program religiously!”

A FIVE-YEAR plan for all of us! Why not? Hoopingarner’s students have tried it—and it works! And there never was a period when men and women so greatly needed a definite plan to guide and stabilize their lives.

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How to Put a Ship in a Bottle

Making a full-rigged model that folds so as to enter the neck

By E. ARMITAGE McCANN

“HOW did it get there?” is the question always asked when a ship model in a bottle such as shown in Figs. 2 and 3 is placed on exhibition. You will observe the curious minded examining the bottom of the bottle to see where it was cut to admit the ship, or they will even inquire if the bottle was blown around the ship. But there is no fake about it; everything goes through the neck. With patience and determination, anyone can make this curious and always mystifying type of model.

First, get a clear glass bottle and clean it inside and out. If the neck is large, the work, will be easier; if small, the result will be more intriguing.

Although any kind of ship can be made, this work was in fashion among the clipper ship sailors, therefore a clipper, especially as it is long and slender, is well adapted to the purpose. We shall describe a full-rigged ship. It will not be exactly to scale, but the closer one can keep to the correct scale, the better the result.

Larger drawings, which will make the work considerably easier, can be obtained by sending fifty cents for Popular Science Monthly Blueprints No. 121 and 122 The hull is slightly more slender than the usual shape and cut off a little below the water line. It should occupy not more than half the neck of the bottle. The top should be cut into so as to leave the bulwarks standing; this also gives room for the masts and gear. The bottom should be hollowed as shown in Fig. 5. Paint and varnish the hull to any clipper ship colors you desire; usually, just black and white with red or green below the water line. Deck houses, lifeboats, and steering gear can be added if desired.

Since the hull will later be set in putty in the bottle, you must ascertain what the distance will be from the deck, when in position in the putty, to the inside of the bottle, so that the masts may be as long as possible yet not too long to stand upright.

The masts may well be in one piece, with steps cut in them to represent the lowermast, topmast, topgallant mast, and royal mast. Make them as slender as you can with sufficient strength to allow them to be strained on after the necessary holes have been drilled. Straight grained hickory, birch, or maple is suitable. These suggestions apply also to the bowsprit and jib boom.

The yards, spanker boom, and gaff are nicely rounded little sticks, tapered to the ends.

The principle of getting the ship in is merely this: All the masts have to fold down on the deck and then be erected when in the bottle by means of the hauling stays.

Each of the masts should have little tops and crosstrees of wood, celluloid, or fiber—and caps as well, if you like. Above and below the crosstrees of the foremast, holes pass through what appears to be the division between the lowermast and the topmast (see Fig. 4). Also drill the fore-and-aft holes as indicated for the stays, as well as a small hole for the futtock shrouds below where the top comes, and holes for the lifts.

The mainmast will be drilled in the same way, with the addition of athwart holes for the mizzen braces. The mizzenmast needs no holes for stays, but has to have them for the main braces as well as one each for the spanker boom and gaff. At the lower end each mast is slightly rounded, and a small hole is drilled for the hinge wires.

If you make the masts of three separate spars, they must be firmly joined. In that case, the shrouds and backstays will pass between them instead of through small holes as in the model illustrated.

The bowsprit has three vertical holes for the head stays, and the boom and gaff each have one hole at the mast end. All the spars may be white, black, or varnished.

The next step is to rig her up, outside the bottle. Two or three different thicknesses of thread should be used—say No. 50 black thread and No. 70 white or natural.

Fix the bowsprit firmly into a hole in the bow and rig it as shown in Fig. 4. These ropes can be hitched to the boom and pegged into the hull.

Fasten the yards to the masts in their correct positions by first tying a thread tightly around the center of the yard with a double knot abaft and then carry the thread around the mast, so that they will remain in position, yet can be turned to lie along the masts (see Fig. 5).

The spanker boom and gaff should be tied to the mizzenmast with the thread through the drilled holes.

STARTING with the mizzenmast, hinge each mast to the deck by carrying a wire through them and down through the hull, twisting the ends together underneath. You should be able to turn the masts down flat on the hull. Fasten the stays and reeve them through the hull or through the next mast and then through the hull or jib boom , as indicated in Fig. 4, leaving the ends long enough to pass out of the i bottle with plenty to spare.

The end of the mizzen topmast stay is pegged to the deck at the stern; then the stay is hitched around the boom and gaff and hitched again at the crosstrees. This will prevent the masts from coming too far forward when hoisted. Raise the masts and hold them in position by pegging the forestay where it comes out of the hawse pipe.

The easiest and neatest way to set up the rigging is to bore holes through the hull into the opening beneath as shown in Fig. 5. Thread a No. 9 needle with the heavy thread and start by pegging the thread end in the foremast hole; then I reeve through the mastheads and holes until all are up and tight when the mast is in position. The lifts and braces for each yard can be rigged as one. Start at one yardarm with a knot, reeve through the masthead, and knot to the other yardarm. Then, for the braces, reeve through the hole in the other mast or through the hull and carry the thread back to the first yardarm. The lift part of these lines should be painted black. All these threads must slide readily through their holes. Rubbing them with wax helps. The completely rigged model is shown in Fig. 6.

You may give the model topmast shrouds, rove through the top and a hole below the yard, and if you care to take the time, you may also add ratlines (steps) of very fine silk, although this is rarely attempted.

Now ease up the forestay, lay the yards along the masts, and lay the masts down on the deck. Make sure that all will go into the neck of the bottle, but do not let the model slip through. Draw it out and see if the masts will stand up again and the yards swing across. Then fold them down snugly once more.

Fasten the bottle with a clamp as shown in Fig. 2 so that it will not slip about while you are working on it. Put a layer of blue or green colored putty in the bottle after adding a little varnish to make it more tacky and to insure that it will dry firmly.

Sit in a good light and slide the hull with its gear into the bottle (see Fig. 1). With a long, stiff wire, press it into the putty sea. Untangle the end of the stays which extend from the neck and, still holding the model down, pull them one after the other, but be careful to do all the straining on the lower stays. At the same time, help the masts to rise with a bent wire. This operation is shown in Fig. 2.

When you have all the masts up, fasten the threads to the neck of the bottle, outside, and put a touch of glue where they come out of the hawse pipe and through the jib boom. Next, use the wire hook to swing the yards into position.

After the glue is dry, cut the lines off close with a sharpened wire, such as is shown in Fig. 7.

Additional picturesque touches can be added by inserting a lighthouse on a rock, a pilot boat or tugboats, and one or more fishing smacks in the water alongside.

As the ship is to be without sails, one or both anchor cables should come from the hawse pipes to the water.

Occasionally a bottle model is seen with sails, such as the one illustrated in Fig. 3. While the principle of assembling a model of this type is exactly the same, the addition of the sails, which are made of thin, flexible paper, complicates the work.

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Secrets of East Indian Magic Exposed

by Beverley Barnes

Famous tricks of Indian magicians—the well-known rope trick, the mango tree stunt, the basket illusion, the ability of fakirs to withstand pain—are not so superhuman as they seem. Science has pulled aside the veil of mystery surrounding these apparently phenomenal performances, and proved most of them , to be accomplished by natural means.

AN INDIAN fakir, sitting on a bed of spikes all day long, is always one of the marvels of India to foreign visitors. Others allow sharp needles to be driven through their flesh, or assume distorted attitudes and hold them indefinitely, all, seemingly, without pain.

And, according to the latest findings of science the secret of their success lies in the fact that they have mastered pain, either through mental exercises or by a process, not yet thoroughly understood by science, by which the broken ends of skin nerves are turned back and fail to deliver a message to the brain.

Fakirs—who must not be confused with the English term “faker”—are not necessarily magicians, though some magicians also are fakirs. The word, originally a Mohammedan term synonymous with dervish, means a religious mendicant. The word has been adopted by the Hindus and other creeds in India, so it is now in general use.

The magic of India, aside from the pain-bearing ability of many of the fakirs, is not remarkable. In fact, Howard Thurston and other magicians who have studied it have discarded much as childish, and improved on the rest.

The mango tree, grown from a seed within a few minutes, the famous rope climbing trick, the basket trick, in which a dozen or more swords are run through a wicker basket containing the magician’s assistant, and many others have been produced on American stages by professional magicians with better equipment and more startling results than the Indians achieve.

“No Such Thing As Pain,” Says Science Indian magicians imported to this country and Europe also have demonstrated the bed of spikes effect, and one attracted considerable attention as a human pin cushion for long and sharp needles. Live burials also were a novelty until the late Harry Houdini and other magicians duplicated them with trimmings the Indians had never dreamed of.

But it remained for Dr. Henri Pieron, noted French psychologist, to solve the ability of the fakirs to bear pain. As a result of his researches science has decided that there really is no such thing as pain, that all pains are imaginary, and probably an acquired instinct developed in caveman days to warn of danger.

There are numerous records of people failing to feel pain under intense mental excitement. Dr. Lorenzo Gualiano, an Italian physician, who examined a large number of condemned criminals, recently published his findings that they apparently were incapable of feeling pain, and that hypodermic needles could be stuck into their bodies without the subjects being aware of the fact.

Another instance recorded is of a man leaping from a burning building, and some time later, after the fire had been extinguished, suddenly feeling pain and discovering that a nail had been run entirely through his foot. As long as the excitement of the fire lasted he did not feel the pain of the nail.

Anatomists have discovered that it is rare for a nerve from the skin to continue unbroken to the brain, where sensations are recorded. Instead there are minute breaks, across which pain sensations jump, just as an electric spark jumps a gap. But in some cases the ends of the nerve, instead of facing each other, are turned back, and no sensation can pass, with the result that no pain can be felt.

Mind Can Ignore Pain Sensations It is even possible, psychologists believe, for the mind itself to break these contacts by sending an order to the nerve cells. Such cases are not at all rare, particularly in some forms of hysteria, where certain parts of the body or areas of the skin become insensible to pain. Theatrical hypnotists have often demonstrated this form of insensitivity, induced by hypnosis instead of hysteria.

In the Middle Ages one of the tests for witches was to stick pins in various parts of the body to see whether these dead spots, which were supposed to be marks of the devil’s claw, could be found. If the suspect, suffering from a mild form of hysteria, failed to jump at each pin prick she was condemned as a witch.

The famous cases of various saints who endured martyrdom without apparent suffering may be traced to a similar in- sensibility induced by mental excitement. Saint Sebastian had numerous arrows shot through his body without any apparent suffering. St. Lawrence laughed and joked with his tormentors while they kept him on a bed of coals, and there are numerous similar examples.

Some Races Immune to Pain Certain races, notably the Mongols of Asia, the Hindus, and the American Indians and Eskimos apparently developed a racial ability to’ block pain out of the mind.

Sufiism, rising in Persia and Turkey, and Yogaism, in Hindu philosophy, both have developed hypnotism and induced ecstasy by the use of music, drugs, dancing and hypnotic suggestion to a high art. The Hindu god Siva was the great Yogi, and his followers believe that through hypnotism and self-mortification they can attain miraculous powers and the control of nature itself.

Indian magic is quite another thing. Howard Thurston says there are thousands of magicians in India, but their methods are simple and their appliances crude. They are not miracle workers, and their tricks are easily detected by an expert.

The Mango Tree Trick The famous mango tree trick is the chief stock in trade of many of them, and it is performed in many different ways, but none of them fool an expert magician. In the trick the magician apparently plants a mango seed, covers it with a cloth, makes mysterious incantations, and, removing the cloth from time to time, successively shows a tree of various heights, up to two or three feet.

In its simplest form the magician simply provides himself with an assorted collection of mango tree branches of various lengths, and a quantity of cloths. Each time he removes the cloth to expose the growing tree he conceals in its folds a large branch to replace the one just exposed, and when he restores the cloth over the mango pot he removes the smaller branch and sticks the larger in its place.

A more finished performance is provided with some advance preparation. A hole is dug in the earth and a small man- go tree, planted in earth on a sheet of cork or board, is placed in the bottom. The earth is then moulded back over the mouth of the hole in an arch until it is completely covered.

Plant Grown From Seed Instantly When the spectators gather the performer digs a small hole through the top of the arch and plants a mango seed. He then either covers it with a cloth, or erects a small cloth tent over the spot, and proceeds to water the seed with pitchers of water provided by an assistant. In the one case the water is poured directly through the cloth lying on the ground, in the other it is poured inside the tepee-like tent. The water flows into the hole, floats the cork bearing the plant, and gradually raises it above the surface. When the cloth is exposed the tree apparently is growing out of the ground.

The rope trick was long the world’s • most famous magic mystery; famous be- I cause thousands of people had told of it, but no magician was able to find anyone who had actually seen it performed. In various versions the magician was described as throwing a rope into the air, where it remained upright, while either the magician or an assistant then climbed up the rope, disappeared, and took the rope with him.

The “Oxygen Drunk” Major Francis Yeats-Brown, a retired British army officer, claims the trick can easily be performed before an all-Indian audience composed entirely of practicers of Yoga, because they can hypnotize themselves into believing anything. The secret is to produce what flyers have come to call an “oxygen drunk” by alternate fast and slow breathing, mixed with holding of the breath as “long as possible, forcing more oxygen into the blood stream than it can absorb.

High altitude flyers have had considerable experience in recent years with the effect of too much oxygen in the blood. Frequently they are irresponsible for several hours after landing, talk incoherently, and have all the symptoms of acute drunkenness.

Secret of the Rope Trick An Indian .fakir who tried the trick before Professor Schmidt, a German scientist, did it well enough to fool the professor in the audience, but the German had had the forethought to conceal an aid in the fakir’s house, and the aid saw all the mechanics of the thing.

While the fakir set one end of the rope on fire and added powders to the flame to create a dense smoke, an almost invis- ible line was lowered from above, and one of the fakir’s assistants attached it to the other end of the magician’s rope. When the latter suddenly threw the rope into the air the light line was jerked up, and the heavier rope apparently remained rigid in the air.

Then, while the antics of the performer kept the crowd’s attention, a heavier rope was slid down the light line, carrying a clamp which closed about the end of the rope from below. To further obscure operations, a bundle of smoking chemicals and rags came sliding down the light line, and when the magician climbed the rope he disappeared into the dense smoke. The assistants on the ground then distracted attention while he whisked the rope up after him, and descended through his house, to reappear from the rear with the rope in his hand.

The rope trick has been performed in this country by Thurston and his assistants without any concealing smoke, but Thurston does not claim it is any more than what it is, a clever piece of deception.

How a Bowl of Rice Vanishes One of the common Indian tricks which Thurston has exposed is the vanishing bowl of rice. Apparently a large bowl filled with rice disappeared from beneath the magician’s cloth, only to reappear in the crotch of a nearby tree. The bowl in reality is a wire framework, on which is modeled a thin clay bowl, varnished to appear like a glazed bowl. A tray fits into the top and over it is spread a handful of rice, to give the illusion of a filled bowl.

The magician exposes it, then covers it with the cloth, makes a few passes and finally jumps on the cloth, to show the bowl has disappeared. In jumping he knocks the clay loose and crushes the framework flat. Beneath the bowl is apparently one cloth, but in reality two. When the magician picks up the covering cloth he also picks up one of the pair beneath, and thus conceals the remains. In the meantime an assistant has placed a real bowl of rice in the tree, and the magician then calls attention to it.

An equally simple trick is the cylinder of fire on a boy’s head. An earthenware cylinder, open at both ends, is placed on a boy’s head, tinder and oil poured in and set on fire. An intense flame results, but the boy suffers no harm. The secret lies in a small ridge inside the cylinder on which rests a circular disk, completely closing the passage. The fire is all above the disk, and the lower half of the cylinder remains cool.

Another trick exposed by Thurston is the shooting arrow, discharged by an image at a target, which it always hits, sometimes at distances of many feet. The image is built with left hand extended. In the hand the bow is placed and the arrow, notched to the string, is drawn back and its end placed in the right hand of the figure. Several seconds later, apparently at the magician’s command, the image releases the arrow and it hits the target.

The secret is a small bit of wax in the right hand of the figure. The end of the arrow is pressed into the wax, which is strong enough to hold it for several seconds. The magician watches the wax gradually pull out, and just as it is about to release the arrow gives the command to fire, and the figure apparently responds.

Not all of the pain-suffering fakirs actually risk pain. One of their tricks is the tub of boiling water, in which the magician immerses himself for as long as he can hold his breath. Actually the tub is nearly full of cold water. Boiling water is poured over the top, then the fakir dives through and rests in the cold water on the bottom.

A variation of the rope trick exposed by Thurston is done with a six-foot length of rope which the magician throws into the air, where it apparently remains stiff for a few seconds until he commands it to recoil itself on the ground, when it falls into coils. The secret is a flexible but fairly stiff steel wire running up the center of the rope. When tossed upward the wire will keep the rope stiff for some seconds, and when it falls the wire will drape itself into coils.

Indian snake charmers, mostly working with cobras, are a separate branch of Hindu magic. About forty-nine out of every fifty, according to Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars, of the New York zoo, work with cobras whose fangs have been extracted, rendering them quite harmless, but the other one of the fifty will use snakes fully equipped with fangs and poison. Their ability to handle the venomous snakes is more or less a mystery, but it has been suggested that, since the art is passed along from father to son the child may be inoculated while very young with minute doses of snake venom, gradually increasing until he is immune to the poison.

Hypnotism Explains Some Tricks Another possible explanation is a species of hypnotism. It is impossible to hypnotize any animal, bird or reptile in the way in which human beings are hypnotized, but they can be controlled in other ways. One of the simplest demonstrations which anyone can make is with a chicken, pigeon or other fowl.

Place the bird on a table, hold its head down to the board, and, with a piece of chalk, draw a straight line away from the head, starting at the beak. The bird, with its eyes focused on the line, will remain motionless for considerable time. The trick is often used on the stage to keep birds in place while other acts are going on.

The same effect can be attained with birds, and with some animals, by simply holding them under restraint until they cease struggling, then removing the hands. It may be minutes before the subject realizes it is no longer being held. Another way to “hypnotize” a chicken or bird is to rub the bird’s head between the palms of the two hands, twisting it about in the process. The bird becomes so dizzy that it may remain motionless for several minutes after being released.

The weaving of a cobra back and forth to the music of the Hindu snake charmer’s pipe is not due to the music, but to the movements of the Hindu himself. That is a common trick used in practically all animal training, where the voice or the music has nothing to do with the action of the animal, who responds only to manual signals.

I frequently feed peanuts to the bears in the zoo near my home, and five of the bears, two American grizzlies, two European brown and one Siberian brown, will sit up and beg, stand up, roll over or salute with either paw on command, but it isn’t the command they obey but a small movement of the hand holding the peanut, which they see and understand.

Similarly the snake charmer blowing on his pipe sways from side to side, and the cobra, with a third of his length raised to strike, sways back and forth following the moving target. Part of the Hindu’s control over his snakes, however, may be due to the pipe. Dr. Ditmars found that some of the Indian musical instruments, notably the sitar, a kind of mandolin, are capable of producing a few whining notes to which the snakes are particularly sensitive. One note would make a cobra shiver and fall over on its side, apparently lifeless.

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MECHANICAL ARTISTS BLOW GLASS BOTTLES

Age-old art of lung-powered glass blowing gives way to puffing, snorting robots of almost human intelligence, capable of turning out 115 bottles a minute.

by Harold L. Zimmer

HAVE you ever picked up a soda or medicine bottle and wondered just how anything so perfect could be turned out in such huge numbers? Perhaps through your mind has flashed the heroic picture of countless, ruddy-cheeked men, industriously blowing away on long tubes, the respective ends of which are covered with round, glowing balls of hot glass.

If so, change all your past conceptions. Glass and bottle- making has changed with everything else, in this scientific age. Huge, spiderlike monsters veritable robots, now puff and snort, throwing out to the belt conveyors as many as 115 bottles per minute! Imagine one machine doing that— faster than you can count! And each bottle is perfect— it has to be.

Were you ever through a bottle-making plant? Then let’s go through one of the world’s largest. Here we’ll find the answer to all our questions and learn many interesting things as well.

If you wish to start from the cellar and work up, we’ll see just where it all begins: A flat-car on a siding is unloading fine, white silica sand. Another, soda-ash and another lime. These are the main ingredients. Each is carefully stored in overhead bins.

Below each bin opens a funnel-like mouth, with a heavy trip valve and an automatic scale arrangement which shows how much material is being poured. Underneath the bins runs a regular trolley track and car. We see a car approaching; first, the man operating it stops beneath the bin labeled “soda-ash.” He pulls the lever and watches the scale to see that the proper amount is poured. Next, he runs the car to the bin, “lime”; then, on to the sand. We might say that “cullet” (broken glass) is also added to the mixture. This is necessary to give the bottles greater strength and purity. If enough cullet or waste is not available, the glass manufacturer often has to buy it from outside sources.

After passing through several mixing operations, the raw material is transported on overhead trolleys to the “batch-bins,” which are directly over the mighty melting furnaces. As the material, or batch, is needed, it is poured into the mouth of the furnace. Let’s climb down, now, to the factory proper.

The point where the raw material enters the furnace is called the “dog-house.” Through a small peep-hole, a workman allows us to glimpse at the seething, bubbling inferno inside. At first, we see nothing but a yellow glare. The workman smiles: “Here, take this, “and he hands us a piece of blue glass. Lo! We can plainly see all about the interior!

The molten glass resembles thick gravy simmering and cooking in some gigantic kettle. Over the bubbling mass, roaring gas jets are shooting flames. The glass cooks upside down, heating from the top!

The lake of glass inside is about 40 inches thick and is so hot it burns through fire-proof brick! A furnace which costs thirty or forty thousand dollars to build lasts, at the most, twelve months! Then another has to be constructed in its place. Cold air is constantly blown against the outside of the furnaces and in some instances, where the walls are becoming thin, a “plaster” of cooling water-pipes is attached.

One of the peculiarities of glass is that it sinks to the bottom as it purifies. This bottom layer runs out of a “throat” in the bottom of the furnace, and into a refiner. The refiner, while intensely hot, is not as hot as the furnace proper, and here the glass rests for several hours. Temperature for “cooking” glass is about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

From here, the glass gradually passes into a shallow trough extending outside the furnace. A revolving pot continually turns the cooling substance back into the furnace, keeping the material at a uniform temperature.

Now begins the actual manufacture of bottles. To describe the bottle-making machine would be nearly impossible. There are over 10,000 separate parts! The machine itself works almost with human intelligence. It is careful and gentle —handling delicate, half-cooled bottles so easily they aren’t even jarred—yet with strength enough to toss fifteen elephants around by their tails!

There are fifteen arms to each machine, and each arm contains a “thimble,” a blank mold, a finishing mold and a bottom plate. The blank mold stoops and sucks the molten glass into its steel mouth, just enough to fill it A “cut-off” whips by and slices the dangling, whispy slug free.

Revolving a short distance, the blank mold opens, and the stick of soft glass, looking like a home-made candle, is held in place by the thimble. The finishing mold now rises, and like an open hand, closes around the plastic material. As it does, compressed air hisses through the thimble and inflates the glass, blowing it out against the sides of the finishing mold.

In one complete revolution of the “spider” machine, the bottle is made. A chute is waiting, and as the arms swing by, a knock-out arm grasps the containers in turn and delivers them, via a belt conveyor, to the next step, the tempering “lehr.”

Strange as it seems, all the heat the bottles have been through is not enough. Were they allowed to cool naturally the way they are, they would break at the slightest touch of a human hand! The “lehr” is a machine which literally bathes each bottle in a stream of fire. A row slides down, rests over the flames an instant, and is whisked into the maw of a long, tunnel-like affair.

In soldierly fashion, the bottles now march slowly through the long length of the lehr, experiencing throughout varying degrees of heat. Finally, they emerge from the opposite end in a cool, bright room, where neatly uniformed girls lift them from the conveyor, inspect them, and pack them into corrugated cartons.

As you watch the thousands upon thousands of bottles parading from the finishing end of the many lehrs (there are thirty machines in this particular plant) you are forced to smile at your first idea of bottle-making. It would certainly take a lot of lung-power to blow up all of these bottles, as the old-timers did, once upon a time!

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Easy Juggling Tricks

by Sam Brown

Tricks of the juggler aren’t always as difficult as they seem to be. With a few simple preparations, as described in this article, you’ll be able to stage a juggling exhibition which will leave your audience gasping at your skill.

ONCE upon a time there was a man. And he did a very clever trick with seven matchboxes. He held one box in his left hand. And on this box he balanced the six others. And people thought he was very clever. But he only laughed . . .

He laughed because the whole trick, like many another juggling trick, was so simple. Try it for yourself: After taking the first box in your left hand, you must secretly push out the drawer about one-half inch; and, since the back of your hand is towards the audience, this passes unnoticed. Box Number Two is then set in place. As you adjust it carefully on top of the first box, you must casually push the drawer down so as to fit into the empty cover space of Box Number One, as shown in the photograph. Each succeeding box is fitted into place in a similar manner. The slight hold obtained by this ingenious subterfuge is sufficient to hold as many as ten or twelve boxes in an upright position.

To release the whole mass, you need only rest your right hand against the top of the uppermost box, and, with the left hand, push the drawer of the lowermost box up into place. The action of pushing the lowermost drawer home will result in a similar action along the whole line, and each drawer is fully returned to its respective cover. The final move is to remove the supporting influence of your right hand, and then—-Bang!—down comes your castle of matchboxes, and a mystified audience is left without a single clue as to the modus operandi.

Here’s something else. The performer exhibits a cork—the plain untapered kind which were so much in vogue before Mr. Volstead spoke his piece. Anyhow, the idea is to drop this cork onto the table from a height of about four inches so that it will stand on end. Try and do it! The average spectator will attempt to drop the cork lightly on end, but due to its great elasticity it promptly rebounds and falls on its side. And that’s the whole secret. If a cork, dropped on end, rebounds and falls on its side; then the same cork, if dropped on its side, will rebound and fall on its . . . Right you are, old man, as the Englishman would put it, that’s just exactly how you do it.

Listen to this one: A coin is very delicately balanced upon the extreme edge of a tumbler, and beneath the quarter—or whatever the coin may be—a slip of paper is placed, as shown in the diagram. The problem is to remove the paper without touching or upsetting the coin or glass. The average person attempting to do the stunt will either try to jerk the paper away or else remove it very gently from beneath the coin. In either case, the result is the same—it simply can’t be done. If you will hold the free end of the paper in your left hand, however, and then strike the center of the paper sharply with the forefinger of your right hand, as shown in the photograph, you will find that the paper slips out quite readily. In fact, you will be somewhat surprised to notice bow motionless the coin remains.

This next item has to do with the balancing of a stick of gum on the knuckles of your left hand. Moreover, the stick of gum rues and falls at the performer’s command in a manner that is quaintly mysterious. The “nigger in the woodpile,” in this case, is a straight pin. This is clipped between the second and third fingers of the hand, and the gum is slipped over, as shown in the photograph. Get a pin and try it! By flexing the muscles of the hand, you will soon see how Mr. Gum so unhesitatingly obeys the performer’s commands about going to bed and getting up in the mornings.

In this next little conceit, the performer takes two matches. He lights them and holds one about two inches above the other. With a light puff of his breath, the performer extinguishes the lowermost match. It is clearly out. And yet … mirabile diclu … the flame from the uppermost match is seen to slyly slip down the rising smoke from the lowermost match and set it once more on fire. The whole secret is in the match. One of these, the lowermost one, has been previously dipped into paraffin. That’s all there is to it. If you’re a Doubting Thomas, get some paraffin and try it!

For a novel and useful bit of legitimate juggling, try tossing a cigarette from your right hand into your mouth, as shown in the photograph. It really can be done. If you have the patience, and have seen the Hon. Douglas Fairbanks perform the stunt, you may, with practice, achieve sublime success. In the end you’ll probably give up, thoroughly baffled. And it’s here that the clever work commences. If you will take a cigarette and slightly “gimmick” it by inserting a small metal weight in one end, as shown in the sketch, you will find the juggle comparatively simple—as certain as the archaic boyhood juggle of tossing peanuts into the air and catching them in your mouth. Moreover, you can defy Mr. Gravity with this prepared cigarette by balancing it on your hat, on your finger tip, or letting it lean far out over the edge of a table, as shown in the photograph.

Another legitimate bit of juggling—that is, it’s supposed to be “on the square” consists of dividing an apple. And how! The “and how” is what makes the trick so clever. The apple is neatly parted in the center by striking it a quick blow with the lone forefinger!

No, it’s not necessary to be a strong man. Merely take your thumb nail, and while nobody is paying particular attention, run the nail completely around the fruit so that the apple’s skin is broken all around. That’s all there is to it. By striking the apple with the side of the hand, or even with a single finger, it can be easily parted into two equal segments, as shown in the photograph.

You’ve seen the stunt of balancing an egg on end—either end. It’s popular enough to repeat the explanation of how it’s done. The egg is blown of its contents by drilling a tiny hole in either end and forcing the contents through one hole by blowing at the other with the lips. Then the egg is partially filled with fine sand, the holes sealed up, and the egg stands in any position in which it is placed if .you are careful to shift the sand to balance it.

The next time you pay your check at the restaurant, you can puzzle the cashier with this trick: You apparently lay down a fifty-cent piece on the counter — the cashier hears the audible click of the coin being deposited—yet when your fingers are removed, there’s no coin there. The explanation is simply a matter of clever juggling.

Displaying the coin in the fingers of your right hand, you transfer it, during the process of turning your hand over, to the left. The fingertips of both hands are then placed down on the counter, the left some distance away from the right, which holds the center of attention because it apparently is the one containing the coin. But it ain’t so; the coin which made the noise when it was slapped to the table is under the fingers of the left hand, where it is eventually disclosed after the puzzled victim has done a lot of unnecessary searching about in a vain effort to discover what has become of the missing money.

Here’s another one: Place a twenty-five cent piece upright on a flat table, and sup- port it with the tip of the index finger, which is held parallel with the table. Then, stroking the finger supporting the coin with the index finger of your other hand, you inform your breathless public that the friction induced by this stroking will cause the quarter to spin when your finger is removed. It does—but here’s how: Just before releasing the coin from under your finger, the thumb of the hand doing the stroking catches the quarter along one side and gives it a flip which imparts its spinning motion. Thus there’s a purely mechanical basis to the stunt, but the observer is rarely sharp enough to “catch on” to the method.

Like most stunts, these juggling tricks require a little practice, but they are by no means beyond the average person’s ability. They arouse the curiosity and make your audience ask you, “How do you do it?” They won’t be satisfied until you tell ‘em. As to the trick of balancing a dozen balls in the air at one time—that’s something else again!

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HOW to be a Successful INVENTOR

by JAY EARLE MILLER
No. 3 of a Series.

In this, the third of a series of articles dealing with the problems of inventors, Mr. Miller points out some of the personalities who have found success through Specialization on certain ideas. One invention rarely makes a successful inventor, the money is made in amplifying the idea or applying it to new uses. You will find much of interest in Mr. Miller’s article. Next month he tells what not to invent.

LAST month and the month before we talked about what to invent, how to invent it, and what to do with it after the device was perfected. But one invention, as a rule, doesn’t make a successful inventor. Even Henry Ford did not stop with inventing an automobile, but proceeded to invent a system of manufacture that has revolutionized all industry. Edison might have rested, financially independent, on either the electric light or the phonograph, but his list of patents range through motors, dynamos, portland cement, mining machinery, and telegraph instruments, to mention only a few.

Edison’s genius is based as much on the diversity of his discoveries as on their individual worth. He is one of the exceptional few. Beulah Henry, the Memphis lawyer-banker’s daughter who has been nicknamed “lady Edison,” is like him in that respect, but when you review the field of successful inventors you will find they kept plugging away in their own chosen branch, and that often each successful invention suggests another. You have seen how William G. Kendall got more than 80 patents out of the vanity case, lip stick and powder business, and how Gregory Spohrer has some 70 successful patents in the compressed air field. Consider Georges Claude, the brilliant Frenchman who invented the neon lamp and made the words “Claude Neon” so well known in America that many people still think “Claude” is the given name of a man named “Neon.” In a lecture at Columbia University, M. Claude said, among other things, that “The difficulty is not to invent, but to choose, among the multitude of ideas that come to mind, the one that will be most worth while.”

Few people know that the great Muscle Shoals nitrogen plant built during the war is equipped with Claude machinery. The Air Reduction company, which produces practically all the nitrogen, argon, oxygen, acetylene and helium used in signs, light globes, radio tubes and oxy-acetylene torches uses Claude processes and Claude machinery. The same plants produce two other rare gases, kryp- ton and zenon. There are 50 factories in their chain turning out gases extracted from the air, and 22 plants producing acetylene.

Dr. Claude started his inventions while hunting for a method of preparing carbide for the production of acetylene. That led to a study of means of extracting oxygen from air, and the result was liquefied air on. a commercial scale. But in breaking clown air he found it also possible to recover the rarer gases, argon, neon and helium particularly, which had been, up to that time, laboratory curiosities—for the production of helium from natural gas in Texas had not yet come into being.

The problem of salvaging the recovered gases led Claude to decide on the creation of a new industry. Scientists knew that if they sealed neon in a tube containing mercury, and then shook the tube, the friction would generate electricity, causing the neon to glow, so Dr. Claude decided the natural use for neon was in lighting, and the neon sign tube was the result.

He is working now on a plan for recovering the thermic energy of the sea. It appears fantastic, but most of the things accomplished in the last dozen years, would have been fantastic if foretold at the beginning of the century. Dr. Claude points out that surface sea water in the tropics has a temperature as high as 28 degrees, Centigrade, and 1000 meters below the surface the temperature is only 4 degrees. If the two could be brought together water could be boiled, in a partial vacuum, producing power equivalent to a 300-foot waterfall.

This method would amount to using the energy of the sun for power, since the ocean temperature variations are produced by sunlight.

William F. Mangels, king of Coney Island inventors, is an example of the successful inventor who stuck to one field. As a boy he helped his father build carousel parts in a small machine shop. In his spare time he invented the “razzle-dazzle,” a fixed center pole from which suspended seats were swung. As an amusement device it was about midway between the May pole and the modern airplane swing. Mangels en- listed a partner with $500—that was in 1890—built one “razzle-dazzle” and toured the county fairs. Three men were employed to pull the swings around with ropes. The device was a huge success, and the partners ended the season with enough money to build several steam driven ones the next year.

In the next 25 years Mangels collected some 60 patents on amusement park devices.

He brought out the “Tickler” in 1907, an inclined plane with cars sliding down and bouncing against short posts, which caused them to revolve. The first one built cost $6,000 and earned $42,000 the first year. In 1914 he brought out the “Whip,” the most successful of all his inventions. More than 500 were built and leased on a royalty basis, earning $350,000 profits in the next few years. Rights were sold in seven foreign countries. An exhibitor in South Africa ordered one which cost him, laid down in Africa, $14,000, but paid for itself in six weeks.

Max Fleischer, artist-inventor, capitalized an unusual field, by improving on cartoon movies. A 1000-foot roll of film, which takes twelve minutes to run, contains 16,000 separate pictures, or “frames” and the animated cartoon consists of 4,000 pictures, each repeated on four successive frames. Until Fleischer came along 4,000 separate drawings were made. He conceived the idea of using cutout drawings with moving parts. To make a dog, whose body would not change, perhaps, through several feet of film, he drew a body, a head, ears and feet, on separate pieces, which could be moved and rearranged as needed. Two sets of ears, for example, were sufficient to produce the effect of a dog wagging his ears, by alternating the drawings. One pair is laid in place, a sheet of glass placed over the drawings to keep them flat, four frames of film in the camera suspended overhead are exposed, then the glass is lifted and another pair of ears substituted. To keep all the parts in their proper relation Fleischer conceived the idea of using paper with two holes punched in the same place in each sheet, the holes slipping over brass pegs on the drawing board.

Miss Beulah Henry got her start as an inventor when she conceived the idea of the detachable umbrella cover—making possible a number of fancy colored covers to match various suits, all of them fitted at will to a single set of ribs and handle.

Manufacturers were unanimous in saying it could not be done, and model makers declined to undertake the job. Finally, in desperation, she ripped a rib from an umbrella, used a stone for a workbench and a nail for a punch, and drove a hole through the end of the rib. From a cake of soap she moulded her idea of the snap fastener, took rib and soap to a model maker, and the trick was turned.

A doll that changes the color of its hair and eyes at will, and a rubber bath sponge with the soap contained inside it are among her other successful inventions.

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Houdini’s Master MAGIC TRICKS EXPLAINED

By R. D. ADAMS

The Mechanic Who Made Houdinis Trick Magic Apparatus In response to numerous requests from readers who enjoyed his thrilling articles, concluded in the December Modern Mechanics, telling of the methods by which Houdini, the master magician, performed his tricks, Mr. Adams has given us another interesting “behind the scenes” story. He built much of Houdini’s apparatus.

HARRY HOUDINI possessed every faculty and every facility for being the master magician of all times. He owned the greatest library on magic ever assembled. And he read and reread these tomes until it is unlikely that there was ever a major magic act of which there is any modern record whose secret he did not know or at least which he could not duplicate by some ingenious method of his own and make a decided improvement upon the original.

Fond as Houdini was of making escapes personally before his audience, he took an equal interest in causing his assistants to disappear.

A clever act he used for a time was of English origin. A small cabinet was let down from the flies by means of ropes and a young woman stepped inside. Curtains hanging from a wire supported by four posts were drawn about the cabinet. The audience saw the young woman reach through the curtains at each of the posts in front of the screen and help adjust them. A moment later, the ropes were pulled and the screen, which plainly had no flooring in it, was whisked up above the stage.

Again the hands were seen apparently readjusting the curtains around the cabinet. Then Houdini fired a pistol and the curtains fell to the floor. The girl had vanished. Where was she? She answered the question herself almost instantly.

“Here I am,” she cried gaily as she walked down the theater aisle displaying 011 her wrist the signature of a committeeman, which had been placed there at the beginning of the performance to prove that a “double” had not been used.

How did she vanish? There was a heavy rug on the floor which showed no trap door was used. She could not possibly have clung to the interior of the screen and been lifted into the flies. And if she had done so, she could not have gotten out and down into the theater aisle so quickly. Like all the others, the trick is simple enough once the method is known.

The first time the hands appeared to adjust the curtains quite ostentatiously, they were those of the young lady. But immediately after they were drawn back, she stepped around the screen and vanished back stage through a slit in the drop, her exit being hidden by the curtain and screens.

The hands that were seen at the curtains after the screen was hoisted were artificial. Fine silk lines made invisible against the dark background and operated from the flies caused the artificial hands to move as if adjusting the curtains and then to disappear behind the posts so they would be invisible when the curtains dropped. When Houdini saw his assistant at the rear of the theater ready to rush down the aisles, he fired the pistol for the removal of the cur- tains and the illusion was complete.

The last time I was with Houdini, he outlined a new trick he had in mind and asked me to make him a model of the simple contraption needed to make it possible.

Here is the trick as it would have been worked had his plans been carried out: A long table would have been placed in the center of the stage and a wide plank with hooks at each corner would have been placed across it. A young woman would have lain down on the plank and a thin piece of cloth been thrown over her in such a fashion that the body outline would have been clearly visible to the audience. Then the plank would have been raised a few feet from the table by means of ropes let down from the flies, the table would have been trundled off the stage by an assistant, a shot would have been fired, the plank lowered again to its original level, the cloth removed and the young lady would not be found beneath it. Instead she would be rushing down the aisle calling, “here I am,” as in the act just described.

And it undoubtedly would have been a most mystifying performance—this disappearance from a plank suspended in midair and nothing above, below, or at the sides of it to veil her escape.

As a matter of fact, however, she would not have been on the plank when it was elevated above the table. As the cloth was being thrown over her, she would have rolled out on a shelf at the rear of the table and been trundled out with it. A portion of the top of the plank would have been covered with light canvas so stained that the audience would not have detected the deception. Beneath this canvas, held tight by elastic but so arranged that it would give at the slightest pressure, a set of springs would have bulged up so as to create the impression that the audience could see the outline of the girl’s feet and torso beneath the light covering thrown over the plank. When the shot was fired, a jerk from an invisible cord would have released a trigger causing the bulging springs to snap back into position and the top of the plank to appear smooth and level.

Another stunt was the escape from a paper bag. Houdini was enclosed in a bag after which the opening was tied and sealed so that it could not be opened from the inside without certain detection. The moment he was trundled behind the screen where he made all his escapes, Houdini took a razor blade from his pocket and drew it at an angle across one wall of his paper prison. Stepping out, he reached” into one of the secret compartments of his screen where there is transparent mending tissue and a flat iron. Placing the tissue carefully inside the slit, he fitted the paper tightly together, warmed the iron over an alcohol lamp if he did not have an electrical one available, smoothed out all wrinkles perfectly and returned before the audience. The committee members inspect the bag. Strangely enough they invariably devote practically all their attention to ascertaining whether the bag is sealed as it was when they last saw it, satisfy themselves that such is the case, give a cursory glance at the rest of the sack and finding no gaping holes therein, shake their respective heads solemnly and depart convinced along with the rest of the audience that Houdini is a phantom.

An old trick which Houdini revived was that of “threading” a package of needles in his mouth.

Houdini’s method of presenting the act was to place in his mouth a number of needles, one at a time, then draw through his lips a long piece of thread. A few minutes later after which he had stalled with appropriate movements of his facial muscles to indicate he was forcing the thread through the elusive eyes of the tiny bits of steel, he drew out slowly before his bewildered audience a thread so long that an assistant had to take hold of one end of it long before it had all passed through his lips. On it at irregular intervals were threaded 150 to 175 needles.

The long strand of threaded needles neatly rolled together had been secreted carefully between his jaw and cheek. As he took the loose needles in his mouth, he worked them down on the other side of his jaw where his dexterous tongue also forced the piece of thread the audience saw him take into his mouth. His agile fingers removed the loose needles and thread, which he palmed, as he started to draw forth the threaded needles.

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How Your Glassware Is Made

By George H. Waltz, Jr.

TWO opposite extremes in manufacturing —meticulous handwork by skilled craftsmen and high-speed mass production performed by automatic machines—provide the wide variety of household glassware we use each day.

Up until 1903, all types of table glassware, ranging from tumblers to vases, were either hand-pressed or hand-blown by master artisans. Then came what is considered to be the greatest single advance in the 5,000-year history of glassmaking—the perfection of an automatic glass-blowing machine that put glassmaking on the production line.

As early as 1889, the idea for a mechanical glass blower began to form in the mind of Michael Owens, d. master blower at a glass works operated by Edward Libbey in Toledo, Ohio. One day while Owens was struggling with a particularly inept crew of apprentice glassmakers, he wondered if it wouldn’t be possible to devise a machine to take their places. Secretly, he designed and built a wooden working model of such a machine. When he showed it to Libbey, the boss was so impressed that he agreed to set up a company to carry on the experimental work with Owens as general manager.

Machine Works like Bicycle Pump Owens’ first full-size machines were simple and ingenious—and they worked. They operated on the principle of the bicycle pump. When a piston was withdrawn, molten glass was sucked up into a metal mold from a supply pot. When the piston was pushed in, the compressed air forced the molten glass against the sides of the mold to form the desired shape. It was as simple as that, and the same basic principle is still used today in the modern machines that produce the major portion of our low-cost household glassware.

Automatic machines, however, have by no means completely replaced the master glass craftsman. Expensive glassware is still created by the same so-called “offhand” blowing methods that have been followed for centuries. At glass works like those main- tained by Steuben Glass, Inc., at Corning, N. Y., skilled glassmakers still use the ancient processes and the crude tools of their craft to turn out decorative tableware and other glass art objects.

They still stick to the old “shop” method of glassmaking in which a master blower, known as a “gaffer,” supervises five assistants. Directly under the gaffer is his “serviter” who blows the glass into its basic form. Then in order come the “gatherer” who gathers or picks up a glob of molten glass from the glass furnace on the end of a blowing rod and gives it to the serviter, the “bit gatherer” whose job it is to gather up on a long stick called a pontil (pronounced “punty”) the small amounts of additional molten glass needed for decorations, stems, etc., the “stick boy” who holds the gathers, and finally the “carry-in boy” who carries the finished piece to the oven, called a “lehr,” where the glass is annealed.

The six men work as a team, with the gaffer calling the signals. He is the artist, the master, who carefully shapes the molten glass (or “metal” as the glassmakers call it) into its final form. His skill comes from long experience.

Glassware made by pressing, rather than blowing, is another traditional type that is still produced, but it too for the most part is now turned out on automatic machines. Many items such as heatproof ovenware, some types of lenses, and decorative ornaments are made in modern, automatic glass presses.

By blending handwork with machines, the glassmakers are making everything from cheap but attractive dime-store tumblers to expensive crystal works of art that enliven our dining tables for festive occasions and decorate our homes.

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MODELS FOR MILLIONS

It takes superb skill and endless work to produce those plastic scale model kits anyone can assemble.

LEWIS H. GLASER, founder and president of Revell, Inc., the plastic model kit company, has on file a letter received from the Department of the Navy in Washington. “The Revell ship models I have seen all possess a sailor’s concern for nautical detail as well as an engineer’s attention to workmanship and design,” the letter states. “You are to be congratulated on your Navy line which has made so many millions of Americans more aware of the ships and planes of our fleet.” The letter is signed by Admiral Robert B. Carney. Proud Mr. Glaser, a one-time radio repairman, who turned retailer back in 1938, began manufacturing plastic objects in 1942. Today he’s riding high on the boom in, scale model kits. The authenticity that stirred the admiral to such high praise is a consistent characteristic of the four-year-old Revell line of kit models, which is slowly covering the entire history of transportation. You can buy and as- semble a Ben Hur chariot, a 1913 Maxwell, a model of the Mayflower, one of several antique carriages or fire engines. Whatever you buy you know it will be a scrupulous copy of the real thing and handsome in its own right. And after an hour or so of cementing you’ll set the finished job up somewhere with your crusty fingers, gaze at it proudly and think, “I made that!” •

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How Ingenious Sound Producing Devices Fool Radio Microphone

You can’t always believe what you hear over the radio—the picture above proves it. Sound producing machinery of a large chain broadcasting company is shown. Thirty-three separate sound effects arc produced by the cabinet before which the operator is sitting, but in addition to this a large number of individual devices are employed, including numerous bells of various tones, a cigar box with a pulley and piece of string to simulate the sound of a curtain being drawn in a theater, oar locks used in acts calling for a rowboat, and a pillow to be struck with slats to produce the thudding effect of a prize fight blow against human flesh. Drawing a taut rubber band over a length of broomstick produces sound of a watch being wound.

The complete effect of a locomotive pulling out of a station is produced for radio audiences with these devices. Roller skates mounted on a revolving drum simulate click of train wheels over the rail joints. At right, a corrugated surface produces the puffing effect of a locomotive when wire brush is rasped across it.

Sea and water effects are produced with drums, two types of which are shown in the above drawing. Both are loaded with small peas and stones which rattle over corrugated surfaces, the main difference being that one drum contains a heavier “charge” of stones than the other. Thus, when used in unison, both the roar of beating sea waves and the soft swish of water against a sandy beach can be reproduced.

Here are two of the most novel radio sound-makers. At the left, a piece of string, suspended through the bottom of a tin pail, produces the roar of a lion when a bit of leather rubbed with rosin is pulled along it. Above, the sound of an airplane motor is reproduced by lengths of soft rubber hose beaten against a drum head by an electric motor. Apparent speed and distance of the airplane is controlled by regulating the small motor to speed up or slow down the revolving hose.

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Go Dig Yourself a Fortune

Mi’s prospecting expert gives you the lowdown on what to do when you make a lucky strike.

By Harry Kursh

THE last few years have seen the emergence of a new kind of lone adventurer in America, a type that is gradually replacing the old-time prospector with his whiskers, battered hat, pickax and pack burro. The new type is the sparetime prospector, an amateur geologist and enthusiastic “rock hound” who devotes vacations, weekends and every hour he can spare from his regular activities to searching for uranium and precious metals. Naturally, friends and neighbors think he’s a little off his rocker—until he strikes it rich and retires to Florida.

Of course, there’s a certain amount of routine worrying to be done between the time your scintillometer sounds off and the time your mine begins to complicate your income tax returns. In the May issue of MI I gave out the low-down on how to be a sparetime prospector, as passed on to me by government officials and other experts in the field. If any MI readers were inspired to try spare-time prospecting themselves and need further instruction, here’s how to act when and if you stumble onto a mineral deposit.

Federal and State Law. When you prospect on the public domain, where practically all valuable mineral discoveries are made today, you have to know how to deal with the Federal government. In almost every case, such dealings are with the Bureau of Land Management in Washington and its various district and regional land officials scattered mostly throughout the states west of the Mississippi. Under the mining and mineral laws, some of which date back to the California gold rush days, if you discover a valuable mineral on Uncle Sam’s lands you are entitled to claim the land. Then there are state laws to look into. Even if you’ve made a discovery on Federal property, nearly every state has its own regulations for staking out and record- ing a claim. If you want to make sure (1) that you’re not jumping an existing claim, and (2) that nobody will come along and jump your claim, you have to check with the appropriate agency in each state. A good way to find out where to make your inquiries is to check with the local Chamber of Commerce. Whatever the local rules are, that’s what you’ve got to follow.

Meaning of “mineral discovery.” A pile of gravel in your backyard may mean nothing; but if you found enough of it on Uncle Sam’s acres to sell at a profit, you’ve made a mineral discovery. Get it out of your head that a valuable mineral is only something like uranium, tungsten or gold. The Federal government has set up its own yardsticks and, with the help of the courts over the years, it says in effect that you may claim as a mineral anything you find in or on the earth if you, as a person of “ordinary prudence,” would find it worth your “time and means in an effort to develop a paying mine.”

There are a few exceptions. The government reserves its right in all cases to control discoveries of coal, oil, gas, oil-shale, sodium, phosphate and potash. This also takes in sulphur found in Louisiana and New Mexico. If you found any of thse “reserved” minerals you’d have to apply for a lease to mine it and sell it.

Terms of a mining claim. Once you stake an authentic mining claim, it’s all yours. You don’t even have to record the claim, unless the local laws require it. As for Uncle Sam, the property included in the claim is yours to sell, mortgage, lease, give away, provide for it in your will or mine it yourself. You have what is known as “possessory rights,” and no one, not even the Federal government (unless you were a fraud in the first place) can kick you off the land. You don’t even have to ask for a deed or what the government calls a “patent” to the land.

Two kinds of claims. You may make a lode claim or a placer claim. When the mineral you discover exists largely as a “vein” in the earth, you’ve got a basis for a lode claim; if it has been washed away from its original place by the action of water, you’ve got a placer claim. The only thing that may matter to you is the value of the claim. But it is important to make the distinction, since the amount of land you can get in a mineral claim on the public domain is affected by whether it is a lode or placer claim.

Who can stake a claim? You have to be either an American citizen or one who has declared his intention to be- come a citizen in order to stake a claim on government-owned land. You may also stake a claim in the name of a corporation or an “association,” if you are organized under any of the laws of any state. If you are under 21, you’d have to prove that you have “reached the age of discretion.”

How do you stake a claim? In government language staking a claim means making a “location.” You do it actually by identifying the four corners of the area in which you claim you have made a discovery. The familiar picture of a grizzly prospector driving wooden stakes into the ground fits the bill perfectly. That’s just what you do. The point is that the area of your claim must be easily identifiable by anyone, including field investigators from Washington. Then you put up a sign (or as many as you like; the more the merrier) proclaiming that it is your claim. On the sign, you print your name, the number of your claim and whether it is a lode or placer claim. And just to stress the point to anyone with shady ideas, print in bold letters: “No Trespassing.” If it is your first discovery and your first claim, naturally it would go down on your sign as “Claim Number One.” But under the law there is no limit to the number of claims you may make.

If your discovery is a lode claim, each claim is limited as follows: no more than 1,500 feet along the line of the vein, nor more than 300 feet on either side of the line that runs down the middle of the vein.

If it is a placer location, you may stake a claim to as many as 20 acres. You are not essentially restricted to following the course of the vein, as in a lode claim. That’s because in a placer there is no real vein.

Although the Federal government doesn’t care whether you record a claim, as long as you obey local and Federal rules, it is wise to record every claim. Always know exactly where each of your claims is located. If the land has been surveyed by the government, it can be described in terms of the official survey language, which is based on a method of subdividing land into townships, ranges, sections and quarters of acres. In cases of unsurveyed land, or in cases of small parcels of land, such as you get in each lode claim, you’d have to use the more familiar system of metes and bounds.

Identifying land, especially when valuable discoveries may be involved, is a chore that is usually left to the experts. Locally, this may be a lawyer or a real estate broker or civil engineer. If you are anywhere near prospecting country you can be sure there will be no shortage of signs leading to expert help. Whenever in doubt about where to go or what to do, contact the district or regional land office of the Bureau of Land Management covering the area in which you are prospecting. BLM officials probably won’t be able to recommend you to any specific individual, but you can always count on them for guidance.

Protecting your claim. After you make a location, if anyone contests your right to the claim you have to fight it out on your own in court. You get no help from Uncle Sam. That’s another reason why it is a good idea to record each and every claim. But if you don’t want Uncle Sam to declare your claim invalid, you have to perform what is called “assessment work.” This means that, under the law, for every claim you have you must perform at least $100 worth of work each year toward making the claim pay off. If you want to avoid complying with this rule every year you can apply to the Bureau of Land Management for a patent to the land. This will transfer the title from Uncle Sam to you. You can make the application any time after you are able to prove that you have spent at least $500 on the land. The expenditure can be in the form of labor or equipment. Your own labor, if honestly performed, can be included at the prevailing wages for such labor. This will cost you $2.50 per acre for placer claims and $5 per acre for lode claims, plus a $10 filing fee and some other minor expenses.

If you get a patent, you have the world’s best land title. You practically eliminate any chance of having your claim “jumped” or invalidated by the government.

But remember that you have “possessory rights” on any claim you make, whether it’s recorded with the county clerk or even if you never apply for a patent. Just keep up your annual $100 assessment work, obey state laws and you can cash in on the land and its minerals just as if you’ve had it in the family since Uncle Zeke stepped off the first stage that headed West.

How do you cash in on a lucky strike? Even professional prospectors seldom go in for mining. The expert mining engineer is in a class all by himself. He may not know anything about prospecting, but he usually knows how to exploit an ore discovery, how to get it out, how to get the most for his investment In a mine, and how to ship it to industrial customers. In other words, he’s a technically equipped businessman. It’s a rare prospector who is. Chances are that you as a sparetimer will not want to go into the mining business.

But don’t worry. Once you’ve made a strike it won’t take long for the word to get around. The scouts for major mining companies will be along, each carrying a proposition, before you can write home and tell the folks about it.

Can you get help from Uncle Sam? Yes, in more ways than one. The big problem after making a discovery, for instance, is to determine how valuable it is. Often this calls for more than a simple assay test. It calls for actual exploration, drilling and digging shafts, on the site of the discovery. This means know-how and equipment.

About three years ago the government realized that if it wanted to’ keep its vast armaments program going full steam, something should be done to make sure there are enough of the vitally needed minerals on hand. To do this the White House set up a brand new agency, the Defense Minerals Exploration Administration.

The job of the DMEA is to encourage new mineral discoveries and to help explore them for Uncle Sam’s stockpile. The DMEA has a list of some two dozen minerals, which it considers strategic and handy to keep in the stockpile. If you should discover any one of the minerals on this list, the DMEA will enter into a contract with you and will pay up to 75 per cent of the cost of further exploration, depending on the mineral you’ve found.

But don’t expect a grubstake to go prospecting. You’ve got to do the prospecting first, make your discovery, prove you’ve got a legal interest in the discovery, and then you can turn to the DMEA.

Since 1951 DMEA has executed more than 600 contracts and has put up aid to the tune of nearly $19,000,000. In these days of astronomical budget figures that may seem like chicken feed. But to the prospector who once had to put up or give up, it is the most important money in the world. When the DMEA was first created, leading mine spokesmen called it boondoggling socialism. Today, some of these very same critics are quietly making applications for DMEA aid.

If you apply for a DMEA contract, you’ll most likely get a visit from DMEA field experts. They will determine whether your discovery shows any signs that warrant further exploration. If you get a contract and you strike it rich, you have only to pay back to DMEA the amount you borrowed. If the exploration is a failure and nobody makes money, you can mark Uncle Sam’s loan off on ice. You get a polite letter expressing regrets all around and, in effect, wishing you better luck.

You don’t have to write to Washington to deal with DMEA experts. The agency has field offices scattered around the country. To know where these field offices are, and to learn more about the DMEA program itself in layman’s language, write to C. O. Mittendorf, Administrator, Defense Minerals Exploration Administration, Washington 25, D. C., and ask for this booklet: The Defense Minerals Exploration Program.

When you have staked your claims, recorded it, explored it and contracted with someone to work it, it may strike you that this has become a serious fulltime occupation. Where are the carefree joys of long ago when you were just a sparetime optimist with a Geiger counter? Cheer up— it’s not so bad. There’ll be the money to make up for the loss of freedom!

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How a Fraud Detective Works

By MARY K. PIRIE

WITH a girl perched on his brawny shoulders, the boy in the red swim trunks cavorted in the swimming pool. When the girl lost her hold on his wet back and started to slip, he reached up strong young arms and caught her.

While both squealed with delight, the boy thought how good it felt to be out having fun again. Ever since he’d faked that accident at the plant last month and claimed a serious back injury, Dad had made him stay home and wear a brace. “Unless you do, we’ll never get that $50,000 for ‘total and permanent disability’ we’re suing for,” the older man had warned.

So, he’d stayed home. Until this girl came along driving her convertible—and had a flat tire right in front of his house. Naturally he’d gone out and changed the tire; and naturally they’d become acquainted and made a date to go swimming. At a pool 40 miles from the plant, who would see them?

The Hidden Eye. The boy never guessed that inside an inconspicuous, panel-type delivery truck parked about 50 ft. away, a photographer sat taking 16-mm color movies. These scenes of the young man’s antics in the pool, later shown in court, proved that he didn’t have to wear a back brace as claimed. He had swum and cavorted without a brace and had even carried the girl on his shoulders.

Gene Gauss’s movies saved the insurance company thousands of dollars on this fraudulent disability claim; if the boy had been one year older, they might have resulted in a prison sentence for perjury. The girl who had been with him at the swimming pool (and on other active-type dates filmed by Gauss) had been hired by the photographer, who holds a detective’s license. The shiny red convertible on which she had such a well-timed flat tire was a rented prop.

This Dallas, Tex., photographer specializes in surveillance film for insurance companies, which hire him to prove or disprove disability claims, especially when medical evidence is inconclusive. Back injuries, for instance, may be claimed—legitimately—which don’t show up by X-ray or other tests.

To take pictures under the adverse conditions peculiar to surveillance work, Gene employs a variety of unusual equipment, some of which he originated or built. There’s his 1956 Ford panel truck. Outside, it looks like a somewhat bedraggled delivery truck, except that it has a 10 x 20-in. mirror on each side and another mirror at the back. Sometimes high school girls stop by the parked vehicle to powder their noses, giggling to each other, “Must be a funny guy, to want mirrors outside.” They don’t know that the mirrors are of one-way glass, allowing Gauss to sit inside the truck and see without being seen while he shoots moving pictures.

It’s Different Inside. The truck’s interior is equipped for taking movies in black-and-white or color, using 400-ft. Bell and Howell model 70-H electric cameras powered by a 150-watt A.T.R. inverter.

Gauss likes color for its value in identifying disability claimants. A man with flaming red hair, for instance, can scarcely deny his identity in a color movie of himself at work. Even as far away as a half-mile, Gauss shoots color successfully, using lenses as long as 1000 mm Focal length. With such extremely long lenses, he has to use a reflex type of camera in order to view through the taking lens while it is actually in use.

Though color movies are more expensive than black-and-white, Gauss’s clients often request them. Through special arrangement with the Eastman Kodak Company’s local plant, Gene gets one-day service on color movies. Through a local black-and-white processing plant, he gets one-day service on his high-speed DuPont type 931 rapid reversal film.

A carpenter claimed that his right hand had been injured so badly he no longer could hold a hammer to drive nails. Gene went to where the man was busy on a construction job, introduced himself as representing a trade magazine and asked permission to take pictures. The carpenter—apparently warned to watch out for photographers—merely limped around watching the job, but taking no active part while Gene shot his pictures. Soon Gene said goodby, drove off to a spot which he had marked out as offering concealment for his panel truck, parked—and waited for the “disabled” carpenter to begin hammering. Then Gene went to work—using a camera of his own design and building, a 16-mm army surplus G.S.A.P. 24-volt electric magazine-load gun camera, mounted on a Bishop rifle stock. It used a 9-in. Century lens, with a Weaver G.4 rifle ‘scope for a viewfinder. (For this type of work, Gauss now uses the Eastman K-100 camera because of its lengthy 40-ft. film run.) Claims Reduced. Movies Gene shot that day later reduced the carpenter’s claim from “total” to “partial” disability—saving Gene’s client a lot of money. As often happens, this man actually had sustained injury, but he was greatly exaggerating his disability. Gene’s objective is not to prove all claims fraudulent, but simply to arrive at the facts. “We try to be fair and impartial,” he says. “In 90% of the claims we investigate for insurance companies, however, pictures prove some degree of fraud.”

Using his gun camera, Gene shot color movie film from a truck parked 600 ft. from a Texas oil rig where a man was working as a roughneck, though he claimed “total and permanent disability.”

In another case, a steelworker claimed that because of an injury he couldn’t get off the ground—and sued for $40,000. Gene shot movies of this fellow working on the fifth floor of a construction job. From several blocks away Gene filmed a man roofing his house, who was supposed to be bedfast under an oxygen tent.

In addition to photographic skill and top-quality equipment, surveillance work calls for plenty of ingenuity. To get movies of a “disabled” man bowling, Gene sat concealed with the pin boys. (He used the 16-mm Bolex and a 2-in. Bell and Howell /1.4, shooting with existing light.) For movies of the same fellow roller-skating, he hid in the woods just behind a roller-skating rink and shot through an open back window.

Since the only lights were a few bare bulbs in the rink, he used f1.4 Bell and Howell lenses and the high-speed DuPont type 931 film.

A Self-Taught Photographer and “detective” (Gene smiles at the latter term, saying his operations hardly require the detective’s license he holds), Gene Gauss was originally a senior machinist operating his own auto repair shop. A liking for adventure caused him to drive a wrecker, and, being a keen amateur photographer, he began taking pictures of the wrecks for the sheriff’s department. (He still does this as a minor part of his business.) Insurance companies soon were asking for wreck photos, then for pictures in disability-claim cases. From stills, he went on in 1942 to movies, which so convincingly prove a claimant’s ability to work. He now has a great variety of equipment, valued at $50,000, including two-way radios and walkie-talkies with their own radio frequency, assigned to him by the Federal Communications Commission. When Gene and his operatives communicate from car to car by walkie-talkie, this frequency is unlikely to be picked up by others. Says Gauss, ‘”We’re permitted—and equipped—to use the sheriff’s radio frequency, because our service includes taking pictures of accident and crime scenes. But we avoid abusing the privilege.”

Constant Communication. Besides the panel truck, which has two-way radio and other special radio equipment, Gene owns a new Cadillac equipped with a Motorola radio on his own frequency. This enables Gene and his operators to talk directly to his wife, Mary, in the office at any time. They also can talk from car to car. His entire fleet of automobiles is equipped with radios on this frequency.

In the course of a day, Gauss and his operatives sometimes use several cars to follow one man. “Perhaps, from his home, we trail him to his job—this being the only way we can find out where he’s working, since he claims inability to work anywhere! It may take several cars, communicating by two-way radio and changing positions frequently, to do this shadowing job without arousing the man’s suspicions.”

To save expensive upkeep and to prevent the cars from becoming identified, Gauss rents extras as needed. As another means of cutting down overhead, he employs operatives on a part-time basis. In addition to Gene himself, the only full-time workers are his wife, who runs the Dallas office, and three technicians to handle the printing of still’ photographs. Both the Gausses often work 14 hours a day.

Especially on surveillance jobs out in the country, Gauss often takes aerial photographs beforehand to get the lay of the land, and he also takes aerial photographs of crime and accident scenes (crime, for the sheriff’s department; accident, usually for insurance companies and other litigants). He owns and pilots a five-place Cessna 195. Mary, who also holds a private pilot’s license with single-engine land rating, often pilots the plane for Gene’s aerial picture-taking.

To Cut Down the Expense of a business that requires a costly range of equipment— and because he enjoys tinkering—Gene originates or builds much equipment, especially photographic gear. He designed and built his gun cameras and his entire photo lab. Fabricating fiber glass over sinks in the print lab and in the film-processing room, he built, for $50, two 6-ft. sinks which would have cost at least $150 in stainless steel.

Gauss also designs concealed camera equipment which he uses to catch burglars and prowlers. Example: “For a wealthy home which had been burglarized five times, we built a soundproof box to sit in a head-of-the- bed bookcase, disguising it with strips cut from the back covers of books to make it look like the real volumes among which it was placed. With this camera set to operate automatically whenever anyone entered the room, we got movies that enabled the police to identify and catch the criminal.

“Every time we turn around, we have to build something,” comments Gene. “But in addition to saving us money, that’s part of the fun of this business. For instance, we have designed and built all types of special camera mounts to hang on the side of a car door or a dashboard; this enables us to use the long telephoto lenses without a tripod.”

Financial Returns on surveillance photography? “That depends on the amount of time and energy you’re willing to put in,” says Gene. “We shoot approximately 100,000 ft. of surveillance film a year, traveling about 70,-000 miles, driving in and around Dallas and in 48 states, to do it. I’d hate to tell you how many hours Mary and I work each year. On a case, our fees from an insurance company may range all the way from $50 to several thousand dollars.

“In general, I’d say that a photographer who doesn’t mind hard work and shooting under highly adverse conditions—who in addition to technical ability has enough ingenuity to figure out new ways of getting the picture—should make a good living.

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How to Have A Million-Dollar Idea

Brainstorming is the new, exciting system that turns your wildest ideas into profits.

By Ardis and Kay Smith

THE meeting of the engineering staff of the National Biscuit Co. in Buffalo began on a sour note. For the umpteenth time a coal crane fuse had blown on the company’s Lake Erie loading dock, leaving the operator stranded on his perch above a 900-ton mountain of fuel, a long way from the fuse box. The usual din of machinery drowned out the distress signals he sounded on a klaxon.

Before going on to more serious problems, Engineer Edward Yehle proposed to cure the fuse-box headache with a “brainstorming” session. This is a popular exercise in the Creative Thinking class he attends at the University of Buffalo. Brainstorming, he explained to his amused colleagues, is a jam session of “thinking-up” in which all parties let fly ideas, like musicians sounding off with hot licks. Quantity of ideas, no matter how wild, is the aim. Evaluation comes later.

When the Nabisco group gave brainstorming a whirl, valid notions were mixed with gags (“Let him take his lunch. When the fuse blows, he eats.”) But a dozen or so serious suggestions were piled up—and two were successfully combined: a 200-foot line was rigged from the crane operator to a boiler plant steam whistle, within easy hearing of an electrician near the fuse box. Simple? Well, nobody had thought of it, Mr. Yehle points out, during months of annoyance.

This episode is a minor practical application of methods developed by Creative Education Foundation, whose purpose is to teach people to think up useful ideas and work them out profitably.

In the Foundation’s office in downtown Buffalo the educational map grows amazingly from day to day. To three pioneer classes at the University of Buffalo more than 300 others have been added. There are Creative Thinking classes or Idea Workshops in great universities such as Columbia, M. I. T., Michigan, California, Northwestern, Notre Dame; in the Air Force ROTC; in industries like General Motors, B. F. Goodrich, General Electric; in schools, clubs and YMCA’s. Anyone interested can find out how to get a class started by writing to the Creative Education Foundation, 1614 Rand Bldg., Buffalo 3, N. Y.

Originator of this educational mush- room and president of the Foundation is Alex F. Osborn, a lean, athletic gentleman of 66. You may know him from his books, How To Think Up, Your Creative Power, Wake Up Your Mind and the text-book Applied Imagination (Scribners)—or as the final initial of BBD&O, the famous advertising firm of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn.

Mr. Osborn does not claim to have originated all his methods. But he has organized them into a system which is sure to help anyone understand and use his natural creativity. His how to procedure is built on his own experience, buttressed by the applied methods of the world’s foremost original thinkers. “This is not to say that you can put on a magic thinking cap and invent the wheel,” he says. “You are more likely to begin with a short-cut in office detail, an improvement in shop routine or a do-it-yourself home decorating project.”

A salesman in one Creative Thinking class got a $100 bonus recently for suggesting that low, head-bruising pipes in his firm’s factory be outlined with luminous paint. An accountant reports solving home problems in family brain- storm meetings. A secretary made gay pins and earrings for gifts by cutting up tops of frozen orange juice cans and decorating them with enamel. Another student panelled a wall of his house with split bamboo salvaged from a batch of old porch shades bought for $3.00.

“Don’t be discouraged if your ideas don’t lead directly to your goal,” Mr. Osborn urges. “Don’t dismiss any idea as useless. It may not apply to your problem, but it may lead to another that does. Or it may open up a new field. Lucky accidents, sudden strokes of genius, ideas from nowhere come to people who have formed the creative habit. A flash may come when you’re coasting—but coasting implies that power has previously been applied.”

How do you turn on creative power?

“Well, the first thing you must do is to separate the two main kinds of thinking—creative and judicial. This is not as simple as it sounds. At school, on the job, you have been trained to learn facts and exercise judgment. These are fine, but they must be kept in their proper place. Used too soon, they can stifle creativity. You may find that your imagination, which took you on such wonderful flights in your childhood, has become stiff and creaky. It will take a lot of conditioning to make it soar again.

“Just getting started may be the hardest part at first. So make a date with yourself. Set a definite time or place. It doesn’t have to be a soundproof room—you may find your mind works best while bathing, shaving, riding to work or doing some routine chore.”

Ready? Here’s the procedure:

1. Set a target and focus on it. Put it in writing. It may take the form of a question: How can I add a room to my home? How rid the neighborhood of starlings? Could a TV quiz for children be designed to compete with blood-and-thunder? Does anyone really want a better mousetrap?

2. Analyze your target. This is one of the times judicial thinking should be applied. Have you stated the problem clearly? Perhaps it’s too complex to tackle as a whole and should be divided into sections. Are you sure the goal is worth while?

3. Having picked your objective, you now do some spade-work. Dig up related facts and material. Do this thoroughly, but don’t get bogged down by overdoing it. Go on to the next two steps; then you may have to dig again for facts you don’t yet know you will need.

4. Now you’re ready for thinking-up. This is the time to suspend judgment. Forget what others have done, what they say can’t be done. Let yourself go. Have a brainstorm. Keep asking yourself, “What else?” And write down every idea, no matter how idiotic it may seem.

5. Now it’s time for incubation. Let up, sleep on it, change pace. The big idea may come to you. If it does, write it down. Keep a pad and pencil near your bed. This period of relaxation will freshen you for tomorrow’s attack.

6. This is the day for putting the pieces together. You may throw out most of your ideas now, but the chance of finding a good one is many times greater than if you had judged them one by one.

7. Will it work? The final step is testing. The extent of this depends, of course, on the kind of project.

Now you can do all this on your own, given sufficient incentive and will power. But most of us find team-work helpful, which is a chief reason for the popularity of the new Creative Thinking classes. The brainstorm technique, Mr. Osborn and his associates have found, works best when groups of five to 25 persons attack specific problems.

So let’s visit a typical class, an evening session at the University of Buffalo. Its 26 members range in age from 21 to 45, and most of them are taking the course for college credit. They include an automobile salesman, a golf pro, a baker, an accountant, four engineers, two secretaries, an insurance broker, a photostat operator, eight ad men, a receptionist, a florist, a loading checker, a hairdresser, a housewife, a printing shop manager, two department store buyers, a salesgirl and a bank teller.

The session starts with a ten-minute warm-up exercise. Tonight it’s writing alternative banner lines for the day’s newspaper. It might have been suggest- ing other titles for Cinderella or David Copperfield, listing inventions that have built up the automobile industry, or outlining a children’s story.

The working mood established, the class now tackles a specific problem: How would you make a living if you could never leave your home? Some of the answers: Start a service for department stores, working out plans for seasonal shifts and promotion ideas. Operate a phone answering service. Proof-read dictionaries, phone books, pocket novels, etc. Furnish scouting reports to football coaches from watching TV games. Write political speeches for local candidates. Install a gift bar. Think up profit-making hobby kits for other shut-ins. Make favors for parties. Make reservations for business men.

Sometimes a member of the class supplies a real problem. A carpenter in Chicago last year asked his classmates for ideas on how to go into business for himself. The brainstorm suggestion that most appealed to him was designing and building rumpus rooms. The class went further, pooling their ideas to compile an illustrated brochure for selling this specialized service. He now is his own boss, business is good, and you couldn’t find a more enthusiastic Osborn fan.

To prove the Osborn Theory, several tests are used. In one a class is divided into equal teams for creative and judicial thinking. A problem is stated and for ten minutes ideas are handled one by one, proposed by the creative section and criticized by the judicial. Then for another ten minutes the whole class suspends judgment and brainstorms. Every idea is written on the board, to be judged later. In a recent session only three proposals were made and analyzed in this first period, while 21 came out of the brainstorm.

“Maybe just one idea was really good,” Mr. Osborn points out. “But it might never have been born if creation had been hampered by judgment. When you turn on the hot and cold faucets together, you get tepid water.”

Another experiment tests individual vs. group thinking. Half of one class wrote down separately as many ideas as each could think of for using surplus typewriter ribbon spools. The other half brain-stormed. The idea total by individuals was 149, by the group 226.

In a brainstorm key questions keep ideas popping. “What else?” is the one that is asked over and over. To spark idea association the leader may ask, “What is next to this? What goes with it? What came before it? After? What is it larger than? Smaller? What is it like? Unlike? What are its component parts? What else could parts be used for? What could be added? Eliminated? What can we borrow or adapt to improve it? These questions have led to progress in every field. The first cook who added herbs or wine to a stew, or cheese to salad dressing was a creative thinker. So were the men and women who thought up balloon and tubeless tires, wider car seats, four-wheel brakes, dehydrated soup, soap flakes, folding umbrellas, one-lens goggles, sliced bread, cafeterias, cake mixes.

Mr. Osborn considers inventing a good mental exercise. He has patented three gadgets—a glass caster, a newspaper rack and a wire device used in store window displays—and sold the patents for an average of $400 each. Working out one of these shortened a dull wait between trains.

“If you do have an idea, don’t hesitate to give it a chance,” he says. “Amateur inventors still hit the jackpot now and then.

“A friend of mine called on his doctor the other day and found him musing over a new plastic tongue-depressor. It had a couple of angles in it, giving it an elongated S-shaped profile.

” ‘For 20 years,’ the doctor said, ‘we’ve been using these things straight, with our hands obstructing the view into patients’ throats. So along comes a man and puts in a simple, obvious twist to take my hand out of the picture. This probably is worth $50,000 to a pharmaceutical house.’ “You may be sure that the man who put the angles in that little spatula wasn’t a one-idea man, but a trained observer and a creative cogitator.

“The great and rewarding thing about ideas is that one leads to another, the stream broadens and the habit extends beyond those concentrating hours in the think-shop. Creative imagination can light our fives. God grant that it may relight our world!”

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Back of the Scenes at the Sideshow

By King Deckert

If you have ever attended a sideshow— and who hasn’t?—you have looked at astonishing exhibitions and seemingly impossible feats and have wondered, “how do they do it?” King Deckert, an old-time trouper, explains in this fascinating article how the public is bunked.

IN DARKEST Africa, the Voodoo witch doctor charges an admission and lets superstitious blacks view his weird collection of miracles; in more progressive countries, intelligent people pay their thin dimes every year to see “The Half Lady,” “The Human Mermaid,” “Oregon John,” and scores of other “strange, strange people,” who migrate from state to state during the summer months under the flamboyant banners of the sideshow. Human nature is much the same the world over—we just like to be bunked!

The Spider Girl One of the oldest of sideshow exhibits, and one that still draws thousands of people annually, is “Spidora,” or “The Spider Girl.” This little lady deserves your sympathy. She has been entrapped in the mesh of a huge spider web, and her captor, apparently, has consumed her body, for nothing but her head is visible from where you view her with mouth agape.

But—it’s all bunk! A mirror does the trick. This runs from the rear of the box, forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, and has its top edge hidden with a length of white tape. The girl is merely leaning forward against this glass, as shown in the drawing, with her head thrust up through the web. Of course, a roped-off area keeps the spectator at a safe distance, and from where he stands the illusion is quite complete—the mirror reflecting the bottom of the box and showing only the head of the concealed girl, apparently trapped in the meshes of the spider web.

Mirror Presents Illusion The “Half Lady” is a popular sideshow effect which is dependent upon the principle of reflection. In this case, a special table is used, with a round segment cut out of the back to fit the waist of the prospective legless woman. The mirror is placed diagonally between the left front and right rear legs of the table. Looking at the alcove from a fair distance, you get the impression of there being nothing whatsoever under the table—thanks to the mirror —and the illusion of a legless woman is complete.

Did you ever see the “Sword Ladder?” In this effect, the performer, barefooted, ascends and descends a ladder of swords, and all this without injury to himself. Moreover, the swords are sharp—the “barker” is there to show you with the archaic method of cutting a lock of hair that these are no playthings.

then, does the performer do it? The answer is fairly simple. In the first place, the swords are really quite dull, the razor-like keenness being found only on the extreme tip and base of the blade. In the second place, the feet of the performer have been toughened to a remarkable degree through a continual application of alum or tannin over a period of from six months to many years. The rest is simple. You probably know that even a comparatively sharp razor will not cut you if it is pressed directly into your hand and at right angles to the skin. The sword climber operates on the same principle. By balancing his weight carefully so as to avoid any sideslip, he can ascend and descend the ladder with perfect impunity.

Breaking a Rock on One’s Chest The strong man, too, comes in for his share of bunking the public. One of his favorite effects is the famous “Rock Breaking Test,” in which a huge slab of granite is broken in two with a sledge hammer while it is reposing on the chest of our hero.

There is no trickery connected with this masterpiece of deception; rather the effect depends upon a public whose knowledge of the laws of inertia is a little less than nothing. Even a brick mason could witness the demonstration and marvel, yet he performs the same effect every day when he places a brick in his hand and breaks it in twain with a few light taps of a hammer. He would deem it absurd if anyone were to ask him if the breaking of a brick in this fashion did not hurt his hand; yet he stands in open-mouthed wonder when the same effect is performed on a large scale within the glamourous confines of the sideshow tent. Actually, the strong man experiences very little discomfort—the hammer being so small in proportion to the weight of the stone that the force is distributed to all parts of the block and thereby made almost negligible.

The fabled mermaids of yore had their abode in the briny deep and only poked their adorable noses out of the water at the witching hour. But . . . the mermaid you see in the sideshow . . . There she sits, day after day, entirely submerged in a glass tankful of water, with the fishes playing around her body, never coming to the surface for a whiff of fresh air. .

Underwater Mermaids How does she do it? “Simply because,” as the barker puts it, “simply because she’s a real, live mermaid, and real live mermaids like that kind of stuff!” Actually, however, the “nigger in the woodpile” is something quite different. The mermaid is never in the water! She isn’t even wet! All she does is take her place behind a glass tank which contains a varied collection of fish, water and seaweed. The walls of the box in which she sits is painted to resemble marine life, and from a distance the illusion of one large tank of water with a mermaid seated in the center of it is effected.

A popular sideshow attraction which has enjoyed considerable success during the past few years is ‘”The Petrified Lady.” This illusion can take other forms, such as “The Petrified Man,” “Oregon John,” etc., the effect in each case being the same—namely, that of a petrified person who still breathes, and in some cases even talks.

Pump Serves Dummy as Lung The method commonly employed in the construction of this freak is the familiar wax dummy. This can be made very lifelike, and with the addition of a pair of mechanical lungs, operated by electric bellows from below the couch on which the dummy lies, can be made to breathe with a naturalness which is altogether human. Various other attachments are added to the figure, enabling her to froth at the mouth in a very unladylike manner, snore with great gusto, etc. With the use of advanced radio, some of these petrified figures are even made to answer simple questions which the audience may call out.

Naturally enough, everything about the sideshow cannot be bunked. That would be almost ‘impossible. Many of the sideshow attractions are legitimate enough. The outdoor free stunts which are used to ballyhoo the show are likewise of a bona fide nature. Among the more spectacular of these is the shooting of a man from a cannon to a net 130 feet distant, the motive power being a large spring concealed in the cannon; and the “Flaming Torch” act in which a gasoline-drenched figure is set afire before diving 60 or 100 feet downward to a small tank of water.

But—inside the tent you will find 75 percent pure bunk. Not that it matters. Genuine or fake, the attraction is sought by an eager public, who year after year are a living testimony to the thing which keeps the carnival and sideshow in existence—we just like to be bunked!

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HOW TO BUILD A GEIGER-MUELLER URANIUM SURVEY METER

By F. L. Brittin, S.M.,I.R.E.

ANYONE can build and operate this simplified Geiger-Mueller survey meter, which is an instrument for detecting the presence of radiations emanating from radioactive substances such as valuable uranium and radium. Specifically, the Geiger-Mueller tube, which is the most important component of the instrument, detects X-rays, cosmic rays and gamma rays. Beta rays can also be detected by Geiger tubes with very thin cathode walls.

When any one of the four types of radiations referred to above enters the Geiger tube, the gaseous mixture within the tube is ionized and the tube will deliver a definite pulse that can be used to actuate a meter, or a set of headphones. The uranium survey meter illustrated and described is a “Geiger counter” similar to those used in all of the recent sensational “strikes” and incorporates a set of high-impedance headphones as the indicating device for radioactivity detection. The exceptionally high sensitivity of this particular instrument to stray radiation is exemplified by infrequent clicking sounds heard in the headphones, caused by cosmic rays when the instrument is not in a field in which other radiation is present.

An ordinary metal lunch box of the type designed to include a small Thermos bottle is employed to house the instrument. It provides a rugged case 10-1/4 in. long, 8 in. wide and 3 in. deep. This case is easily portable and only a few minor alterations are necessary, as will be noted in Fig. 1. The two openings, cut to provide screened windows, are backed with a strip of 1/4-in.-mesh wire screen, 2-1/2 in. wide and 5-3/4 in. long. This wire screen is held in position by four short 6-32 machine screws, washers and hex nuts. A 3/8-in. hole is drilled for mounting the open-circuit phone jack.

The Geiger-Mueller tube is mounted on a 1/8-in. Bakelite panel by means of two rubber-covered clamps. These clamps are made as detailed in Fig. 1, or, 3/4-in. fuse clips may be used. They are mounted 4-1/2 in. apart and 2-3/4 in. from each end, by means of short 6-32 machine screws and hex nuts. A 1-1/8-in. length of rubber tubing is slipped over the ends of each clamp where it contacts the Geiger-Mueller tube to hold it in position. This Bakelite panel is mounted in the case, 13/8 in. above the screened openings, by means of four 5/8 x 5/8-in. angle brackets. The battery clamp is made from 1/16-in. sheet metal and holds the three batteries in position.

Photos A, B, D and F show various views of the completed instrument. Fig. 2 is a sectional drawing of the highly efficient “Keleket” model K-EX Geiger-Mueller Gem tube used in this instrument; the actual tube is shown in photo C. It should always be handled by the ends; do not touch the fragile center. The schematic circuit diagram is given in Fig. 3, and the pictorial wiring and assembly diagram appears in Fig. 4. The underside view of the panel shows the method of mounting and connecting the tube. Note that the center positive and the outside negative leads are brought out to two binding posts mounted on the Bakelite panel; keep these flexible leads well separated. The center positive, or “hot,” lead goes directly to the positive 900-volt battery terminal and should never be touched when unit is “on;” always keep case dry. The open-circuit phone jack is in the negative battery lead. A .01-mfd. 600-volt fixed condenser is connected across the phone jack. Banana-type battery plugs with black for negative and red for positive, plastic insulated ends are used to connect the batteries in series. The phone plug is inserted only when the instrument is in use. There is practically no drain on the batteries; their life is estimated to be from six months to one year. These batteries list at $11.00 each; the model K-EX Geiger-Mueller tube costs $20.00 and it will give approximately 15,000 hours service in constant use. Before the survey meter is taken into the field for use, a quick test may be made to determine if it is functioning by merely holding it over the dial of a radium-illuminated watch as illustrated in photo E. If there is an increase in the number of “clicks,” it will indicate that the unit is working satisfactorily. Before making a survey, a background count should be noted in an area free from radioactivity. A pair of 4000-ohm phones should be plugged into the instrument and the number of clicks heard in the phones counted for a period of one minute. Ordinarily, the background count will vary between 10 and 50 per minute.

A topographic map of the area to be surveyed should be completed by the prospector before entering the field. Furthermore, familiarity with the various types of ores associated with uranium, thorium, radium and other radioactive material should be obtained. It should always be remembered that many precious metals such as vanadium, cobalt, nickel, gold, etc., are sometimes found in proximity to the radioactive ores, and subsequent analysis may indicate a lode of considerable value composed of nonradioactive metals. As successive counts are .recorded at different stations on the area being surveyed, differences in background count should be noted and plotted on the topographic sketch. The instrument will effectively direct a prospector to an area where the radioactive background is higher. When digging is started, samples of the ore or rock formation should be tested with the instrument to determine if the digging is proceeding in the right direction.

Detailed material list R-374 is available from Popular Mechanics Radio and Electronics department upon receipt of ordinary letter postage.

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Table Tricks with Knives & Forks

By SAM BROWN

The after-dinner tricks with knives and forks described here by Mr. Brown can be performed with little advance preparation, and they afford sure-fire entertainment for everybody.

NOTHING so very magical about knives and forks. Once upon a time there was a man who ate peas . . . But that’s something else again.

How’s this: The performer exhibits a napkin. He rolls it up loosely. He pokes a fork down into the center of the rolled up napkin. And then . . . abracadabra . . . the fork slowly rises from the napkin, bowing quaintly to the bewildered spectators.

It’s really too easy. You have a napkin which is slightly prepared. This preparation consists of opening up a small portion of the napkin seam along one side and inserting a two-inch bit of elastic in the hem. Both ends of the elastic are sewn securely to the cloth. Well, that’s the idea.

You roll up the napkin. You hook one tine of the fork through the bit of elastic, as shown in the photograph. (The photo shows the napkin unrolled for the purpose of illustration.) You poke the fork, down into the napkin. You hold it tightly. When you release the pressure of the hand holding the napkin, the fork rises, quickly or slowly as you desire, and in a manner truly magical. At the end of its journey, the fork is removed from the napkin, allowing the rubber band to slink back to its place of concealment under the hem. Watson, the next case!

Something simpler: The performer takes a knife and places it in the center of a napkin. He doubles the napkin diagonally so that the knife is enclosed between the folds. He rolls up the napkin, starting at the fold and rolling towards the corners. Now, just being sensible, you would unhesitatingly say that if the napkin were unrolled the knife would still be inside the diagonal fold. Of course! But . . . Oh my, . . . these magicians! When the napkin is unrolled, the knife is found outside the fold and not inside where it should be.

The secret is absurdly simple. When unrolling the knife you should unroll the outer corner of the napkin for one complete revolution by itself. Then, proceeding with the doubled napkin, you will eventually arrive at the knife, outside and not inside the folded cloth where it was originally placed. This will amaze everybody. Maybe!

Here’s an easy one: It calls for five knives. The idea is to arrange four of them in such a manner that they can be lifted with the fifth knife. The photograph and diagram on opposite page show the “how.” It’s as easy as all that!

Another little catch of a similar variety consists of arranging three tumblers in triangular formation and bridging them with three knives. A condition of the construction is that each knife must rest upon one tumbler only, and at one point. The bridge when finished must be firm enough to sustain a fairly heavy weight—say, a plate of the wife’s best biscuits. The marvelous bit of structural engineering is fully explained by the photograph.

The Disappearing Spots Get this one: The performer exhibits an ordinary table knife. “Nothing on this side.” And, turning the knife over, “Nothing on this side.” To each side of the knife, then, the magician affixes three small squares of paper, pressing them down at equal distances along the knife blade after first moistening them with his tongue. “Three on this side. Three on this side.” Now for the trick. Proceeding systematically and efficiently, the performer commences to remove the small squares of paper, wiping them off with his left forefinger as he manipulates the knife with his right hand. “One from this side. One from this side. Another from this side. Another from this side …”

And, finally, “nothing on this side, nothing on this side,” as the performer shows each side of the knife blade to be entirely innocent of paper covering. But . . . mirabile dictu . . . the performer requests a spectator to blow on the knife blade, and . . . Lo! . . . there they are again: “Three on this side! Three on this side!”

The solution of this excellent little effect lies in one deft movement of the right hand which can be easily mastered by anyone. To commence, dab on the three squares of paper to either side of the knife. Now, holding the knife in your right hand, remove one of the small squares, the tip one, with your left forefinger. The second move is to apparently turn the knife over and remove the corresponding square from the opposite side of the blade. What you do, however, is something entirely different— you turn the knife completely over, immediately brushing your finger over the empty space on the knife from which you have previously removed the paper square.

The “deft movement” before referred to has to do with this complete turn of the knife so that it will appear to the spectator as if the knife were but turned half way over. To do it you hold the knife in your right hand, as shown in the first photograph, palm up, thumb on the side of the knife handle. Now . . . take a knife in your hand and go through this slowly . . . if you will twist your thumb over, you can give the knife a half turn, as shown in the second- photo. You will also find that if you turn your hand over so that it is palm down, you can give the knife an additional half turn, thereby making a complete revolution of the knife although the two movements, blended together with a little flourish of the hand, seem to be but the natural movement required to turn the blade over.

After making the complete revolution, the forefinger of the left hand immediately strokes the knife blade as if removing a square of paper. The second square of paper is then removed and the knife again turned completely over by reversing the movement—a pull with the thumb and a turn of the hand—and the forefinger again pounces down on the knife and brushes away an imaginary slip of paper.

When the three papers have been removed from one side of the knife in this fashion, you show the knife completely bare, and then, making only the half turn, you show the knife again housing three papers on one side; and then with the double twist you show three squares on the opposite side. The fingers of the left hand then close about the knife blade and apparently remove the three paper squares from either side.

Do you get it? It really is one of the most excellent bits of magic in existence, and not at all as difficult as all this haranguing would seem to indicate. Try it!

An Amazing Sound Trick This one has to do with “acoustics.” Don’t let the subject stop you . . . it’s only Greek for playing the fool with sound. The performer places two tumblers on the table. He picks up a fork. He plucks the prongs of the fork with his fingers so that it gives out a sound, and after the sound has died away, he proceeds to pick it out of the air again and throw it into first one tumbler and then the other.

The whole basis of the thing is that the fork continues to “ring” for some time after the sound has apparently stopped, but inaudibly. If the butt end of the fork is gently touched to a solid object, however, the sound will at once become audible again, and the note given off in consequence is, by association of ideas, at once attributed to the glass. In an old form of this excellent trick, it was customary to touch the butt end of the fork to the table top. A great improvement in the tone of the notes can be effected by concealing a small matchbox in your hand, as shown in the photograph, and using this as a sound box. The fork is held clear of the box until the initial note has died away, and then touched lightly to the box for the “plucked” notes which appear to come from the glasses.

This is the big, knife-swallowing act! The performer takes an ordinary table knife and rolls it in a napkin. Then, holding the end of the napkin to his mouth, he taps the opposite end gently and lets the knife slip down his throat. Right down! And then … a reproduction from the region of the vest line . . . and there you are!

It’s all very simple. The trick is performed at a table. The wrapping of the knife and all that is fair enough, but just before the knife is carried to the mouth, there is a brief moment when the mouth of the napkin is below the table top, and in that fraction of a second the knife is allowed to slip out and fall to the performer’s knees, as shown in the photograph.

The swallowing then takes place, ending with the complete crushing of the napkin to show that the knife is “all gone.” While the masticating process is going on . . . steel is “rawther” difficult, you know . . . the performer is cautiously busy with the task of pushing the knife up under his vest so that it can be later removed from the region of the middle button hole.

Robot Production Line Makes 3 Radios a Minute

THE so-called “printed” radio sets are still new on the American scene, but they are rapidly becoming common items in England. A new factory near London is using a robot machine (above) which takes the plastic molding in one end and delivers the printed circuits from the other end at the rate of three a minute. It would take about 2,000 workers to do the same job by hand.

In the printed circuit there are no wires. The electrical conductors are channels of metal imbedded in a non-conducting panel which constitutes the base of the set. It is no wonder that the British quickly saw its adaptability to mass production methods. The plastic base of this set with its printed circuits is shown at left. An assembler is inserting the two tubes and condensers.

The robot is really a 70-ft. long series of 20 separate machines, each one performing its individual task. The operations can be observed through windows in the sides. Special “memory” units safeguard each process by preventing piling up on the conveyors, stopping operations if one unit fails, and reporting the positions of defects.

Father of the robot is John Sargrove, a Londoner. He calls it the ECME which means: Electronic Circuit Making Equipment.

How Power Impulses Keep Electric Clocks Accurate

WHY does an electric clock keep perfect time? Some of the so-called electric timekeepers are nothing but standard spring-driven clocks, equipped with an electric motor and a device to turn on the current at regular intervals and wind the spring. But others have no spring, no clock works, in the usual sense, and do not, as a matter of fact, either measure or keep time, yet they are always accurate.

Hidden away in the latter type is a little synchronous or cycle motor which is really acting as a meter, to measure something happening at the power station, and, he-cause that thing happens at regular intervals, the meter can be calibrated to record time.

The actuating impulse is the alternating of the current produced by the dynamos at the power house, which is why electric clocks can only be used on A. C. lines, and will not work in D. C. power districts. Most companies have standardized on A. C. of 60 cycles a second, and it is for this current that the standard clocks are built.

Dynamos vary but the variation is averaged up at the power house, so that if the dynamo gains two or three cycles in one hour it will close them the next. As it takes a change of 60 full cycles to throw the clock off one second, it can always be brought back to accuracy by this averaging process.

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“There’s Millions in It, IF ~”

The First of a Series of Articles Dealing with Problems of the Inventor
by JAY EARLE MILLER

Sooner or later you are bound to hear some enthusiastic fellow repeat the words of the title, referring to the idea for a Great Invention which will make him rich, “if only—” To show the young inventor just how to go about it to cash in on his invention, Mr. Miller has written a series of articles of which this is the first. You’ll find the series interesting and instructive. This month he gives simple rules on what to invent.

DID YOU ever have your luncheon companion borrow a pencil, make a few cabalistic marks on the restaurateur’s near-white table cloth, while he explains the Great Idea, and assures you there are millions in it—if he can get his invention before the right people?

If you haven’t, then there must be something wrong with your circle of luncheon friends, for apparently you haven’t established contact with the great American army of inventors.

Just under 52,000 patents a year are being granted by Uncle Sam—a thousand ideas every week, certified as being new and novel. Nearly 1,750,000 patents granted to date, the vast bulk of them being dated in the last forty years. But patents granted are only a drop in the bucket of ideas born.

If nearly 52,000 brand new ideas are sealed and certified by the patent commissioner each year, that can only indicate that many million hopeful souls fail to raise the necessary lawyer’s fees to get Washington’s imprint on their brain children.

For inventing something is the greatest indoor sport between the Atlantic and the Pacific, the Great Lakes and the Rio Grande. It undoubtedly has more devotees than cross-word puzzles and ask-me-another games combined. And it is one of the most wasteful sports ever conceived, for out of the vast army of would-be inventors at least ninety percent, and some would say ninety-nine, are working on the wrong track.

The investment in the appurtenances of invention, tools, models, etc., not to mention patent and attorney’s fees, is probably greater than the expenditure on any other form of sport. I know an airplane inventor who recently spent $2,200 on one small model of a revolutionary propeller, and junked it as soon as it was finished for another model costing only a fraction of that sum. Even if all the models built averaged but a few dollars each, when that sum is multiplied by the millions of potential inventors the result is a grand and staggering sum.

And once a patent is issued, the task has only begun, the hardest work remains. That’s the job of marketing the invention, and it is particularly hard because the average inventor is not a business man, and doesn’t know how to proceed. Even the fact that a patent is issued proves nothing, for the government does not guarantee that an idea is either practical or useful—only that it is new and novel. Out of nearly a thousand ideas patented each week perhaps three-fourths should never have reached that far. Of the other 250, perhaps 245 will appear on the market, battle an unresponsive public, and retire more or less gracefully, while sadder but wiser men pocket the loss. That leaves five, and maybe four will have a fair measure of success, and the fifth may be a real money maker, with millions in it, for the right people.

It isn’t the thousands of unsuccessful inventions that are patented each year, however, that represent the real economic loss. The tragedy lies in the hundreds of thousands of ideas that are stored away to gather dust on some closet shelf, never to get their chance to meet the buying public face to face. It is a tragedy, for among them the simplest law of averages proves there must be many that would have found a place in the world and gathered fame and fortune for their fathers.

Some place between the birth of an idea and its growth to full stature several million inventors are dropping by the wayside. Their models are stored away in the attic, to be resurrected by some future generation that will smile and wonder what harebrained idea grandpa was fooling with when he perpetrated this one.

Rules for Inventors It is to point out the errors that lead to this great economic loss that this series of articles is being written. There are certain simple rules of what to invent, how to invent it, and what to do with it after it is invented, that may help prospective inventors over the hard places in the road.

And the first of all rules is that a successful invention must fill a real need. If we had had some other form of transportation as cheap and fast as the automobile there would have been no field for automobiles. It was because the gasoline buggy was so far superior to the horse-drawn vehicle as a time and labor saver that Henry Ford today possesses one of the world’s largest fortunes.

Consider the case of William Garfield Kendall, of Newark, N. J. There is hardly a woman or girl in the land that isn’t contributing a few pennies every year to Kendall, who holds something like eighty patents on vanity cases, compacts, talcum powders, and similar articles. Kendall and a partner started business life making novelty jewelry in a small factory. They discovered a need for a practical form of solid cake powder—a compact, the ladies call it. The French were marketing a cake powder, but it was held together by gum acacia and baking, and was not satisfactory. Kendall experimented until he developed a cake composed of pure talc and distilled water.

Then he had to develop a metal plate to hold the cake, a vanity case with a means of attaching the plate, and then he invented a metal mirror for the case. Thus one invention led to another. A doctor friend suggested that ordinary sifter-top talcum cans should have self-closing tops, to keep the contents clean. Kendall proceeded to invent one, and sold the patent for $25,000.

And his best advice for inventors brings up the second rule, for Kendall says, “An inventor usually does the best work in the field he knows best.”

That ought to be self evident—yet when a submarine was rammed and sunk a few years ago more than 5,000 people who never saw a submarine and knew nothing about their workings submitted rescue inventions to the navy department. Needless to say, none of the 5,000 proved practical.

In the last half dozen years I have examined hundreds of ideas for airplanes and lighter-than-air ships, ideas conceived by people who never flew a ship—some of whom had never seen an airship outside of magazine pictures. Needless to say, there wasn’t one that was practical. One inven- tor’s idea was a pendulum, with a heavily weighted end, hung in the cockpit, with controls connected, the theory being that if the plane dipped a wing, or started to dive or climb, the displacement of the pendulum would operate the controls and restore normal flight. A pretty theory, but unfortunately the inventor didn’t know about centrifugal force; didn’t know, for example, that you can place a glass of water on the floor of a plane and loop the loop without spilling a drop.

These are some of the reasons why practically every successful inventor advises prospective inventors to stick to the fields they know best. The street car motorman may invent a new electric control, or a new car door opener, and the office worker a new gadget for the desk, but each would be lost in the other’s field.

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Mystery of the Razor Blade

There has been so much misunderstanding of razor blades in the past that every user of those universal utilities will welcome this highly interesting and authoritative article.

By J. G. PRATT

ALTHOUGH a large amount of research lias been conducted in connection with razor blades, the magnification has generally been carried little beyond three or four hundred diameters— insufficient to show the actual cutting edge and the effect of stropping.

On this account, the numerous myths and illusions which have found their way into the lore of razors have been handed down unchallenged since man began to shave.

The most common of these is that the razor’s edge is “sawtooth”; that these “teeth” are bent over in shaving and that stropping brings them back into proper alignment. The blade does look that way in sunlight, even to the naked eye; and the micrograph reproduced in Fig. 1, even at 200 diameters, seems to carry out this idea. Even eminent authorities show micrographs taken at two or three hundred diameters, similar to that seen in Fig. 2, in proof of the sawtooth theory. What appears sawtooth, however, is not the actual cutting edge, but the coarse grinding, probably 1/500-inch below the cutting edge, as shown in Fig. 3. I can easily condone this mistake because, when (after weeks of study) I managed to secure Micrograph No. 2, I remember throwing my hat in the air in the belief that my goal had finally been reached.

At 1,000 diameters the edge (see Fig. 4) straightens out into an unbroken line; at two thousand, and beyond, it shows the “grain” and a wavy or scalloped edge, according to the structure of the steel and the processes used at the factory (Fig. 5).

With the entire lack of scientific knowledge on the subject, it is remarkable that stropping devices have been improved to their present state of efficiency; for manufacturers could rely only upon shaving tests, and there are probably few things in life as variable as men’s whiskers.

People often ask me which I judge, from my extensive research, to be the sharpest blade on the market. Sharp- ness in a razor blade is merely a relative quality; because what best suits one beard might be very inferior when used on another.

If you can imagine a razor blade nearly two blocks long, with a continuous series of little mounds and jagged depressions hardly larger than the teeth of a bucksaw, you might visualize to some extent the magnitude of the task involved; especially since this vast edge can only be ‘Tacked” across the field of the camera a little at a time.

My investigation proved that stropping does not fill in the nicks; — it merely straightens up the edge where it is turned over, and pushes back into a plane the steel fibers which are bulged out of place. It is these which pull the whisker and make for uncomfortable shaving; the nicks seen at high magnification having little to do with the efficiency of the blade.

This fact is well illustrated in the large illustration on the first page of this article, showing that a comparatively large nick comprises hut a small portion of the cutting edge which attacks a single hair; the hair at this magnification, it will be seen, appearing about seven inches in diameter.

Another interesting fact rought to light is that the old-fashioned razor strop is just as efficient as the best of the machine stroppers. It has often been wondered why the real heavy blades, with proper stropping, give probably ten times as many comfortable shaves as the thin blades. The thin blade has a tendency to break down, practically all along the edge (Figs. 6, 7, and its rejuvenation from stropping is more or less limited. With the heavy blades, although a nick appears here and there, the edge as a whole is practically untouched except for a certain amount of bending; and this is at once corrected by stropping, to almost the efficiency of a new blade. And even the nick, seen in Fig. 10, by compression of the bulged fibers, is reduced to one-third its original size.

In conclusion, I might say that the man who does his own shaving might well profit from the experiments conducted in connection with the care of razor blades. New blades are covered with a waxy substance which will preserve them in their original packages almost indefinitely. A blade used once, however, and subjected to the usual bathroom moisture, will deteriorate more rapidly from corrosion than from subsequent shaving, after shaving, therefore, wipe the blade dry and then cover it with vaseline ; and it will give you more and better shaves than has heretofore been its wont.

VISUALIZING SOUND

Easy tests explain effects that most of us take for granted

Sound is always in the air around us, though sometimes our ears cannot sense it. Often its behavior is puzzling. A train whistle, for instance, seems to rise in pitch as the train approaches, then drop as it speeds away from us. In this case, the rapid motion of the train is responsible; it shortens the distance between sound waves spreading ahead of the train and lengthens the distance between those spreading to the rear. This effect is demonstrated by the whirling whistle in the picture at the right. Other strange tricks of sound are illustrated by the simple devices shown below. Easily made from common household materials with no tools except scissors, they will give you a better understanding of sound phenomena that are observed nearly every day.

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Making Mickey Mouse Act for the Talkies

How do they make those animated movie cartoons of Mickey Mouse and his animal relatives which have proved so popular? In this article the author explains the tedious process by which cartoons are brought to life.

by Gordon S. Mitchell
Mr. Mitchell is a member of the Sound Department of Universal Pictures Corporation, and is well qualified to write on technical phases of movie production.

THE next time you drop into your favorite theater and watch Mickey Mouse, Oswald the Rabbit, Krazy Kat, or any of their familiar cartooned brethren scamper across the screen in a series of animated musical episodes, stop and ponder for a moment on these weighty facts:

No less than 10,000 drawings, tediously made by hand, went into the production of your 20 minutes’ entertainment. Approximately 2,000 feet of film was required to reel off the cartooned adventures—and one cameraman, working steadily, can turn out only 50 feet of cartoon recordings in one day. A skilled orchestra, watching the cartoon unreel before their eyes, produced the sound effects not once, but twice, so that the best sound “take” could be chosen for the finished film.

The animated cartoon, in its present form, stands as a monument to the ingenuity of the several men engaged in the creation of these sound novelties. There are two principal cartoon studios in Hollywood today. Walt Disney, with his “Silly Symphonies” and his “Mickey Mouse” series, and Messrs. Lantz and Nolan, with their “Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit” series, are totally responsible for six cartoons per month.

The procedure followed in creating the animated cartoon is in general the same in the two studios, differing only in minute detail. The first step, of course, is to arrive at some semblance of a story. The entire cartoon staff of writers, animators, and illustrators, as well as the musical director participate in the gag meeting at which ideas for the cartoons are thrashed out. The musical director, who is the master of countless suitable melodies, plays appropriate music as the ideas develop and notes are kept on the music as well as story idea. After the main plot ideas have been elaborated to a sufficient degree, and all sound effects, gags, and musical accompaniment have been decided upon, the scenario is written. Everything which is to go into the cartoon must appear in the scenario. When completed, it is broken down into several parts, and given to the individual animators, each of whom is responsible for the drawings in his particular section. Each of these sections of the scenario is again broken down into particular sequences, each sequence being described fully upon a sheet which is known as the “Instruction Sheet”. Accompanying this “Instruction Sheet” is a sheet which is known as the “Exposure Sheet”, upon which all music and sound effects are indicated. It is from these sheets directly that the animator draws his individual scenes.

The fundamental principle upon which the motion picture projection machine is based is the phenomenon of persistency of vision. In brief, it is this: when the human eye is exposed to an object, and that object is quickly removed, the eye continues to view the object for 1/16 of a second after the removal. Thus if another object be quickly put into the field of vision, the two objects will be superimposed one upon the other. The motion picture consists of thousands of still pictures, each varying only in minute degree from its adjacent picture. When these pictures are projected upon a screen at the standard rate—that is, 24 pictures per second —the eye blends all of them into one harmonious whole, which appears to be a moving picture. The pictures exactly reproduce the action inasmuch as they were photographed in exactly the same manner-^ a series of still photographs individually exposed at the rate of 24 pictures per minute. The animated cartoon, instead of being photographs of actual people moving about, is a series of drawings, each individually made and then photographed upon the standard motion picture film.

To go back to the animators—after being given their sheets showing exactly what is desired in the cartoon, they begin upon the task of drawing the cartoon. Each drawing is made upon a sheet of white paper approximately eight by ten inches, and must show every detail of the picture upon each drawing. However, inasmuch as a good deal of the cartoon will take place upon one background, a separate background drawing is made, and then each action drawing has the background detail left out. The action drawings, of which literally thousands must be prepared, shows the progress of the action throughout the sequence. For instance, the mere act of raising an arm requires four to six separate drawings. Supposing the cartoon requires that Mickey Mouse must step up and kick the Black Bear. This little incident, taking almost no time upon the screen requires hundreds of drawings, each one showing the foot in a little more advanced position than the last. Thus it is that every scene, every foot of the cartoon must be drawn. There are sixteen drawings to the foot of finished film, and one cartoon requires from ten to twelve thousand individual drawings.

After the drawings have been made, they are traced upon sheets of celluloid of the same size, and inked in with India ink. This “work is done by girls, of whom there are sixteen in the Oswald studio. The background sheets as well as the action sheets are so traced. The two fit together in such a manner that when any action sheet is laid upon the background, a finished picture shows. These tracings are then photographed.

The camera assembly with which these tracings are photographed is arranged for the convenience of the camera man, for his task is at best tedious. Each tracing must be laid over its background, photographed, the film moved up one frame, and the pro- cedure repeated. The process is slow—it being possible to photograph approximately fifty feet of film per day. The camera is mounted above, shooting down upon a table. This table is equipped with a glass window, the light shining up through the window from below. Two pegs at the top of the window engage holes in the celluloid sheet to hold the drawings in place. Up to this point, the cartoon procedure follows that of the old silent cartoons. The introduction of sound has increased the difficulties and the effort required to create a cartoon many fold.

The music accompaniment, the sound effects, and what dialogue is necessary are all put onto the sound track at one time. Synchronizing these sounds to the picture is no easy task, and is done by the musicians. The finished cartoon, after final development and printing, is cut into short sequences, perhaps one hundred feet long. It is thus necessary to stop and re-record only one hundred feet of sound track in case of trouble, where if the whole cartoon were put through in one piece, a mistake would spoil many hundreds of feet of sound track. The musicians are trained especially in sound recording for cartoons, and the same orchestra does the work for every cartoon. These men are equipped with a variety of instruments which are effective in creating the necessary sound effects. Growls, squeals, and groans are made with special instruments which have been originated by studio technicians. The short sequence which is to be. recorded is projected upon a screen on the sound stage. The microphones and the recording machinery is so set up that the musicians can play for recording while viewing the action of the cartoon. Rehearsals are made which allow the musicians to become thoroughly familiar with every bit of action and synchronize their effects to it. For instance, when Oswald hits his rival over the head with a board, the loud ‘swat’ should be heard at just the right moment. When the rival groans, a ‘groaning noise’, made by one of the musicians is recorded. And so throughout the entire cartoon. Every sequence is recorded twice, for it is much cheaper to do that than it would be to call an entire orchestra back to the studio to remake a sequence which might have been spoiled either in recording or in the laboratory.

At this stage, the cartoon consists of separate sound and action—that is, the sound and action are printed upon separate reels of film —with two “takes” of sound corresponding to every scene of action. By special arrange- ment of projection machinery, it is possible to project the action upon a screen, and hear the sound through adjacent horns, the two reels running in synchronism. This is done in this case in order to choose the best “take” of each sound sequence corresponding, to the action. These “picked takes,” as they are called, are then patched together and the entire reel of sound is in synchronism with the picture. A point in contrast to the ordinary motion picture is that the cartoon requires no cutting—for just enough drawings are made to complete the reel, and each drawing is photographed in its final position in the reel. The last step in the process is a laboratory routine—-that of printing the action and the sound track upon one film. This prepares the cartoon for general theatre release.

The extraordinary popularity of the animated cartoon is due to the peculiar facility with which sound effects blend themselves to the type of action depicted in the cartoons. They are truly, in their present state, a result of the sound era of motion pictures.

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HOUDINI’S Mystifying Magic Stunts EXPOSED

By R. D. ADAMS

The Mechanic Who Made Houdini’s Trick Magic Apparatus

Recognized as the Master Magician of his time, the great Houdini performed tricks of magic which were the marvel of millions. Only one man knows the secrets which Houdini carried to the grave with him. That man is the mechanic who made Houdini’s illusion-producing apparatus, who concludes his expose below.

OF ALL the stunts performed by Harry Houdini, perhaps none was more mystifying or brought forth more impossible explanations of his method of accomplishing it than his celebrated trick of the vanishing elephant in which a full size animal was made to disappear from the stage of a crowded theater instantaneously.

After making the elephant go through an act that would have done credit to a wild animal trainer, Houdini led the pachyderm behind a framework and with appropriate patter, fired a pistol. Instantly the elephant vanished.

Some say it went through a trap-door, but there was a tank of water under the stage of the New York theater in which the trick was performed. Anyhow, a trap-door could never have been utilized for the purpose. The frame around the elephant hid the secret of his disappearance.

Have you ever touched a window shade with a nervous spring? Such accidents occasionally cause bathroom tragedies.

The curtain rolls up so quickly your eye cannot detect it. The lower part of that framework about the elephant which was well back on the stage, hid a roll of cloth identical with that immediately behind the elephant. Above in the flies was a heroic-sized shade roller whose spring, especially built by a Chicago firm, had to be wound up by two men. Straps running down the sides of the frame behind which the elephant stood, connected with the roll of cloth below. As the shot was fired, the audience probably blinked. In any event, its eyes were not keen enough to see that curtain jerked into the flies with lightning speed by that giant spring. With the background unchanged and the elephant invisible, the illusion was complete.

Two or three years before Houdini died, I was talking with him about some of the outstanding feats of magic I had seen performed when I was a boy and asked him if he knew how Keller had done a mind reading stunt which had always mystified me. Oddly enough, Houdini himself had the trick in mind and was then considering the advisability of amplifying it and introducing it in his act if he could find the proper kind of an assistant. And the assistant had to be a real specialist as you will see. Here is the trick and how it was performed, as Houdini explained it.

Keller would have a lady assistant sitting on the stage blindfolded, as usual, while he would pass through the aisles and ask her to name various articles he held in his hand. At first the answers were merely “a fountain pen,”‘ “a lady’s purse,” “a gold bracelet.” Then he would hold up a newspaper. “Give the name, date and volume number.”

Quick as a flash she would answer accurately.

A spectator would be asked to copy the serial number of one of his pieces of cur- rency on a piece of paper so that Keller might hold it up for others about him to see. “What is the number?” he would inquire.

“577762.”

“Correct,” he would return. “Now multiply it by 7453 and extract the square root of that sum.” Tall mental arithmetic, that!

Mathematicians in the audience would be requested to take their pencils and determine if the answer was accurate. But they would hardly have the multiplication started before the blindfolded assistant would call out the correct result.

And there was no fake about that feature of it either, except that the lady did not do the figuring herself.

Up in the flies was a dwarf with an uncanny mind for figures such as are found occasionally. He could extract the cube root of a number in twelve figures in a flash without the aid of paper or pencil and had at one time been billed himself as “the human adding machine.” The dwarf, with the aid of a special device combining the features of both a telescope and microscope which Keller had made in Germany at the cost of several thousand dollars, from his secret place in the flies kept his glass trained upon Keller through a peephole in the curtains. Since he could see any article in Keller’s hands as well as the magician himself could, and was a master at mental arithmetic, it was very easy for him to pass the correct answers down to the lady on the stage through a small speaking tube which ran under the rug and up through the chair on which she was seated, connecting with a receiver hidden beneath her hair.

Suspended in Mid-Air Among the tricks Houdini worked in his earlier days was the “Aerial Suspension Mystery” which had a Hindu origin but was first introduced to the stage by Robert Houdin, from whom Houdini took the name he was to make world famous. Despite its antiquity, the stunt is still worked occasionally and never fails to intrigue an audience.

The performer brings forth a heavy plank 5×2 feet standing upon legs six inches high to demonstrate that it is not connected with the stage floor. In the center of the platform he places a stool upon which steps a young woman who is to be the subject of “Hypnotic” demonstration. She extends her arms full length with the palms of her bands pointing downward. A brass pole of appropriate length is placed beneath either arm a few inches from the shoulder. The magician makes a few “hypnotic” passes. The young woman’s face takes on a fixed expression. Slowly her eyes close. The trance is complete.

The magician kicks the stool from beneath her feet. She is undisturbed by the incident. He removes the support from under her left arm. The lady still sleeps, her position unchanged. He removes the brass rod from beneath her left arm. There she remains like Mahomet’s coffin, suspended between heaven and earth. Gently the per former takes his subject and bends the right arm until the palm of her hand rests against the side of her head. He then tilts her body until it forms an angle of thirty degrees with his own. He raises her feet again until the angle is sixty degrees. Still she rests comfortably. Another elevation and her body is parallel with the floor of the stage and five feet above it.

How is the illusion produced? When the brass pole at the lady’s right was placed under her arm it was fitted in a socket in the plank. The one on her left was merely held there by the pressure of her arm. In her clothing was a hinged steel rod to which she was attached by a body harness which passed around her waist, between her legs and over her left shoulder. The lower end of the bar was fastened securely by a belt around the right leg well above the knee. Near the top of the bar, which was hinged at the position of her arm-pit, another belt was drawn about her right arm just below the shoulder. There is a hole in the top of the pole under the lady’s right arm. On the end of the bar to which her harness is strapped, is a steel plug extending at right angles which the performer slips into the slot at the top of the rod but which is hidden by the end of the subject’s short lace sleeve dropping over it.

Removal of the stool and the rod to the sleeping beauty’s left of course means nothing. The pole on the right only seems to have been removed. What the magician actually took away was a brass shell covering an iron rod painted the same color as the curtain immediately behind it and blending so completely with the background that the audience does not see it. The hinge under the girl’s armpit will take several different positions since it is controlled by a ratchet governed by a check held in place by a spring which the performer may release by a downward pressure on a hood also hidden beneath the girl’s clothing. This accounts for the various angles at which the girl’s body rests during the several stages of the performance.

Such were the tricks which made Houdini the great master of his craft—so great that many refused and still refuse to believe he did not possess supernatural power.

Strange enough, though he spent many years and thousands of dollars exposing false mediums, Houdini was not convinced that it is impossible for the spirits of the departed to return. On the contrary, he was inclined to believe that they can do so. He sought many times to obtain communication with friends and relatives who had passed on and he promised many of his intimates to appear to them himself, after death, if it were possible.

“With all of the insistence of the gullible that you are in league with familiars,” I once said to him, “it seems strange that you tried to disillusion them, rather than insist that they were in error. What a fortune you might have cleaned up. Were you ever tempted to do so?”

“I was very sorely tempted once,” he replied, “tempted almost beyond my powers of resistance.” He gazed out of the window reflectively, then continued: “Perhaps if I had been money mad, I would have closed my career, rich beyond the dreams of avarice and the world’s greatest charlatan.”

Then he explained that while he was in Russia, the news of his exploits had made a tremendous impression upon the mystic mad empress. She was convinced that he was possessed of supernatural powers and that he might be of great assistance to the Russian throne.

“A Russian of great distinction,” he said, “came to me and explained the situation. He did not know, or care, whether I was a medium. He only knew that Rasputin, the clumsy peasant libertine with his crude trickery and his hypnotic powers, was the real ruler of the empire. If I would accept, he would make it possible for me to supplant Rasputin in the favor of the empress and through her with the czar.

“No fortune I could hope to gain in any other way would be a tenth part of the reward that would be mine if I accepted. I asked for time to think it over.

“The sensation my act was causing had the entire country by the ears. A committee of dignitaries waited on me. They had definite assurance that the czarina would cast aside Rasputin for me if I would only announce that I was able to accomplish my feats with the aid of the supernatural.

“How easy I could have deceived her! I was commanded to appear before the emperor and empress. Then at a dinner held in my honor, a toast was proposed to the czar and the czarina. I am a teetotaler, as you know. I had left my glass turned down and I merely raised it empty when the others drank. My actions were misinterpreted as a slight to the monarchs, and Rasputin, to whom the czarina had spoken about me several times, made the most of the incident. The commanded appearance was recalled. Disappointed but not discouraged, the tempters who desired to make me the premier charlatan of Russia begged me to wait for a more propitious moment and that they would yet make me the favorite of the court.

“I left Russia, promising to return when they were ready for me. But I had no intention of doing so. Once away from the country I saw how utterly absurd it would have been to sell my birthright of trickery even for such a stupendous price. I could not have lived the lie that would have been necessary even though the world had been the reward.

“Yet, I, a Jew—hated of the Russians— might have been the real ruler of the vast country. Perhaps, after all, in view of the destruction to which Rasputin led the empire, it had been better for me to have accepted.

” ‘You, at least,’ one of the Russians who wished to have me installed at court had argued, ‘are not a madman; you will not, you could not be the terrible menace to our country that Rasputin is.’ And, of course. I could not have been. It may be that I, had I superseded the mad monk, could have gradually disillusioned the mystical empress. Had I possessed the ‘mediumistic’ power to foresee what Rasputin would do to the country, I might have stepped out as Rasputin’s rival. By so doing, perhaps I could have saved an empire from complete collapse.” And so he might.

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Bearings Move Todays World

BIG AND LITTLE of precision-made steel balls that smooth the path of modern industry and transportation. The big sphere, six inches in diameter, will go into a mammoth hot-oil valve in a refinery. The smaller one (it’s in the eye of the needle) has a diameter of one millimeter. With two others of the same size it makes a bearing that is a vital part of the Norden bombsight.

LIKE PEAS IN A POT, precision-ground steel balls are dipped in a cleansing fluid before being assembled in bearings. Balls alone are not “bearings”; latter also include rings or “races.”

PERFECT BALANCE is essential in the bearing shown here under test. When the spindle is placed in its socket, the bearing must turn under the weight of a piece of wire the size of a pin.

GIANT RING or raceway is lowered in assembly of a tapered roller bearing of the type used in huge turbines and other industrial machinery. Whether as large as a night-club dance floor or as small as the head of a pin, a friction-reducing bearing performs a vital function in the machine of which it is a part.

TWO MANPOWER pulls a 400-ton steam locomotive from a dead stop on level track, thanks to roller bearings on the axles of the iron horse. Use of such bearings on locomotive axles has cut down starting resistance by 88 percent in comparison with old-fashioned plain bearings. An interesting new use for friction- NOT CHAMPAGNE BUBBLES, but tiny bearing balls dropping into a glass. A tablespoon holds 70,000 of them, and it takes 110,000 to weigh a pound. They are used in the Norden bombsight, where accuracy is so important that an error of 1/10,000 of an inch would cause a bomb to strike hundreds of yards off target.

reducing bearings has been reported from Los Angeles, where a building is being equipped to roll six inches in any direction when an earthquake puts the structure under stress. Each of the bearings employed in the earthquake-resisting building has an assembly weighing 600 pounds and supports a 250,000-pound load.

PRECISION OILING is an essential, too, in the manufacture of miniature bearings, which often must revolve at speeds exceeding 100,066 revolutions a minute. Here a rubber-gloved worker applies just one drop of oil to a hearing with a hypodermic needle.

GIANT FINGERTIP and needle in this magnified view show relative size of world’s smallest mass-produced bearing ball. It took five months to produce the first 1-1/2 ounces of these balls; later, at wartime production peak, one plant turned out 400,000 a week.