Up-and-Down Wiper Clears Entire Windshield

BLIND spots caused by snow or rain accumulating on the windshield are ended by this up-and-down wiper that extends the full width of the glass.

The wiper is operated by a threaded spindle—much like the lever wind mechanism on a fisherman’s casting reel—and pulls the snow or water down into a trough below the hood level.

You might be seeing this new invention, which received U. S. Patent No. 2, 880,444, on some German cars in the future. Its inventors, Bela Barenyi, of Stuttgart-Rohr, and Karl Wilfert, of Stuttgart-Degerloch, assigned it to Daimler-Benz,

A. G., of Stuttgart-Unterturkheim, Germany.

Healthful Sleep on Ultra-Violet Ray Bed

YOU grow healthy while you slumber and arise in the morning fresh and full of vitamines, if you sleep away the night in a special bed which has recently been devised by scientists.

What does the job of keeping the body of the sleeper fit is a battery of ultra-violet lights which bathe the flesh, as illustrated in the artist’s drawing above. An opaque screen covers the bed, thus shutting out the view and providing the occupants with the utmost privacy.

With cities growing constantly larger and sunlight becoming more and more scarce, these ultra-violet beds may be called upon to furnish all health rays in the future.

The other difference between this and other artificial languages like Esperanto is that you can actually learn to speak those. The only time you see someone walking around spouting a string of numbers is in movies where an android goes haywire.

TALKING BY NUMBERS

3283 1621 1 2047 1705 467 1800.

The above sentence in Logography, a new international language devised by Dr. Hans Binem of Denmark (photo above), means “This is a new language called Logography.”

The beauty of Logography is its simplicity. The first sentence of numbers in this article means the same thing in English as it does in French, German, Spanish and Scandinavian languages— and can easily be extended to include Chinese or any other language.

Dr. Binem’s slogan, “Nothing to learn, nothing to remember” just about sums it up. Note the illustration at the top of this page. It is a section of a page from the inventor’s American-English list of words using the Logography system.

You will notice that each word has an assigned number. The numbers, incidentally, are odd ones. Dr. Binem is reserving the even digits for the growth of his system which now has about 2,000 basic words with corresponding numbers. If you want to send a message you look up the word in your Logography manual and put down its code number. That’s all there is to it.

The person who receives your message deciphers it by taking out his Logography book, looking up the number for each word and translating the message into his language.

International Morse code is used by Dr. Binem for spelling proper names; the code is printed in the back of each manual.

Dr. Binem forsees many uses for his unique numbers system, including international business letters, telegrams and pen-pal letters.

Dr. Binem says, “The slight trouble to translate words to and from numbers opens the possibility of valuable and interesting personal contact to knowledge and friendship anywhere in the world.”

Dr. Binem was born in Poland but came to Denmark with his family when he was five. He had his numbers system in mind for quite a few years but didn’t begin working on it seriously until 1954.

Esperanto, Interlingua and other languages have an essential defect. Dr. Binem says, “They must be learned while the ideal must be a language which can be used immediately.”

He believes his unique numbers language may contribute to world peace by making communications between the great powers clearer and more simplified.

3809 523 1509 1627 3889. 901 4003?

Which means “We certainly hope it will. Do you?”

If you want more information about Logography and wish to become a member of the world-wide fellowship, write to Dr. Binem, c/o the Logography Center, Nakskov, Denmark.

—Ib Eichner-Larsen

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THISH CAR RUNSH ON BEER

By Rudy Arnold

Liquor for this auto’s engine of distinction makes it run smoothly with that gurgling, surging power.

VERNON G. EISEL has what you might call a lush car. It will drink anything—and often does.

Pouring such barroom concoctions as beer, whisky or even soda into the fuel system of his ’53 Olds makes it purr like a kitten.

The secret, according to Eisel, who lives in Levittown, N. Y., is the “caveator” which lies beneath the hood and gives the car its gurgling, surging power.

Eisel normally pours water into the cavitator which functions satisfactorily on almost any liquid that can be turned into steam. Made with standard steam fittings and connected to the carburetor, Eisel claims his cavitator mixes vapor bubbles and gasoline in the carburetor. The exploding force of the bubbles, added to the force of the gasoline exploding in the cylinders, increases the engine’s power, he says.

When his cavitator is perfected, predicts Eisel, it will eliminate the need for an oil or air filter. You will never have to grind valves or clean spark plugs because there won’t be any carbon deposits and your engine will run smoother and with more power. Eisel claims he gets 25 per cent increase in gas mileage and from 25 to 40 per cent more power.

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Climate Control Is Coming

If Spain could have subdued the devastating storm that swept its Armada from the English Channel in July 1588. would all the Americas be speaking Spanish today?

If Napoleon’s proud legions could have neutralized Russia’s secret ally, “General Snow” how would the map of Europe look now?

If the Nazis could have ordered gales to batter Gen. Eisenhower’s vast invasion force off Normandy on June 6, 1944, what would historians now be writing about World War II?

Armchair strategists have long de- bated the tantalizing “ifs” introduced into history by the vagaries of weather. In military operations, weather is usually a potent foe or a mighty ally.

Up to now, man—at war and in peace—has remained at the mercy of nature. But there is mounting evidence that this will change. U.S., Russian, and other meteorologists are engaged in a critical race to impose their wills on the winds to create weather—even climate—to their liking. Or, conversely, to harass an enemy with storms or droughts.

Indeed, the question is no longer: “Can man modify the weather and control the climate?” but “Which nation will do it first, the United States or the Soviet Union?”

One of those working to tame the elements for the West is Capt. Howard T. Orville, U.S.N, (ret.), who for four years has headed President Eisenhowers Advisory Committee on Weather Control. In submitting his committee’s final report Orville said: “If an unfriendly nation gets into a position to control the large-scale weather patterns before we can, the results could even be more disastrous than nuclear warfare.”

One of Orville’s consultants, Dr. Bernard Vonnegut, a pioneer weather-control researcher, has compiled a separate report which lists some of the astonishing possibilities for weather control now being explored both in America and Russia. His study, soon to be made public, ticks off uses of weather as a weapon and in long-range economic rivalry.

Cloud-seeding techniques might be used to open large holes in cloud formations to increase visibility for air raiders, Vonnegut states. The same principles might also be employed to increase cloud cover over enemy territory — perhaps eventually to hang a long-lasting curtain over a given area, blotting out all sunlight.

Doctor Edward Teller, the hydrogen-bomb scientist, recently described the potentialities of such a fair-weather monopoly, “Please imagine,” he told the Senate Preparedness subcommittee, “a world . . . where (the Soviets) can change the rainfall in our country in an adverse manner. They will say, ‘we are sorry if we hurt you. We are merely trying to do what we need to do in order to let our people live.’ ”

To this warning Prof. Henry G. Houghton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist, added: “I shudder to think of the consequences of a prior Russian discovery of a feasible method of weather control … an unfavorable modification of our climate in the guise of a peaceful effort to improve Russia’s climate could seriously weaken our economy and our ability to resist.”

The meteorologists’ growing understanding of how and where weather is born is allowing man to intervene more and more with the elements. Earth’s weather is brewed in the comparatively thin (8 miles deep) layer of the lower atmosphere by an exquisite balance of cosmic and terrestrial forces.

Life-giving solar radiation pours down on the earth’s surface; some heats the ground, some is reflected back to heat the air, and some evaporates water in the world’s oceans, lakes, and seas. > Overhead, like a glass roof of a giant greenhouse, the atmosphere imprisons the heat of the day, preventing it from radiating away into space at night. This heat balance, together with the rotation of the earth, propels the mighty ocean currents and the great rivers of air which determine what kind of a day it is today, and how it might change tomorrow.

Man is experimenting with this basic knowledge in new, ingenious ways. For example, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union are trying to put the free energy from the sun to work for them. One plan to reclaim frozen areas involves sprinkling sunlight-absorbing soot over snow-covered lands. They hope the resulting thaw will eventually permit productive agricultural use of such plateaus.

In a world where water is becoming the most precious mineral, control of the moisture balance between air, land, and sea becomes more and more important. The U.S. Geological Survey’s experimental laboratory in Denver, Colo., is using a harmless, tasteless chemical film (hexadecanol, a substance also found in ladies’ lipstick) that actually can seal in bodies of water to reduce evaporation.

If it could be done on a large scale, this would deprive adjacent land areas of rain. Other chemicals might be used for the opposite effect: By speeding evaporation, rainfall could be increased.

There has been much speculation about using hydrogen bombs to break up hurricanes. But the weather experts now think they have better ways to fight the fury of the winds. Sometime during the hurricane season this coming summer, the U. S. Weather Bureau may attempt to divert a hurricane away from the southeastern U. S. coast by using the heat updraft from massive patches of burning fuel oil poured on the sea at crucial points.

As for H-bombs, they may someday prove valuable in trimming mountaintops to redirect wind patterns. Atomic Energy Commission officials have hinted at such mammoth landscaping tasks for the radiation-free bombs it is trying to perfect. One early beneficiary of such a project might be smog-ridden Los Angeles;- if science could trim the surrounding mountains, a new wind pattern would sweep the smog away.

Some of today’s most spectacular weather-taming plans involve the Arctic and Antarctic iceboxes, principal breeding areas of the worlds cold fronts. Changes in the size and shape of the polar icecaps would have profound effects on the rest of the world. In the ultimate remodeling—say, the thawing of the north polar region—ocean levels would rise an estimated 40-100 feet, inundating New York, London, Le Havre, and other near sea-level ports.

Two methods to alter the polar packs have been discussed by would-be weather controllers: First, using scores of nuclear bombs to thaw some of the deep-ice areas in the Antarctic and, second, redirecting warm ocean currents—by dams, channels, or jetties—to reduce the Arctic’s ice fields.

The Russians have long been interested in the Arctic for strategic reasons and because so much of their territory borders the Arctic Circle. Dr. Harry Wexler, chief of research for the LI. S. Weather Bureau and a frequent polar visitor, gives this assessment of the Soviet efforts there to date: “They have been conducting big arctic expeditions since 1937. Literally they have covered the whole arctic basin within 100 miles of the North American continent. They make our own efforts look puny by comparison. They have clone excellent work in climatology, and in basic cloud physics, and have much greater facilities for studying weather.”

Aware of this challenge, Capt. Orville’s presidential committee recently urged more vigorous government support of basic meteorological research. Specifically, the committee suggested research in solar effects on weather, global air circulation, dynamics of cloud motion, and origin and movement of large-scale storms.

A confirmed believer in the feasibility of large-scale weather control perhaps in 20 or possibly fewer years, Orville says it “is essential to have some international cooperation in this field, possibly through the U.N.” Pending such agreement, however, he wants the U. S. second to none in weather knowledge.

U. S. Weather Bureau chief Francis W. Reichelderfer is all in favor of more money for such basic research but he also is convinced that a “crash” effort “will not give us the basic knowledge we need for a real weather program.”

Reichelderfer is supported in this warning by many meteorologists. Forecasting, for all the new rocket probes, radar plots, and electronic calculators, is still an imprecise science. Before man intervenes, for example, to increase solar radiation intake by blacking snow and speeding water evaporation, he must be sure what the over-all effects will be.

With imperfect knowledge, it is possible weather changes will boomerang on man, and his massive efforts to harness climate might instead initiate the return of the glaciers and a new Ice Age.

Despite this warning, the race to master weather—to make it a weapon—accelerates in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

The idea that your calls are safe from eavesdropping because you have a specially tuned radio is also incredibly naive. All you’d need was a general radio with a tuner and you could listen to all the calls.

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NOW — POWER IS BROADCAST!

by Thomas J. Naughton

The Klystron, greatest radio advance, transmits energy without use of wires!

LIKE schoolboys in a classroom, more than 100 deans and professors of Eastern universities stood in a laboratory of the Westing-house plant at Bloomfield, N. J. Each of the learned gentlemen held in his hand a light-bulb with a few inches of bare wire attached; all of them expectantly watched the Westing-house engineer who was tinkering with two small doughnut-shaped, contraptions, connected to a six-foot loudspeaker-like horn, at the front of the room. The engineer straightened up.

“All right, gentlemen. Ready!”

At the words, the savants, like Statues of Liberty, raised their light-bulbs overhead and held them there. The engineer flicked a switch, swung the big horn to point toward them; pivoting smoothly, the big horn came to rest focused on the cluster of bulbs. And as it did so, every one of the bulbs lit up.

No wires, except for the little tail-like antenna, were attached to those lamps. They contained no batteries, they were entirely unconnected to any source of power. Yet they were alight. How?

The answer to that question records the achievement of a goal, a Promised Land of Science that has been sought for 40 years. It is something new under the sun. For those lamps were receiving power from the big horn, through the air. Power, in that laboratory, was being broadcast.

Those little lights, shining in a prosaic laboratory, marked the coastline of a new land. No powerlines march Indian-file over the hills and through the valleys of that land; no wirepacked conduits lie buried under the streets of the cities; no third-rails or overhead wires parallel the railroad tracks. The people there do not need those things, for they can tune in a supply of power as easily as we tune in a radio program.

There are no gas stations in that land. Automobiles have no gas tanks, no batteries; driven by electric motors, they draw their power from the airwaves. Airplanes are free from the leash of limited fuel capacities, for they carry no fuel; they can fly from New York to Hawaii, to Hong Kong, to India, with never a stop.

Houses have no furnaces, no oil burners, no steam pipes or radiators; they are heated by electrically-activated coils set in the walls. Power is everywhere, in the air itself, always available, waiting only to be funneled out through a strand of wire and put to work in a thousand ways.

That is the land whose first dim outlines were picked out by the light of the little lamps in that laboratory. It is the El Dorado for which cranks, dreamers and geniuses alike have been looking for two generations.

Our passport to it is the pair of doughnut-shaped copper containers manipulated by that Westinghouse engineer. Separately, the containers are called rhumbatrons; together, with a copper pipe connecting them, they form an invention which has been authoritatively described as “the most important advance in radio since the invention of the audion in 1906″: the Klystron.

For the Klystron, newborn though it is, has already proved itself the wonder-child of electrical technology. Probably no other invention of recent years has been the master-key to so many doors, has swept away obstacles from so many different paths of progress. Broadcast power is only one of the great vistas opened up by the Klystron; other fields in which advances are already being made with it are airplane travel, telephony, and television; and it is an important new tool for national defense.

Yet for all its versatility the Klystron, like most great inventions, is essentially simple; , it consists chiefly of nothing more complicated than two oscillating magnetic fields. Through the first field, in rhumbatron No. 1— called the “buncher”—a stream of electrons is squirted from a cathode; the field, shuttling rapidly back and forth, alternately speeds up and slows down the electrons passing through it so that they emerge from it not in a steady stream, but in bunches, with empty spaces i between. These bunches of electrons, traveling at a clip of 25,000 miles a second, shoot through a copper pipe to the second rhumbatron, the “catcher”; there they hit the ; second, or backstop, magnetic field, which absorbs their motion -energy and converts it into high-frequency radio waves. These are the waves of power.

The whole process -takes place inside a space no larger than that occupied by a portable radio. A Klystron, complete, weighs only about five pounds. Even the name of it and its parts are, as scientific names go, compact and simple; the rhumbatron is so called because of the rhythmic motion of the magnetic field inside it; “Klystron,” derived from Greek, signifies “waves breaking on a beach”—a phrase which pictures very aptly what happens in the “catcher” rhumbatron.

But the waves produced by the Klystron are different from any ever known before. The Klystron waveband is narrow—the wavelength is from one centimetre to one metre—but there is room in it for about 500,000 separate signals, as compared to about 100 separate signals possible in the standard 200 to 450 metre band. Also, the Klystron wave travels through air in a straight line; it does not follow the curvature of the earth, and it goes through the Heaviside Layer, that mysterious ionized stratum which serves so usefully as a backboard for all other radio waves, like a bullet through cardboard. If directed into a copper pipe, however, it will flow in that pipe like water, even around turns.

These characteristics cause communications engineers to regard the Klystron as being little short of a gift from heaven. Because of the enormous multiplicity of its signals, they believe it will soon enable them to transmit as many as 500,000 telephone messages at once on a single cable. Then all the long-distance telephone calls in the country could be handled by one or two main trunk lines with comparatively short tributary branches. Messages from New York to Pittsburgh, Chicago, Denver, and San Francisco, for ex- ample, could all be poured into the same cable; those bound for the inland cities could be unerringly picked out of the crowd at the right time and shunted off to their proper destinations while the others shoot through. Television engineers expect to use the Klystron similarly, so that the cost of television networks—up to now so huge that no such network has ever been formed—can be cut to a fraction of its present figure by transmitting many programs through a single copper pipe.

In short-distance communication the possibilities opened up by the Klystron are even greater, for it may in most places actually eliminate wires altogether. Wires are not needed in this age of radio for transmitting messages; that is being done without wires all the time. Where there are a great many messages, however, wires are necessary to keep them separated, because without wires only as many different messages could be in transit at any one time and place as there are distinguishable wavelengths available— under present circumstances, a few hundred. But the Klystron makes possible half a million simultaneous messages, each distinct from all the others, without wires. That is to say the Klystron makes possible, for all except the very largest cities, radio telephone.

Your radio telephone will have two parts: a receiver, set at a fixed wavelength which will be your telephone number; and a transmitter, ajustable by a dial to whatever wavelength you want to call. You won’t have to worry about eavesdroppers, because no receiver will be able to pick up any messages not tuned to its own built-in wavelength, and all the receiver wavelengths in any one community will be different. One city’s system will not cut in on that of any other city, as long as the two are at least 200 miles apart, because the Klystron wave travels in a straight line in air, and therefore cannot be tuned in beyond the horizon as seen from the transmitter. The short-range receivability of the Klystron wave, which appears at first glance to be a limitation, is actually an advantage.

Nor is its straight-line travel an advantage only for radio telephony; it combines perfectly with two other characteristics of the Klystron wave to make the instrument a powerful tool both for safety in air travel and for national defense. One of these characteristics is so remarkable that, if the Klystron had nothing else to recommend it, it alone would be enough to ensure the invention an important place in engineering history. It is that Klystron waves can be focused with precision on an objective—not merely directed in a general way, like present-day airlane “beams,” but aimed at a point. The airlane “beam” is a cone, fanning out from the source; the Klystron beam is extremely narrow and can be shot out like the ray of a searchlight.

Already that controllable precision has been put to use where it was badly needed. The Klystron is the heart of a new blind-landing system for airplanes, a system as superior to all previous ones as a modern pursuit ship is to a jenny. For even the best of the older systems had serious faults; they were not thoroughly reliable under all conditions and, even under the best conditions, most of them were fantastically complicated. The Klystron beam system, simple, boring through static like a high-speed drill, has solved the problem. Army and Civil Aeronautics Authority planes, using it, have made more than 1000 blind landings in all kinds of weather, and every one of them has been perfect.

Although the Klystron beam penetrates electrical disturbances and the Heaviside Layer with undeviating ease, however, it will not go through any substance which is not a good conductor of electricity. Whenever it hits an electrically-resistant surface, it bounces back from it like light from a mirror. This is another apparent liability which is in fact a considerable asset.

For because of it the pilot aloft in dirty weather can use the Klystron to shoot a beam downward and, by measuring the time it takes to rebound, determine a vital fact no altimeter can tell him: his exact distance from the ground. Over rough country he can shoot a Klystron beam ahead, and with it feel his way past shrouded mountain peaks.

And if he can see mountains, he can see other planes. Reports of R.A.F.’s new radio-rebound device to increase the effectiveness of fighter planes against night bombers indicate that the Klystron is doing its part to keep the Luftwaffe out of English skies!

In the improvement of ground defenses against aircraft, the Klystron is proving invaluable. Antiaircraft watchers probing opaque skies with its far-reaching, invisible finger can spot approaching planes long before any sound of motors could be picked up by even the most sensitive microphones. The Klystron can aim and fire guns automatically in pitch darkness with greater accuracy than human gunners can achieve on a clear day!

In that field the Klystron jumped to maturity almost as soon as it was born. But in other fields, in which it remains still an infant, it will attain the greater stature. It grows toward the day when wires, now vital nerves of civilization, will be left to moulder in forgotten conduits; when your telephone, your stove, your heating plant, your light —all will inhale power through an antenna on your roof. Automobiles, airplanes, trains, ships, will ride the pulsing power in the air like surf-boarders on the crest of a wave—the wave of the future, which will emanate from a couple of copper doughnuts called a Klystron.

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Bazooka Bomb: Newest Sub-Killer

IN World War II the German commanders of the Panzer divisions were mystified by a new American weapon which effectively was knocking out their tanks. At first they thought it might be a new kind of mortar. Actually they were being introduced to our bazooka and its shaped-charge shell. In the Korean war this same weapon proved to be a potent threat to the Communists’ heavy armor.

The shaped charge was designed in 1887 by Charles Monroe, an American explosives expert, but its military research did not begin until early in the last war.

Its principle—and formerly its secret—is simply its shape. A very powerful explosive, TNT or Pentolite, is placed in a container with a conical, steel liner indenting its forward end. The charge is not allowed to touch its target, but is held at a definite “stand-off” distance. When it explodes, the force is funneled forward, compressing the sides of the conical liner into a solid slug and driving it out with tremendous impact. The result is that a hole is punched in the target. As a bazooka bomb it blasts holes in a similar manner through a tank’s steel sides.

MI artist Frank Tinsley has designed a new use for our shaped charge, and that is as an anti-sub weapon. Small projectiles can be dropped in a pattern from hovering helicopters. Upon striking the skin of the sub, they would punch a number of holes through it causing the commander to surface his ship where it could be attacked easily by naval planes and guns. •

New Flying Machine Patterned After Structure of an Owl
AS THE result of intensive study of the flights and structure of heavy birds, Robert Myers, of Rockford, 111., has designed and built an ornithopter from which he expects to develop ideas for further experiments with such ships. The strange ship has wings crisscrossed with rib structure and hinged to the body in such a way that the wings can be flapped to propel it. Myers, like many before him, believes that it may be possible to learn secrets of flight from birds that will enable man to perfect highly developed flying wings; a type of aircraft radically different from the rigid type of winged ships now in use.

Crutch for Paralyzed Eyelids

An eyelid crutch for use in cases of a paralysis of the eyelids, leading to a complete or partial loss of sight, has been developed by Dr. John C. Neill of the Pennsylvania State College of Optometry. The crutch consists of a thin gold half wire loop fitted to the contour of the patient’s eyes and welded to the nose piece of the glasses.

Hand-held Microwriter

If you can’t type, yet want to write perfect letters or memos without the help of a secretary, Microwriter could be the answer. It resembles a large pocket calculator, but has only five main keys, which fit the relaxed finger positions of your right hand. Individual alphabet letters are formed by an easily learned finger code, in which one or more keys are pressed for each character.

Your words come up on an LED display panel showing 12 characters at a time, and scrolling to the left as more are added. The full text is stored in a RAM (random-access memory) that holds the equivalent of eight normal pages of typescript. You later plug the

device into an electric typewriter that taps it all out at over 500 words per minute.

This battery-powered word processor is the invention of Cy Endfield, an American author and film director living in London. He says the simple chord keyboarding can be learned in half an hour, and that in a few days a novice will be “writing” faster than longhand. As memory aids, finger combinations are logically chosen to resemble alphanumeric shapes.

A sixth, thumb-operated control key pressed in combination with others is used for numbers, capital letters, punctuation marks, and other keyboard symbols. It also handles 16 editing functions, including backspace, insert, and delete. You can make changes and corrections as you go along, and end up with perfect finished copy.

Microwriter is “an electronic substitute for the fountain pen,” says End-field. He thinks engineers, office workers, and journalists will find it practical. In a large office, up to 15 units could be served by one automatic printer. Easy typing for the blind is another possibility.

At present, the system is distributed by rental solely in Britain.—D.S.

Checkerboard Searchlight TRAPS Planes

BRITISH war officials have just announced the development of a new anti-aircraft searchlight of radical design which, instead of throwing the usual cone of light into the sky, projects a gigantic criss-cross pattern which looks something like a checkerboard on the clouds.

This unique feature enables the position of raiding airplanes to be computed in the same way that artillery targets are plotted on squared maps. There are 16 squares in the checkerboard beam, and as soon as a plane crosses any two lines in the pattern, all the data necessary to direct anti-aircraft fire is obtained.

Pilots flying into the checkerboard would be unable to elude the beam, it is claimed, and they would be unaware of its existence until they entered its rays. Details of the invention are not disclosed, beyond the Tact that the searchlight casts 300 parallel shafts of light, each directed by a mirror
along the path it is to occupy in the completed checkerboard pattern.

The completed searchlight is mounted on a truck, and its round body resembles the tank trucks used in carrying milk and other liquids.

Interestingly this kind of thing is currently being considered, but for wireless networking, though an important distinction being that it is done inside a room, not in the open.

Television Programs Sent on Light Beams

TELEVISION transmitted on a light beam, opening the way to a new era in the art of broadcasting, has been successfully demonstrated at Schenectady, N. Y. by Dr. E. F. W. Alexanderson, noted radio engineer.

In the laboratory tests, instead of the electric impulses being fed into the radio transmitter as heretofore, they were modulated into high frequencies on a light beam from a high-intensity arc. This beam was projected the length of the laboratory into a photo-electric tube, which transformed the light waves back into electric impulses. These latter impulses reproduced the original image by means of an ordinary television receiver.

Light-transmitted television points the way to the development of a new method of communicating with planes whereby a fog penetrating light, modulated into voice waves, is projected to photo-electric cells on the wings of a plane, so that landing directions may be transmitted through fog for prevention of smash-ups

Speed Boat May Cross Atlantic in 30 Hours

MESSIEURS Moyne and Clement, French inventors, have devised a remarkable new type of speed boat with circular fins that they expect will propel their new submarine shaped craft across the Atlantic ocean in 30 hours. The model of the craft is being put through tests. There are stabilizing fins at the bow and stern. The principle of operation included two helices rotating in opposite directions to counteract torque. The surfaces of the craft that offer friction are designed to do useful work, the helices minimizing the skin friction present in the ordinary boat hull. The inventors of the new boat which they have dubbed “Venus” anticipate that the full sized craft will accommodate 125 passengers as well as the crew. There will be comfortable cabin space for the passengers in the low riding boat which the inventors expect to skim the surface of the ocean expediting passenger, mail and express transport of the seven seas. If perfected, this invention would be one of the greatest achievements in the realm of transportation. The inventors visualize many of these strange appearing craft speeding across the ocean cutting the tops of waves and flashing by the present-day fast liners on their missions of commerce.

“A Tornado BUSTER” for the Mid-West
The above drawing illustrates the scheme proposed by Hans Kutschbach to prevent tornadoes in the Mid-west. This scheme, a modification of a similar project by Dessoliers, a French engineer, calls for the construction of a huge revolving cone that will serve to produce artificial whirlwinds, or potential tornadoes. The moist heated air from the surface of the lake swirls about the cone, then rises to the sky, thus equalizing the atmospheric pressure. The advantage of this scheme lies in the fact that the cone virtually holds the potential tornado stationary, so that it does no damage.

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Bridge of Boats to Guide Trans-Atlantic Air Mail

by BEVERLY BARNES

Within a few weeks you’ll be able to drop a letter in your local mail box and have it delivered in Europe in a few hours, carried by airplane all the way. How this trans-Atlantic air mail will be guided by a bridge of boats or seadromes is explained in this timely article.

THE “bridge of boats” which America rushed to completion thirteen years ago to carry an American army to France and help win the war, may become a bridge again to guide the first trans-oceanic air mail line across the North Atlantic.

While this is being written, in early March, the postoffice department at Washington is busy preparing an advertisement soliciting bids for a trans-Atlantic air mail service. By the time these words appear in print the invitation will have been issued, and it is possible that the first mail flights may be made before the end of the year.

Irving Glover, second assistant postmaster general, in charge of all air mail activities, is sponsor for the suggestion that some of the old war-time vessels, laid up by the shipping board years ago, be refitted and anchored at intervals across the Atlantic to form service stations, radio beacons and mile posts for the air mail line. Ten ships anchored at intervals would be sufficient to safeguard the route from New York to Bermuda and Bermuda to Lisbon, Portugal, by way of Fayal, in the Azores. The use of the old ships as radio and light ships and spare parts and fuel stations would be only a temporary expedient until the “floating islands” designed by Edward R. Armstrong can be built and placed along the route, as his company plans to do.

Glover’s suggestion of using the war-time ships depends on who the successful bidder is, for the method of hopping off across the ocean will be left to the winning bidder.

If carried out, however, a single ship anchored midway between New York and Bermuda would divide the first leg of the ocean hop into sections of slightly less than 400 miles each. From the ship constant radio bearings could be sent day and night, assisted by a beacon light at night.

Seven ships anchored between Bermuda and the Azores would be sufficient to divide the longest leg of the flight into 300 mile sections. With ships at those intervals the planes would never be more than 150 miles from a radio direction beacon, and a fuel and repair station, while in event of a forced landing between ships the nearest vessel could drop its moorings and proceed to the rescue.

Two, or possibly three ships, would be needed between the Azores and Lisbon. From the Portuguese city a land route via Bordeaux and Havre would connect with London, or a shorter land and sea route could be laid out up the Portuguese coast, across the Bay of Biscay to Brest, and from there to Southampton, England.

The French Compagnie Generale Aeropostale already is operating an air mail line from Europe to South America, although fast steamers have been used for the comparatively short hop from Dakar, West Africa, to Natal, Brazil, by way of St. Paul Rocks and Fernando Noranho, the famous Brazilian penal island off the coast of South America. The steamers are shortly to be replaced by seaplanes, and, in fact, several experimental trips have been made by plane.

At Natal, the French line connects with the east coast lines of the Pan-American Airways, the American mail and passenger lines which reach from Miami, Florida to Buenos Aires, by way of Cuba, Porto Rico, the Leeward and Windward Islands, and Trinidad, Georgetown, Cayenne, Para, Maranhao and Natal. The ocean hop from Dakar to Natal on the French route is not much greater than the famous flight of the U. S. Navy’s “NC” boats from the tip of Newfoundland to the Azores, just after the war.

Regardless of whether or not Glover’s suggestion to use the war-time ships as floating islands is adopted, it is practically certain the successful bidder for the first north Atlantic air line will use either flying boats or amphibians with boat hulls, and not land planes. The experience of the Pan-American air lines, operating, with its subsidiaries, a total of 19,190 miles of air mail and passenger routes, has shown that multi-motored amphibians, such as the Sikorski, are sufficient for the fairly short hops between the islands of the West Indies and across the Caribbean.

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LIQUID AIR to RECLAIM LAND from NORTH SEA

ONE of the most astounding engineering feats of recent years—that of building a wall of solid ice with liquid air around a large portion of the North Sea—is now under consideration by German engineers. Adding thousands of acres to the continent of Europe, the ice dam will serve as a breakwater to enable the engineers to construct a permanent inner dike of concrete, and then proceed to fill the inclosed space with earth sucked up by a dredge from the bottom of the sea outside the ice wall, as illustrated in the accompanying drawings.

Engineers will set about building the ice dam by erecting a pipe line out into the sea to carry liquid air, which will reduce the temperature of the pipes to approximately 180 degrees below zero. The sea water coming in contact with these pipes will congeal into ice, and the waves will then tend to form a solid ice wall to serve as a breakwater for the inclosed area.

This much accomplished, engineers will then build a permanent concrete dike inside the ice wall, and by means of a suction dredge fill in the reclaimed area with earth sucked up from the bottom of the sea outside the wall.

This project, if proven feasible in preliminary experiments, will first be carried out in the North sea, shown on the map above, where for centuries the Germans have been trying to win land from the ocean. Liquid air will be supplied by refrigerating plants on the shore, and the pipe line will extend out beyond Helgoland and back to the mouth of the Weser river.

Meter Gauges Work in Bread-Slice Units

How rapidly exercise uses up the energy in the food you eat is graphically demonstrated by a device called the “bread-o-meter” at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pa. When a visitor mounts a bicycle frame and pedals vigorously, a generator produces electricity in proportion to his effort, and figures on a board show how many slices or loaves of bread would be needed to furnish this energy.

Planes Need No Wheels

Airplanes should keep their wheels on the ground, believes Samuel S. Knox, of Long Beach,. Calif. He has patented a landing strip formed of pneumatic-tired wheels, which could be powered to speed take-offs and braked to shorten landing rolls. It would free the plane of landing-gear weight.

Runway for Airplanes Atop Skyscrapers
A NEW YORKER has invented a novel turntable runway which he believes will be suitable for landing and take-off of airplanes from the tops of high buildings. The device is declared to offer many advantages over the proposed platforms for such landings. The landing table can be tilted at any angle and swung about in any direction so that the wind is along its axis. The incline naturally serves as a brake on the landing ship and air blasts assist in checking the speed of the landed ship. The turntable would also present an incline which would enable a faster than ordinary take off.

Sun Operates Gas Machine

Developed by Otto H. Mohr, of Concord, Calif., a specially constructed machine utilizes the sun’s rays to produce a gas which, when broken up by means of an electric current, yields hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen are then stored in separate tanks for cooking, heating, etc.

Mirror in Cap for the Sheik

MODERN youth has solved the problem of the embarrassing necessity for carrying his mirror, for on sale at various men’s stores in London is a novel cap inside which is a mirror. All a young man must do is doff his cap to see whether his hair is nicely slicked and whether he is entirely presentable.

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Damming a River of Fire

By WARD MADDEN

THE strangest fortification line on earth is being planned for the island of Hawaii. For thirteen miles across the flanks of Mauna Loa, the world’s most active volcano, high barricades will dam and divert rivers of fire. This daring scheme is designed to protect the Hawaiian city of Hilo, with its 20,000 inhabitants, from the volcano’s flow of lava. Science, for the first time in history, has declared war on a volcano.

Dr. Thomas A. Jaggar, director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, is the originator of the plan. For twenty years, Dr. Jaggar literally has lived with Hawaii’s famous volcano. He has studied it, tested it, kept a day-to-day record of its changing pressures, its shifting temperatures, its altering aspects. His home, hung inside the walls of the vast Kilauea crater, the largest opening on the sides of Mauna Loa, is unique among habitations. It was there, not long ago, that Dr. Jaggar explained to me his plan for a scientific battle line to safeguard the city of Hilo.

Mauna Loa, he pointed out, is the second highest peak in the Pacific. It towers 13,675 feet above sea level. Once every three and a half years, on the average, incandescent rivers of lava flow down its sides. At three strategic points—one at 10,000 feet, another at 7,000 feet, and the third at 2,500 feet— Dr. Jaggar plans to erect his barricades of concrete and igneous rock to turn the tide of lava down relatively uninhabited valleys to the sea.

The uppermost rampart will be fifteen feet high and five miles long. It is expected to cost in the neighborhood of $300,000. This embankment will give the lava its first impetus to the west. The second barricade, as tall as a two-story house and one mile long, will plug up the saddle between Mauna Loa and its neighboring peak, Mauna Kea. It will cost about $100,000. Already, CCC workers have completed ten miles of road which makes accessible the site of the highest embankment.

The final barrier is to be seven miles long and eighteen feet high, curving to the west of Hilo like a gigantic parenthesis mark. If the lava breaks past the first two embankments, this final wall is expected to turn the flow away from Hilo into the Pacific. Starting at an elevation of about 2,500 feet, the $400,000 barricade will curve downward almost to sea level. Rivers, railways, and highways will pierce the wall through arched openings. But immense steel gates will be provided at each arch, huge doors that can be rolled shut in times of emergency.

Although the total cost of the project is thus approximately $800,000, the amount is small in comparison with the value of the property it is expected to protect. The physical valuation of Hilo, alone, is $50,000,000.

Three valleys, scarring the eastern slopes of Mauna Loa, converge just above Hilo. Like troughs, they tend to lead the lava toward the city. Although the community is forty miles from the summit of the volcano, lava flows on several occasions have pushed close to its outskirts.

In 1885, during an eruption which lasted for sixteen months, the lava approached within five miles of the city limits. In 1881, the molten river, fed for nine months by the lava springs of Mauna Loa, crept to within one mile of the Federal Building in Hilo. At times, these streams of melted rock have a temperature of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Even a year after an eruption has ceased, it is possible to cook steaks on the blackened lava far down the mountainside.

Two years ago, in 1935, one of the most spectacular of Mauna Loa’s many eruptions came to a dramatic climax.

About seven o’clock in the evening on November 21, a sharp earthquake shook the island. Six hours later, a tidal wave struck the waterfront, hurling spray twenty-five feet in the air. At dawn, red lava was pouring down the side of Mauna Loa, eating its way through a dense forest. Trees, swirling in the molten eddies, generated steam in their moist cells and exploded as though filled with gunpowder. At some places, the smoking rivers of lava were rushing downward at fifteen miles an hour; at others, they were cascading over cliffs like flaming Niagaras. Clouds of smoke and gas rose into the sky and the red glow of the incandescent rock was visible 175 miles away on Oahu Island.

Day after day, the flow continued. It passed the saddle between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, and headed down the eastern slope toward Hilo. Dr. Jaggar circled overhead in a swift army plane watching developments. The main stream was a mile wide with more than fifty lets extending like fingers ahead of it. Christmas was celebrated in Hilo with the lava moving nearer at the rate of about two miles a day.

Twenty-four hours later, it was nearing the headwaters of the Wailuku River, the source of Hilo’s water supply. Dr. Jaggar telephoned the U.S. Army air base and that night mechanics groomed a dozen big bombing planes for a strange aerial attack upon Mauna Loa. By blasting gaps in the edges of the lava stream, Dr. Jaggar believed he could divert the flow, spread it out and make it cool more quickly, thus building up increased resistance and turning the lava into a new channel.

TWENTY bombs, each filled with 600 pounds of T.N.T. and designed to detonate one-tenth of a second after striking, to allow for penetration, were dropped on the lava stream. Out of the openings torn by this six tons of high explosives, poured the hottest inner lava of the flow. After that, the advance of the molten rock slowed down and finally stopped altogether.

It was during this 1935 eruption that Dr. Jaggar saw something which resulted in his present plan to erect a system of lava dikes on Mauna Loa. He noticed that in several instances natural embankments, lying at an angle to the progress of the lava, turned it to one side. During the first and most dangerous stage of an eruption, the lava moves as a liquid instead of pushing like a solid. By placing his barricades so they slant downhill obliquely, he believes he can divert this “aa type” lava in any direction he desires.

For two decades Dr. Jaggar has been studying tilts and pressures on the lava floors. By means of drills he has taken periodically the temperature of the subsurface rocks. Transit measurements and regular, photographic records show minute variations in the shape and condition of . the crater. In special containers, he collects gases and analyzes them in his laboratory. Nothing which might throw light upon the mystery, of what is occurring underfoot is neglected.

As a result, Dr. Jaggar has been able to predict the last two major eruptions well in advance.

An important part of the harvest of Dr. Jaggar’s observatory is a collection of thousand of seismograph records. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and tidal waves are so closely linked together, the scientist points out, that they should be studied jointly in the search for new information about what goes on beneath the surface of the earth. When we know enough about volcanoes, he reasons, we can recognize minute warning signals and thus reduce the annual toll of 40,000 lives now lost in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

HIS ultimate goal is a world-wide chain of observatories, manned by experts who will pool their findings just as do the scientists in charge of the far-flung weather bureau stations today. These “consulting specialists” would flash news of unusual activity from any of the sixty-odd live volcanoes on the surface of the globe. Such an organization, modeled after the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, would vastly increase our knowledge of the habits of the earth’s interior, habits which affect the lives of millions of people.

This project, however, lies in the future. The outstanding news of the present is the battle against lava planned for the slopes of Mauna Loa. Unique in the history of man’s long struggle against the forces of Nature, this campaign, with its thirteen miles of scientific fortifications, forms the dramatic climax to a quarter of a century of research.

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Control the Weather and Control the World

Will we win the crucial race to gain mastery over this most devastating of all weapons?

By Dick Halvorsen

WORLD WAR III, if it comes, may be won or lost, within 48 hours—and without a single A-bomb dropped or a single shot fired. We could win the next Big One by harnessing the mightiest physical force in the world: the hitherto uncontrollable weather.

Fanciful nonsense? Crazy day-dreaming? Science-fiction? Not a bit of it. Consider these startling facts: A hurricane expends more energy in one minute than all the electrical power produced in the United States in the past 50 years. . .

Hurricane Edna, which ravaged the east coast of the U. S. in 1955, had more raw power packed in its 100-mph gales than all the A-bombs dropped since Hiroshima. . .

Off Luzon in the Philippines in 1944 a tropical typhoon swept down on three destroyers of the U. S. fleet. Each of the tin cans boasted 60,000-h’p engines— but their strength was as nothing against the fierce winds and all three warships turned turtle and sank with all hands…

The crushing Pacific typhoon of October 1945 sent seven warships to the bottom, drove more than 200 aground, wiped out army installations, roads, bridges and cities on Okinawa and killed hundreds of men with its 180-knot winds and 50-foot waves. . .

Tornadoes of 1952 destroyed a good percentage of the fighting strength of the Strategic Air Command, smashing expensive fighters and giant bombers into worthless wreckage. . .

Hurricane gusts bend steel plate like tin foil, crumble concrete wharves, rip up forests, crush bridges. A tornado can drive iron rods through telegraph poles. Floods and winds have caused more devastating than all the puny weapons of man since time began.

How could weather be used as the most powerful weapon the world has ever known? History books of the future may well contain the following chapter: “The attack against the United States ” was launched early on the morning of September 26,1960. The enemy struck at half a dozen points, using submarine fleets to surprise and capture U. S. installations at Iceland, the Azores, Hawaii, Bermuda and Spitsbergen. Following the troop-laden subs came vast air armadas and then three great invasion fleets, two in the Atlantic, one in the Pacific.

“America met the attack, not with A-and H-bombers of the Strategic Air Command, but with the squadrons of the Air Weather Service and the Navy’s Weather Group. Their primary target was the enemy fleet coming up fast in the South Atlantic.

“Behind this fleet a late-season hurricane, nicknamed Jezebel, was brewing and weather planes moved to Brazilian bases to direct it. Their weapon was a super-thermite bomb which generated intense heat and produced vast low-pressure areas. As the hurricane began its normal northwesterly course, bombardiers dropped the heat bombs north and east of the swirling winds. Jezebel, seeking the line of least resistance, spun into the low-pressure area and followed the course laid down by the bombs—a course that led directly to the enemy fleet.

“The massed ships were hit with 150-knot gales and waves towering up to 100 feet. Cruisers capsized, their rudders torn loose. Overladen troop ships, unable to navigate, collided and sank. Destroyers and corvettes were driven far off their attack course. The enemy fleet scattered.

“But hurricanes were only one weapon in the arsenal of our weather service. Planes loaded with dry ice struck at the airfields captured by the enemy in our overseas bases. Heavy seeding of cloud formations over the fields produced torrents of rain that turned landing strips into quagmires and kept enemy air fleets grounded.

“Along America’s east coast, at Miami, Norfolk, New York and Boston, the weather service’s huge, mobile wave-making machines went into action, backed up by wind tunnels generating 2,000-mph gales. The ships of the enemy’s northern invasion fleet reached the coast to find themselves faced by raging seas and winds that made water-borne or air-borne landings impossible.

“While these defensive weather measures were being taken, German- and English-based weather planes raced aloft to utilize weather as a weapon of attack. Balloons carrying packets of silver iodide crystals were released into the everflowing jet stream which pours eastward across Europe at more than 100 mph, eight miles up.

“As the packets dissolved at varying distances, the crystals spilled out and enough of them seeded rain-swollen clouds to dump torrential downpours on the enemy’s industrial centers. The seeding was further aided by ground generators that pumped crystal-laden fog and smoke into winds prevailing toward the enemy’s homeland.

“There was no let-up in this war-by-weather. The enemy’s farm areas were saturated with thermite bombs, prolonging the seasonal drought, causing low- pressure areas which brought hot winds fanning up from the southern deserts. Drought parched the enemy’s crops; floods swept away his railroads; rains swamped his airfields and factories; mud bogged his roads and highways; hurricanes crushed his fleets; typhoons ravaged his coast; tornadoes crisscrossed his farmlands.

“Unable to withstand this terrible destruction that seemed more the work of a vengeful Deity than a weapon in the hands of man, the enemy sued for peace and World War III came to a quick end.”

However fantastic this war report may sound, it contains nothing that is not already “in the works!” Man has always tried to control the weather, from primitive drum-beaters to jet-borne cloud-seeders. Today, cloud-seeding with dry ice and silver iodide crystals are the approved rain-making techniques, although there have been rumors of successful electronic methods. In Project Cirrus, a joint Army-Navy test of rain-making techniques, generators burning coke impregnated with silver iodide shot smoke into the air which seeded thousands of miles of cloud in a few hours, with startling, rain-producing results.

According to Ferguson Hall, leading rain-making authority of the U. S. Weather Bureau, it would take a score of planes carrying 500,000 pounds of dry ice to seed a 100-square-mile area. With such an amount, he says, “We might even break up a lightning storm or kill a tornado or hurricane.”

According to Robert H. Simpson, director of the Bureau’s “Project Whirlwind,” data gathered in the past few hurricane seasons has produced evidence that hurricanes have an Achilles’ Heel where the application of force might affect its formation and path. But finding that vulnerable spot will require a systematic search.

There is much we have to learn about hurricanes. We do not yet know for sure the source of the storm’s energy, nor how it grows. We don’t know why a hurricane causes a “storm surge”—a general rise in water level inundating coastal regions. Hurricane waves more than 100 feet high have been reported, but do they occur singly or in series?

Weather cannot be duplicated in the laboratory to study cause and effect. Even on a clear, calm day the forces involved vary from minute to minute. The enormous number of unknowns makes accurate prediction a difficult job even for an electronic brain.

But in spite of the difficulties involved, the attack against the problems of weather prediction and control is going forward rapidly on many fronts.

Ground fogs have been conquered by dry ice and by heat. The imagination of meteorologists has been unfettered by these early victories and recently we have had such eye-opening suggestions as building huge ocean barriers to deflect warm currents to melt the arctic ice and make Greenland habitable. Another novel suggestion has been to drop soot on glacial areas to absorb the heat of the sun and melt the deep-frozen snow. ., , So great have been the strides of meteorology in recent years that Dr. Edward Teller, famed as father of the H-bomb, has predicted that weather control will be possible within ten years.

But will weather control be used for the good of mankind? Each victory against the forces of nature puts another deadly weapon in man’s arsenal. And here we are dealing with a force that makes man-made weapons seem like slingshots and beanshooters.

You can be sure that the military leaders of all nations are pushing research on weather control with all possible speed. Mathematician John von Neumann predicts that by 1980 a Weather Commission will be able to flick a switch and thaw the polar regions, or flick another switch and inflict a new Ice Age on the enemy’s terrain.

Scientist Vincent Schaefer has stated that it is already possible to limit the formation of super-cooled clouds in the atmosphere throughout the world. “In other words,” comments T. Morris Longstreth in his book Understanding The Weather, “an industrious enemy in time of war could overseed a nation’s clouds and sow drought at growing seasons.”

Military men know that such predictions are not beyond the realm of possibility. The race to control the weather is on—now! The loser will reap flood and drought, whirlwind and sandstorm, hurricane and typhoon—all the ruin and devastation the mighty forces of nature can wreak. This will be a defeat the brilliance of generals and the gallantry of a people cannot mitigate. There will be no second chance for the defeated.

So much for the loser in this dramatic race to control the weather.

The winner will control the world! •

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New Glider to Soar With Sails

THE WORLD’S first sailplane, something new in gliding, has just been constructed by John Demenjoz of Bridgeport, Connecticut. This novel glider represents nearly a year of work. It has a 40-foot wing spread, is 30 feet in length, and altogether weighs less than 600 lbs.

It has no motor, and is to be propelled by wind only. Mr. Demenjoz is shortly to take his machine to Old Orchard, Me., where he will make it the location for the crucial tests of his new invention.

Original in his idea of making a plane go both ahead and into the air by the use of sails similar to those of a boat, the French inventor has carefully calculated all the requirements of stability, he says, and is confident that with a wind of 20 miles an hour he should be able to fly. He further predicts that he will be able to fly as high as there is any wind. He estimates his craft will attain a speed of 40 miles an hour.

The principle of making sails propel vessels and vehicles other than boats has been widely applied in the past to railway handcars, road wagons, and the like.

To the editors of Modern Mechanics, however, who are watching the forthcoming trials with much interest, it would seem that a more logical way for the application of the sail would be to have a counter sail under the landing carriage to balance the high center of effort of the present mainsail. This could be folded, and unfurled when in flight to add to speed and stability. That is, of course, providing the principles are sound and the glider actually flies. At all odds the inventor is to be complimented for his innovation and for his enterprise.

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Bombproof Plane Factories ROLL INTO MOUNTAIN SIDE

Raid Shelters for Assembly Plants: A Swiss Inventor’s Solution to the Problem of Protecting Production AIRPLANE FACTORIES that literally run to shelter from raiding bombers have been invented by Antoine Gazda, noted Swiss armament designer, and erected at undisclosed places in Switzerland by the Pilatus aircraft concern as a national-defense precaution. A typical installation consists of a pair of twin assembly plants, normally standing in the open where their total of 360 workers enjoy natural sunshine and fresh air. At an air-raid alarm signal, however, a “motorman” enters a control cabin at the rear center of each plant’s upper floor. He swings a switch handle, and the entire 1,600-ton factory rolls ponderously on electric-powered wheels into a cavern in a mountain side, completing its strange journey in about twenty minutes. Only its front remains exposed, and steel armor covers this end.

Meanwhile, workers reconnect quick-change electric and plumbing fittings to mains within the cavern, and attach a ventilating tube whose intake is hidden. Then the plant resumes full operation under artificial-daylight lamps. In case of a poison-gas attack, the front portal can be hermetically sealed, and fresh air drawn in through the ventilator is filtered and purified. When danger has passed, an “all clear” signal from observers brings the factory out into the open again.

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Who Are the Quacks?

By Annie Riley Hale

YOU see the Allopaths arrived first, with Hippocrates, and quickly seized all the natural strongholds,—popular ignorance and superstition, the laissez-faire instinct of the mob to be led or driven, and the panicky animal fear of pain and death. These they further fortified with traditions of medical learning and omniscience; with the alleged inability of the lay mind to grasp any ordinary physiological fact; and the pleasing fiction that every physician is a man of science, holding the only key to health.

And most potent of all the adventitious aids making for Allopathic exclusiveness and supremacy, is the veil of secrecy and mystery which has ever hung over their activities, and which the elaborate foreign and technical nomenclature of the medical schools rendered well-nigh impenetrable to the laity.

The element of mystery in medical practice, which has been such a source of profit to its votaries, was early and easily injected because of the notion among primitive peoples that disease was a manifestation of some occult power for evil; hence the first practitioners of the healing art were also the religious teachers — sorcerers, soothsayers, and the priests of the various altars, who sought by mystic signs (the forerunners of modern pharmaceutical cipher) and incantations, sometimes by the torture of the afflicted ones, to drive out the indwelling demons of bodily distempers.

A favorite method of expulsion was by administering concoctions from poisonous herbs, and in order that the dose might not kill the patient as well as his tormenting evil spirit, it became necessary for these early practitioners to study the nature and properties of herbs and minerals, to calculate their effects on the human system, and learn how much could be taken with impunity.

This was the origin of the “medicine men” and the elaborate drug baiting which subsequently held malign sway over sick humanity through many centuries, but which happily now shows a tendency to peter out in the sale of soap, perfumery, and tooth-brushes.

The art of healing in some form is as old as the race, and strictly speaking there is no “Father of Medicine,” although Hippocrates won the title by creating for it a literature, and by founding a school of medicine which bore the designation “Dogmatic,” as teaching and practicing in accordance with a general principle and not empirically. He thus placed his art upon so firm a basis that later teachers have generally preferred to imitate or modify what he set forth, rather than venture upon new fields of inquiry. The maxim has been imputed to Hippocrates: “Sacred knowledge may be communicated only to the initiated ; the profane may not be taught before their initiation,” and the vow of secrecy imposed upon the novitiate in his school was styled the “Hippocratic Oath.” doubt this was an inheritance from an earlier practice when it was accounted sacrilege for any to intrude upon a priestly function; he was certain to meet the fate of Korah and King Uzziah.

Pliny relates that Galen, in the Second Century, narrowly escaped mob violence at Rome, for delivering a series of public lectures on anatomy at the request of the leading men of the city, noblemen, savants, and philosophers, among them the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, but for whose protecting favor, the famous physician would probably have been arraigned and put to death. For he was charged with “a violation of the code in force among Roman physicians, as well as of the so-called Hippocratic Oath, which forbade the instructing of nonmedical persons in any of the mysteries of professional knowledge.” The historian declares this to have been merely “the desired pretext” for venting upon Galen the jealousy and enmity of the Roman guild of physicians, who hated him because “he was infinitely their superior in skill, erudition, and liberality of sentiment.” Very significant of the power of this Roman medical guild over the minds of the Roman populace, however, was the fact that despite the powerful friendship of the Emperor, Galen was compelled to desist from lecturing, and was denounced by all the ribald epithets—”quack ” among others—current among the medical nien of that period, until in disgust he left Rome and returned to his native Pergamos. Later he was summoned by Antoninus to accompany him on a military expedition, and afterward became the physician of the Imperial family.

Thus it appears that medical bigotry and intolerance, professional jealousy and hate, have gone hand in hand with the development of the Healing Art from time immemorial; and knifing therapeutic colleagues has ever been a favorite pastime with the gentlemen who neglect no opportunity to laud the “nobility” of their calling. As time went on, the Allopaths, like all monopolists, waxed rich, and in common with other rich folks, were very influential with governments. With political power added to their superstitious control over the minds of the masses, they were able to build up a system which up to the present has been practically impregnable. It had in it the absolutism of kings, the slavocracy of medieval priest-craft, and the plunderous graft of modern commercialism. Entrenched behind this triple-barred fortress, members of the Allopathic school were in position to Mag their heads derisively at the exponents of other therapeutic systems. They christened themselves the “regulars,” and all others were faddists, cultists, and “quacks”; the last named being the favorite epithet for all dissenters from Allopathic faith and practice, and lias been applied indiscriminately and with equal ictus to the scholarly founders of the Homeopathic and Naturopathic schools of thought, and the illiterate vendors of hair tonics and corn plasters.

One might suppose that the Allopaths in the full security of their superior position, would be content with verbal jibes and revilings at the quacks, and that they could even afford to be good-natured about it; but the history of quack persecutions at the hands of Allopathic authorities for the past hundred years, seems to imply that for all their boasted superiority and strength, the “regulars” stand in constant dread of dispossession by the despised “quacks.” Witness their frenzied efforts at suppression of the latter, not alone by public fulmination and ridicule from platform and official medical journals, but by compulsory laws, and so long as public opinion would tolerate such instruments, by thumb-screw and fagot, which bigotry has always carried for non-conformists. In Wilder’s “History of Medicine,” page 272, we read: “In Germany, as in America, there arose in the earlier years of the nineteenth century a movement among the less scholarly but more numerous grade of physicians to suppress rival modes of practice by arbitrary measures.”

The first to feel the fires of persecution in this movement, were the exponents of Homeopathy and Natural Therapeutics, the demonstrated efficacy of whose methods had won them many adherents in the latter part of the eighteenth, and early part of the nineteenth centuries. Hahnemann, the founder of the Homeopathic school, was forbidden to prepare or dispense his own medicines, was finally driven from Leipzig and took up his abode in Paris in 1835. His disciples continued to be fined and imprisoned in Germany and other European countries, and when they crossed the Atlantic— which they did in 1825—they met the same chilling hostility in America. Their efforts to found Homeopathic schools and colleges to spread the new doctrine were blocked by flocks of Allopathic birds which they found perched in every State capitol, ready with sharpened bills to peck to death every therapeutic innovation; the same flock which later met the Osteopathic applicants for legislative license, and which are not pecking so furiously at the petitioning Chiropractors. Even so dignified and important a personage as the head of the New York Neurological Institute, told the writer he had taken the time from his busy life to go up to Albany a few years ago, in company with other eminent “regulars,” to help defeat a bill before the New York Assembly for Chiropractic State licensure. “And if you could have seen the bunch of illiterate ignoramuses who were there to push that bill!” exclaimed the head neurologist, as an expression of unspeakable disgust spread over his broad face.

It did not seem to occur to this eminent neurologist that he and other opponents of Chiropractic licensing, were chiefly responsible for the illiteracy and ignorance of individual Chiropractors, which unquestionably exist, and may work harm in some instances—t hough whether more than frequently is wrought by Allopathic blundering, is questionable. Certainly, the most illiterate Chiropractor could not display more ignorance of practical dietetics in the treatment of disease, than was displayed by this same head neurologist in a memorable case of which the writer had personal knowledge. Be that as it may, it is obvious, that but for the powerful opposition of the Allopathic school, Chiropractors would long since have received the same authority from the State to practice their method that is accorded the exponents of other therapies, and with the license some safeguarding provision requiring a certain amount of academic and medical training. Thus would be insured to the Chiropractic physician as good a knowledge of English and miscellaneous subjects as is owned by the average Allopath, and at least a workable knowledge of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene, which undoubtedly every one who essays to treat the human body should possess.

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Are the Allopaths “Stealing the Thunder” of Homeopaths and Naturopaths?

DR. WILLIAM OSLER, world’s greatest authority

on drugs, says in his article “Modern Medicine,” in the Encyclopedia Americanna:

“The new school does not feel under obligation to give any medicines whatever, while a generation ago not only could few physicians have held their practice unless they did, but few would have thought it safe or scientific. Of course there are still many cases where the patient or the patient’s friends must be humored by administering medicine or alleged medicine where it is not really needed, except where the buoyancy of mind, the real curative agent, can only be created by making him wait hopefully for the expected action of the medicine; and some physicians still cannot unlearn their old training. But the change is great. The modern treatment of disease relies very greatly on the old so-called ‘natural’ methods, diet and exercise, bathing and massage,—in other words giving the natural forces the fullest scope by easy and thorough nutrition, increased flow of blood, and removal of obstructions to the excretory systems, or the circulation in the tissues. Take for example typhoid fever … It was perfectly certain that Homeopaths lost no more of their patients than others. There was but one conclusion to draw—that most drugs had no effect whatever on the diseases for which they were administered.”

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“TALK-BACK” for your RADIO

NO problem of the commercially sponsored radio broadcast is more vital than the determination of listener response. What percentage of people like a program and what per cent do not. If the president asked his radio audience to vote “yes” or “no” on an important question how valuable it would be if he could learn the trend of opinion on the topic by the next morning; and with no more trouble to the listener than the mere pushing of a button on his radio set.

The answer to such questions appears possible with an invention of Dr. Nevil Monroe Hopkins of New York University which allows a radio listener to register his approval or disapproval of a program by “talking back” to the broadcasting station. The “talk-back” mechanism is the result of seven years of secret experimentation in which commercial and government scientists have participated. A large electrical company is now considering the invention from a practical standpoint. It is estimated that in quantity production the new talk-back device would cost only a dollar and could be attached to any radio set.

Dr. Hopkins has devised two ways of working out the problem of radio-audience reaction response. The first involves the use of small compact short-wave radio transmitters—of set wave length—attached to each receiving set. When the members of the invisible radio audience are asked to express an opinion they first press a button that sends a short-wave signal through the air. The total intensity of this short-wave signal formed by the thousands of little transmitters is picked up by the broadcasting company and its strength determined with a watt-meter, a device for measuring power. The readings on this meter are calibrated in terms of the total number of listeners who are tuned in.

Next the listeners who approve of the topic at hand are asked to press the “yes” button on their sets. The intensity of this signal is received by the broadcasting company and translated into the number of listeners who vote yes. Finally the number of listeners voting no is likewise determined. The ratio of the yes and no votes—the relative strength of the two signals—should total the strength of the whole number listening in.

A second way of determining the yes and no votes is by measuring the load in the electric power lines that energize the radio sets. Pushing the button to indicate that one is listening in increases the line load. While the gain for any one set would be small the aggregate increase is measurable. The gain in line load for yes and no votes can likewise be determined.

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Rocket Train Faster than Sound

TOMORROW’S train will be too fast for a timetable. Leave New York at 12 noon for the coast, and you’ll arrive in Los Angeles at the same time, the same day!

How’s that? At 1,000-mph your train will travel as fast as the sun in its apparent motion across the earth from east to west. You’ll pace the sun through every time zone from Eastern Standard to Pacific Time as your wheel-less train glides across the continent in three hours on its graphite-lubricated slippers. It’ll take the sun three hours to race the same distance, and you’ll flash into L.A. in a dead heat—at the same time you started!

Such a super train is depicted here by MI Artist, Doug Rolfe. Its pattern is the Army “sled” recently tested at Muroc Air Base by the Northrop Aircraft Co. With five solid-fuel rockets it streaked along its standard-gauge railroad track at 1,019 mph, far faster than the speed of sound.

The sled originally was designed to help plane engineers crack the 750-mph barrier of sound and test air models at supersonic speeds. Before the sled shot off the rails and buried itself in the desert, however, it set a world’s record for speed on land and opened the way for a revolution in transport and rapid dispersal of our sardine-packed cities. •

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TOEHOLD IN SPACE

Tiny moonlets, encircling our earth, might be used as jumping-off points for space travel.

By Stanley Carson

HOW many moons has the earth? If your answer is one, you may be wrong! Astronomers believe that there actually are one or several small satellites orbiting with tremendous speed between the earth and the moon.

If the predictions of our astronomers are correct, and there are a number of small moons circling the earth at short distances, then space travel may become a reality many more years sooner than is anticipated. For the moonlets which our government is now searching for can be used as ready-made stations in space. It would not be necessary for rocket ships to carry thousands of tons of structural material into space to construct an artificial satellite. The foundation for man’s first celestial outposts would be ready and waiting and only a minimum of materials for living and working quarters would be necessary.

The Department of Defense has decided that the possibility of moonlets existing in space between the earth and the moon is sufficient to warrant an immediate astronomical survey in an attempt to locate the exact position of these small bodies. A telescopic search is now being made for the government by Drs. Clyde Tombaugh and Lincoln La Paz, directors of the Institute of Meteritics of the University of New Mexico.

In a recent interview Dr. La Paz said that the United States had “better get on the ball quickly” if it is not already working on a station in space. He believes that if the search for a small, nearby moonlet is successful it can be built up as an outpost in space.

“Using such natural stations,” said Dr. La Paz. “would save many billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money which would otherwise have to be spent building an artificial satellite vehicle.”

Many astronomers and scientists believe the chances of eventually finding the moonlets are good. It has been pointed out that while the earth has only one known satellite—the familiar moon—other planets have from two to eleven small bodies as moons and that many more probably exist, but have not been seen in telescopes.

Mars, for example, has two tiny moons, Phobos and Deimos. Compared to the earth’s moon with a diameter of 2,163 miles, the two tiny satellites of Mars can hardly be classed as moons, but rather fit into the smaller category of moonlets. Phobos, 5,800 miles from the planet, is only 10 miles in diameter and Deimos, 14,600 miles from Mars, is but five miles in diameter!

With its eleven moons, Jupiter is a perfect example of a solar system in miniature.

Its satellites range from moonlets an insignificant 15 miles in diameter to two great bodies, Ganymede and Callisto, each 3,200 miles in diameter. The closest moon of Jupiter is only 112,600 miles from the monster planet and the most distant orbit is 14,880,000 miles away.

Space abounds with smaller bodies variously described as planetoids and asteroids. Ceres is the largest known of these wandering nomads of the solar system and is 480 miles in diameter. The planetoid Hermes, one mile in diameter and with a mass of three billion tons, can come as close to the earth as 220,000 miles—closer than our moon. The majority of the “minor planets,” however, are less than 50 miles in diameter. At least 1,500 are charted and their orbits known.

There is good reason to believe, therefore, that the earth also may be the mother world of one or a group of small moonlets. These may circle our planet anywhere from 1,000 to 200,000 miles out in space though they are probably quite close to the earth, which accounts for their not having been sighted before.

According to Dr. C. M. Clemence, director of the Nautical Almanac Office of the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, the chances are “very good” that there are one or more small satellites between the earth and the moon.

Such objects will be extremely difficult to find, Dr. Clemence believes. They would have become disastrous meteorites eons ago except that they fell into an orbit about the earth.

Dr. Clemence stated that the speed of the tiny moons would depend upon their distance from the earth. A satellite 1,000 miles in space would whip around the planet in less than two and one half hours, which is one good reason why they have never been spotted. They would be moving too fast to be caught on the usual photographic plates.

Another reason why the moonlets have not yet been sighted, explains Dr. Clemence, is that most of the time they are in the earth’s shadow and therefore do not shine. Every now and then, however, the moonlet in its orbit will whirl beyond the shadow of the earth for a short period of time and may be seen visually. Dr. Clemence believes that one way to track the moonlets is to move the camera at the same speed as the satellite (as it would be seen) would flash through the sky.

Even if the search is successful, Dr. Clemence believes the project will require at least two to three years for completion.

Other astronomers do not feel quite so keenly about the chances of discovering the elusive moonlets. According to Dr. Hugh S. Rice (for whom the Rice Asteroid is named), Research Consultant, Astronomy, The Hayden Planetarium, it is definitely possible that the moonlets do circle the earth, but it is also improbable that we shall be successful in our quest. Dr. Rice points out, and with good reason, that sky observation and study have been conducted for many years. “To my knowledge,” Dr. Rice stated, “our observations have not detected any bodies orbiting about the earth other than the moon.”

The standard method of celestial study and photography is to use an astrograph. This instrument consists of a telescope with a camera plate attached to photograph certain areas of sky. Usually the astrograph is set so that it will follow exactly the motions of the stars as they “swing about the heavens” during the night hours.

Actually, of course, the astrograph’s movement is so governed that it does not turn-with the earth as it rotates. In this fashion, the developed photographic plates will show the distant stars as fixed circles of light. Smaller bodies within the solar system, such as asteroids or moonlets, will appear as streaks of light.

The planetoid Ceres was discovered in this manner, as was the outermost planet, Pluto.

Many asteroids approaching close to the earth are detected in this fashion, although the majority seem to have been discovered by accident. The astronomers, intent upon photographic scrutiny of the stars, have found the tracks of the asteroids across the developed film.

The problem in searching for the moonlets is twofold. Since they are presumed to orbit closely around the planet, as Dr. Clemence pointed out, they are subject to illumination by the sun only during short periods of time. It is’also possible that astronomers have already tracked a moonlet, but were led to believe that what appeared on their photographic plates was a meteor trail.

A moonlet 1,000 miles beyond the earth, for example, must have an orbital velocity of approximately 17,000 miles per hour. That means that if the moonlet was exposed to a lengthy time exposure, it would show as a brilliant streak and could certainly be assumed to have been the passage of a “shooting star.”

Dr. Rice does not believe that the astro-graph, despite its long and successful use in the past, is particularly well suited for the moonlet search. He points out that its angle of view is very narrow and that the astrograph is designed to take large images in very small areas of sky. Astrographic study for moonlets, therefore, would be a long and tedious task.

“There is another method of photographic observation of the sky,” Dr. Rice added, “in which the astrograph is employed to take time exposures. The stare are allowed to appear in the pictures as streaks of light. A deviation from this ‘light streaking’ will indicate another type of celestial body.”

Astronomical science, of course, has other tools at its disposal. Radio detection of small meteors and meteor swarms, during daylight and darkness, possibly can be adapted to the moonlet search. New methods developed during the last several years employ radio waves as “Jacob’s Ladders” to the extreme upper atmosphere. These radio investigations have revealed that the earth is bombarded by a barrage of 10,000 to 100,000 meteoric dust motes every second.

After a radio wave study of 13,000 individual meteors, scientists determined through radio measurements that these celestial bullets travel a speed of from 10 to 45 miles a second.

Radio astronomy methods have permitted scientists to discover and track meteors with an efficiency 100 times greater than that possible through visual observation by telescope. The most important fact revealed by the radio astronomy work is that great clusters of meteoric material move in specific orbits in space. These regularly visit the planets, each time depositing showers of iron and stone particles upon the various worlds.

It is reasonable to assume that the radio astronomy methods, as well as radar detection, can be adapted to the search for moonlets.

Whatever the methods employed, the armed forces appear determined to exhaust the possibilities of the moonlets in space. As Dr. La Paz stated, the moonlet orbiting about the earth is a natural base for a scientific space station upon which we could establish living and working quarters for the first spacemen. The problems of space travel are manyfold and one of the most extensive of all the projects envisioned for the conquest of space is the incredible task of constructing an artificial satellite in an orbit about the earth.

It has been anticipated that such a venture would require many millions of tons of rocket fuel, the passage of many years, billions of dollars, and would impose a strain on the nation’s economy. A moonlet would eliminate the necessity for transporting hundreds of tons of structural members and materials for basic living and working quarters, since the essential structures for supporting life could be erected directly on the moonlet surface.

Of course we still have the problems of how to catch the moonlets when and if we do find them, how we will counteract the pull of gravity on the moonlets themselves, what we will eat, how we will breathe, etc., but our scientists are already hard at work, trying to solve such problems and they have made great strides indeed. It is entirely possible that by the time the tiny satellites are finally spotted and properly charted we will already have amassed enough technical information and built enough equipment to take space travel out of the realm of science fiction and projection and plunge it like a flaming sword into the pulsating domain of reality.

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The Future: Electronic Mating

A look into the more rational marriage choice of the future, by a science expert on things-to-come.

By Hugo Gernsback

Marriage still remains man’s greatest gamble. The world’s divorce rate constantly accelerates at a dizzying rate. Clearly there is something seriously wrong with our customs and our approach to marriage—it cries out for radical reform.

People rarely speculate why so many of our most dazzling “sexy” beauties of screen and theater shed husbands like a pair of gloves, and why other famous and exquisitely beautiful women, with the most alluring anatomies, never marry at all.

The simple truth is that worthwhile sex expression requires the affinity of two people. And if the couple are not sexually compatible, even Venus and Adonis would not be able to make a go of their marriage.

Frequently, too, nature plays ghastly pranks on humans. Thus many of history’s—and the present’s—irresistible, beautiful women heartbreakers can’t tolerate mere males. They prefer women—homosexuals, like themselves.

The average individual—after aeons of hit-and-miss mating of his ancestors—still blithely persists in trusting the five senses when it comes to selecting a mate. The man looks at a pretty face and figure—sight. . . . He listens enrapturedly to her voice — sound. He feels her cheek — touch. … He inhales the fragrance of her skin or hair—scent. … He kisses her lips —taste . . . and promptly loses his head. The woman reacts similarly —and so they get married, with a better than 80% chance that it won’t really work out happily.

There was a time—just a few decades ago—when people married without regard to health, particularly venereal disease. There was a terrific public hubbub when some states first enacted blood (Wassermann) tests, against syphilis, before issuing a marriage license. Today such a test is taken for granted.

But marriage itself still remains a stupid gamble—the planet’s most outrageously costly and totally unnecessary lottery. Yet, we progress —exceedingly slowly it is true—but we do inch ahead.

In all seriousness I propose an entirely new approach to solve the problem. I hasten to add that my plan—if adopted—will not eliminate all mismating, nor all divorce, but I sincerely believe that it will cut down a large proportion of unhappy marriages.

There will be 2 stages to this plan. The first, to extend over a number of years, will concern itself mainly in accumulating a vast quantity of research material. Once this has been accomplished, we can then approach the second stage, that is, putting the plan into work.

Let us begin with stage 1. A group of bright, young research scientists – psychologists should be organized under the tutelage of a brilliant, able leader.

The group of researchers will interview 25,000 or more married couples. They will be armed with lengthy questionnaires as well as special test equipment. After a few years they will have ascertained which of the 25,000 marriages were successful and which were not. Like the original coded and self-proving Kinsey questionnaire, by eliminating any possible false answers, these marriage questionnaires will be as perfect as modern science and ingenuity can make them.

In due time—mind you, this is a long-term project—our scientists will have much vital scientific data and a long set of questions which all marriage candidates must answer routinely before a license can be issued to them.

The questionnaire and tests will go exhaustively into heredity, individual taste, sex habits, education, race, color and texture of skin, I.Q., general health, past illnesses, texture of hair, Rh blood factor, odor preferences, physiological sensitivity over various parts of the body, musical sense. Rorschach test reactions, artistic sense, speed of various perceptions, religious sense, color perception, physical contour, ethical sense —and perhaps a hundred other vital aspects.

When the research fact-finding period has been concluded, stage 1 of the plan has ended. We now reach stage 2: putting the plan into actual operation. This, of course will require the full cooperation of the states and cities throughout the land. But I do not foresee much difficulty here, when so much is at stake, and where the resulting benefits to the country are so great.

When stage 2 begins to function, young people will also have to be tested for their S.Q.—the Sexual Quotient. This test will become as important as our present blood tests. No marriage certificates will be issued without an S.Q. test.

If the index cards of the marriage candidates reveal complete incompatibility, no marriage certificate will be issued by the state, till the condition has been remedied. This is, of course, a parallel to the Wassermann test, where candidates are not allowed to be married till the syphilitic condition has been cured.

In cases of total incompatibility, there is a chance of alleviation, either medically or psychiatrically (frigidity and other sexual disturbances).

How do we obtain a person’s S.Q.? First, there must be a complete medical examination of the subject, which everybody of marriageable age should have, if much subsequent grief is to be avoided. This examination will quickly reveal obvious physical sexological defects or disturbances, many of which can be remedied.

After the physical tests, the sexual tests are evaluated. Let me debunk here the age-old lie that sex is wholly physical. Nothing is further from the truth. Not even the most libidinous human couple can perform during fright or under other highly unpleasant conditions. This is because we have a sexual center at the top of the brain. The sexual impulses travel from this center via the spinal nerves to the genitals. Cut, or impair, this sexual communication line—either physically or psychically—and sex performance is drastically curtailed or eliminated.

Hence the psychic sexual tests are most important. Fortunately, we have today a number of excellent laboratory instruments which give us outstanding indices for such tests. Better instrumentation is being developed continuously.

The future tests will proceed somewhat as follows: The subject, male or female—it makes no difference which—is physically connected to a number of instruments, such as the following: Electrocardiograph, which furnishes a most accurate tape record of the heart action, reliably portraying emotional stresses. The Electropsychometer (electronic lie detector), which also gives us a most reliable tape record of psychical highlights while the test proceeds. The Electroencephalograph, which gives a running curve of the brain function during the test.

To this is added a recording Polygraph, which gives other valuable clues and accurate indices of sexual emotion through the pulse action, rapidity of breathing, etc.

(These if instruments are illustrated in the drawing on the preceding page.) Now the person under test is given to read a specially prepared romantic short story. This is followed by a short motion-picture film made up from various well-known film productions, with the accent on “torrid” love scenes by famous film personalities.

Next we have a number of short sexological – educational, informative items printed on special cards. This particular part of the test gives the laboratory people a good insight into the person’s sex knowledge.

There follows a final, lengthy Kinsey-type sex questionnaire into the intimate life of the individual with the double and triple checking technique. Such questions, if not answered truthfully, will trip up the subject when the question is put in another form later on.

The final computation of the subject’s S.Q. is made by automatic machines, chiefly through the means of electronic calculators —the so-called electronic brain— and punched index cards. The rating is automatically printed on each card in percentages.

When the final S.Q. has been noted on the card, it becomes a comparatively routine matter for the psychologist in charge to “match” the male and female cards of the marriage applicants.

The answer will not be simply “compatible” or “noncompatible” but the machine rather will answer in percentages. Thus the electronic brain may say: 90 per cent. Translated, this means that the marriage will be in all likelihood, 90 per cent satisfactory. The next two candidates may rate only 73 per cent, and so forth.

The State Marriage Authority may refuse to issue a marriage license to applicants who rate 50 per cent or less. That means that such candidates should find themselves more suitable partners.

This may all sound unnecessarily complicated and lengthy, but it is not. It is far better that young people spend a few hours answering questions and undergoing a few tests than spend the greater portion of a lifetime in unhappy marriage.

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Mr. Gernsback is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society and Editor and Publisher of Sexology magazine and Radio-Electronics magazine. He has enjoyed a distinguished reputation as a prophet of scientific and technological development for over 50 years.