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The ATOMIC SHIP Takes Shape

by Richard K. Winslow

Condensed from Newsweek One fine morning in the spring of 1960 a gleaming white ship will glide from some American harbor out to sea. The ship’s rakish lines will be unmarred by any smokestacks. Her bridge will probably resemble the pilot’s bubble on some huge aircraft. Her passengers—nuclear scientists and marine engineers —will anxiously watch each dial aboard the ship to see if all is well.

America’s first atomic merchant ship will thus embark upon her first sea trials.
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FLOATING Playgrounds Keep Ocean Travelers Fit

No longer must bored travelers pace the pitching decks or remain curled up in a chair while the tedious hours of the ocean voyage slip slowly by. Every deck on the modern liner is now a fully equipped playground, designed to keep the traveler fit and contented.

PERHAPS the most potent reason for the increasing’ popularity of sea-travel is the extraordinary lengths to which the larger steamship lines have gone to keep the passengers amused and contented. Read the rest of this entry »

New Lifeboat Resembles Casket
ABOUT the strangest, and perhaps the most ominous craft yet to make its appearance in marine circles is a life saving boat that resembles a casket. Its unusual appearance, however, does not hinder its effectiveness as a means of rescuing and keeping shipwreck victims safely afloat, for the boat can neither capsize nor sink. It is buoyed up by pontoons on either side, and will remain afloat in the heaviest of seas.
For picking up swimmers from the water after a shipwreck, a row of hand rails are affixed to the side, which can be grasped when the boat comes close.

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An OCEAN LINER Built Like a Zeppelin

Following the streamline form of a Zeppelin, a new ocean liner, designed by a German inventor, gives promise of reducing by one-half the time required for an ocean crossing.

WILL the ocean liner of the future take advantage of the lessons learned by airship engineers and pattern its design after the streamlined Graf Zeppelin, Los Angeles, R-100, and other famous lighter-than-air craft? Read the rest of this entry »

They should have had another label on the picture, pointing at her head with the text “Woman”. Considering we’re too stupid to understand what a diving helmet or air tube looks like, why should we know what a woman looks like either?

Woman Is Expert Deep Sea Diver
CLAIMING the distinction of being the only woman deep sea diver in the world, Mrs. Winifred Height, of Wilmington, California, recently brought to the surface the barrel of a brass cannon that experts state belongs to the period of early Spanish occupation of California. Mrs. Height learned the occupation from her husband, who has gained fame as an under-water worker.

Motorboating in a Washtub
THE ancient and lowly washtub, long the symbol of feminine drudgery, recently proved its conservatism in England when efforts were made to modernize it by adding an outboard motor and converting it into a sea-going craft. The tub promptly rejected the idea and submerged.

Undersea Classroom Reveals Ocean Secrets

DOWN among the coral reefs off the Florida coast lies the world’s strangest college laboratory—the under sea classroom of the marine zoology department of the University of Miami.

Clad in bathing suits, the class sails to the laboratory site, dons diving helmets and sinks into the sea, as assistants on the boat above send fresh supplies of oxygen pulsing through the air tubes.
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Fishtail Drive PROPELS BOATS and MODEL PLANES

FOR ten years, Arthur D. Hill, Jr., a California commercial fisherman, has been observing and studying how the vibrating tails of fish enable them to dart through the water at great speeds. He also noted that birds, with their flapping wings, were still more efficient in flight than the most modern of airplanes with fixed wings. Puzzling out the principles involved, Hill determined to combine the methods of bird and fish, and he has finally developed an odd fishtail drive for Propelling model airplanes, and boats ranging from toy craft up to vessels thirty-five feet in length. Read the rest of this entry »

Electricity May Supplant Nets in Taking Fish

Catching fish by shocking them with electricity is an experiment being tried by the Australian State Fishery Station, at Sydney Bay. A fishing boat has been fitted with charged electrical grids or electrodes of copper that are submerged in the water. Powerful electric generators force a current through the water between the electrodes, shocking all near-by fish, which then float to the surface and are picked up alive in large nets.
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Novel Rowing Car Provides Good Sport

What this country needs is an exercising’ machine that will provide good sport as well as build up muscles and tear down excess avoirdupois. At least that is the belief of the New York manufacturer of the novel whirligig car shown above. Read the rest of this entry »

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U.S. Navy Inventions Build Great Industries

by John Edwin Hogg, Lieut., U.S.N.R.

An amazing scientific workshop afloat —that is the peace-time function of Uncle Sam’s Navy. The discoveries made by navy engineers and scientists have been responsible for the creation of vast new industries, from which you benefit in many ways, as told here.

TO THE average person, perhaps, the American navy is a tremendous engine of destruction draining the Federal treasury of approximately $350,000,000 every year, and serving no useful purpose to the nation except in time of ‘war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The American navy in times of peace is a great progressive institution that extends its ramifications into many fields—scientific, mechanical, social, and diplomatic. Read the rest of this entry »

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Denmark’s Amazing Submarine Plane

The Danish Navy recently secretly tested a successful plane which not only flies, but which can fold its wings and travel undersea—a perfect submarine!

AT LAST the flying submarine has been invented. This hybrid craft which has already undergone successful tests off the Danish coast, will travel over land, run down a beach and launch itself into the sea, and then it is able to turn itself into a submarine and continue to travel underwater. This important military invention, developed by the Danish Navy, can then rise to the surface, unfold its telescopic wings and fly away from the scene of operations.
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