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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Torture Devices of the Old Convict Ships

By C. Moran

Methods of torture used to punish convicts, in vogue in the last century, are graphically displayed aboard the old prison ship, “Success, ” used in the 1850’s to transport British convicts to Australia. The ship is now touring various American ports.

WHEN the jails of England overflowed with prisoners nearly 130 years ago, Great Britain sought to relieve the situation by chartering a fleet of convict ships to transport the “criminals” to Australia. For fifty years this practice was continued, until public revulsion against the inhumanities to which the prisoners on these ships were subjected caused its abandonment.
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Water Glider Floats on Rollers

POWERED by a 9 horsepower motor, the novel water glider shown in the photo below attained a speed of 140 kilometers an hour in a recent test at Suresnes, near Paris. The boat is buoyed on three barrel-shaped floats which revolve when craft is in motion. Propeller attachment mounted in front of boat adds to the pulling power of the motor.

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The Fighting NORTHLAND RESCUE SHIP of the Arctic

by CLARENCE EBEY

TRAPPED in a field of treacherous pack-ice twenty miles off the Alaskan coast, the freighter Anyox, two gaping holes in her ice-crushed bow, was slowly settling to her doom.

Twenty-eight hours earlier the ship’s imperative distress call had crackled through the arctic ether as desperate men had leaped to lash tarpaulins over the battered bow. The initial rush of the hungry waters had been checked; but not before the hold had partially filled and one of the engine fires had been extinguished. Doggedly the men fought the inevitable, but it was a losing battle. Slowly, inexorably, the clutching waters inched their way upward along the freighter’s hull, pulling her ever lower into the trough of the sea. It was the end. The Anyox was doomed. Read the rest of this entry »

SALVAGE MEN CLIMB UP TO DISMANTLE A WRECK

French salvage engineers are tackling an unusual job in the Mediterranean. The Nicholas Paquet, a vessel plying between Marseilles and the coast of Morroco, grounded on the rocks, and remained with its stern rearing high in the air and its bow buried in the waves. Salvage men climb to the tilted decks on rope ladders and lower dismantled parts of the vessel to waiting ships.

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UNCLE SAM ASKED TO BUILD Floating Ocean Airports

REDESIGNED and improved since its earlier forms were described in this magazine, a new type of “seadrome” or floating airport, is proposed by its inventor, Edward R. Armstrong, as the basis of a modernized plan to bridge the Atlantic with a string of artificial islands. His project, which has attracted the interest of U. S. Government officials, is intended to provide twenty-hour airplane service between America and Europe. It calls for the anchoring of five of the seadromes between America and Spain, at about the latitude of Washington, D. C, to serve as refueling stations about three hours’ flight apart. Planes using these islands in stepping-stone fashion could transport heavy pay loads at high speed, since their loads of gasoline would be light.
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“Water Auto” for Police Hits High Speed

Like a streamline automobile without wheels, the odd “water auto” shown above in a trial run along the Thames River in England, can hit a top speed of thirty-five miles an hour although it is driven by a motor rated at only nine horsepower. Designed especially as a police patrol boat for emergency work on the waterfronts of large cities, the craft has its engine forward and a three-place passenger cabin perched over the stern. The center windshield section forms part of a hatch through which entrance is made into the cabin, which provides all the comforts of a luxurious motor car.