High Speed With Low Power Boat Has Pontoons for Hull
A NEW JERSEY inventor has introduced a novel type boat with which he expects to attain highest speed with smallest output of power. Five double cone-shaped welded steel drums which may be seen in the photo above support the craft on the water. It is pushed along by a 65 horsepower airplane engine mounted on the steel framework above the after floats.
What Tomorrow’s Cars Will Look Like
By Donald Gray
The automobile industry, always one of the country’s most progressive, is today on the verge of astonishing changes in engineering design which are likely to make your next automobile so radically different in appearance that you’ll hardly recognize it. Probable lines of development of tomorrow’s car are here authoritatively presented.
PROFILES of automobiles, like profiles of women’s hats, have a habit of changing swiftly and drastically in response to the whims of fashion.
A RAILWAY that FALLS Down Hill
GERMAN engineers have recently proposed the building of novel “roller coaster” railways for use on short runs between cities and suburbs. The ingenious yet simple construction of this railway, which literally gets its power from falling down hill, is well shown in the accompanying drawing.
Each waiting station is elevated forty or more feet in the air, and passengers are lifted to the platform in an elevator. The train, consisting of two or three cars, awaits them on a level stretch of track beside the station.
MODERN ARK IS BUILT TO ESCAPE TIDAL WAVE
Fearing that the tidal wave that swept Yokohama also would destroy the city of Iloilo in the Philippine. Islands, Chinese residents there hastily constructed a raft of bamboo and were prepared to flee to it if the inundation occurred. The rude craft was 84 feet long and 33 feet wide, and in three hutlike cabins were stored provisions for several days, and bolo knives with which the owners expected to fight off anyone else seeking to climb aboard. The feared inundation did not take place.
Gasless DIRIGIBLE for Safe Air Travel
EVEN the most rabid enthusiast cannot defend the weakness of the hydrogen-fill dirigible. Death and destruction lurk in every cubic foot of it. Human ingenuity has failed to devise a means of making it safe and the prospect of riding the air with 2,000,000 cubic feet of a violent explosive over one’s head is not alluring, at least to those who have had laboratory experience with the energetic hydrogen atom.
SIGNS GUARD INVALIDS FROM HONKING CARS
When the city surveyor of Birmingham, England, recently sought a way to end the honking of automobiles outside the homes of sick persons, he devised the means shown in the photograph. Signs bearing a warning legend were prepared and placed in readiness by city officials. Now a written or telephoned request brings a messenger who will affix the notice outside the afflicted home, to stay until it is no longer needed. The scheme is a boon to invalids, as public hospitals have hitherto been the only ones favored with “Quiet” signs.
Man-Made Gales Help Airplanes Land
HUGE fans which can whip up a 65-mile gale that will act as a brake on landing airplanes will be the next piece of equipment installed in the modern airport, according to experimenters.
Aviators have long known that it is easier to land in a stiff breeze than in still air, and it is proposed to take advantage of this fact by arranging twelve to twenty fans on the landing field to supply an artificial gale. The fans would be arranged at the end of the field to cover a section 200 ft. wide and 90 ft. high.
The air would be driven through a screen of steel bars one inch wide and two feet apart. This screen would serve to break up the eddies of the air.
Japs Greet Midget Car
This startled MP has seen everything. Luckily there wasn’t any traffic to snarl up when the Jap inventor drove his tiny, electric-powered car down a Tokyo street. Named the “Baby Star,” it is about one-fifth the size of an ordinary automobile. A 400-watt motor, developing one-half horsepower, runs it for three hours at 25 miles an hour before the batteries need recharging. It can be converted to use gasoline. A homemade job, the wheels of this bantam auto were taken from dismantled airplanes. It is supposed to be a two-seater.
What a Honey!
The New 1951 Harley-Davidson HYDRA-GLIDE
SLEEK, smooth and beautiful. And what a performer. Takes off like a scared rabbit. Snuggles to the road like a clinging vine. Breezes over hills like a bird. Whisks you over rough spots with cloud-like ease … brings you thrill after thrill as you take in exciting race meets, hillclimbs, gypsy tours, sightseeing runs and other exclusive motorcycling fun events. You’ve never really been places and seen things until you’ve ridden this dazzler! Every moment in the saddle is fascinating. Every trip brings new adventures and new companionships. See your dealer today. Mail the coupon now.
Hewing Jungles and Mountains for World’s Greatest Highway
Triumphing over nature’s grim and forbidding barriers, engineers are building a super highway linking Alaska and the Argentine. Here is the story of the greatest road project in history.
by PETRIE MONDELL
HACKING their way through tangled jungles, braving the quicksands of treacherous streams, hauling equipment by sheer man power up towering cliffs and over once impassable mountain ranges, dauntless engineers are bending every effort to bring the mightiest highway in all history to completion. The finished project will link two continents—a Pan-American roadway extending from northern Alaska to the southern Argentine.
Boeing’s 490-Passenger Jetliner
By Wayne ThornsBOEING engineers call their 747 the gee-whiz airplane. The reason: everyone who walks onto the assembly line at Everett, Wash., and sees his first 747 in shining aluminum is a cinch to utter at least one gee whiz (or its equivalent) while registering stupefaction at the craft’s size.
MI’s author was no exception. We recently got a preview look at the world’s biggest commerical passenger bird. After being appropriately overwhelmed by the aircraft’s size and technical virtues we can report with some authority on what flying will be like in the Superjet era almost upon us. It’s closer than most folks realize. The 747 is scheduled to be airborne in test flights this month or next, and should open its doors to as many as 490 passengers per flight in scheduled service by late 1969.
Dogs Ride in “Normandie’s” Dummy Funnel
That dummy funnel on the “Normandie,” which is probably a concession to the old popular fancy that the more funnels, the more power, is not entirely a dummy after all. Inside it are recreation rooms, a theater and kennels for the passengers’ pets.
The dogs live comfortably aboard ship behind stainless-steel bars that surround their oval room, at the center of which is a drinking fountain. The kennels are steam-heated and ventilated, fresh beds of straw are provided daily, and the dogs are allowed daily exercise on a top deck. There are even life preservers for the pups in large, medium and small sizes, and a special menu printed in French offers choice bones, soups, biscuits and vegetables. In case the canine tourist is indisposed, a veterinarian aboard helps him win back his sea legs.
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