New Kinks in Science
Science keeps pace with the needs of man, as shown by these latest developments from the far corners of the globe.
Human minds must be agile indeed to keep abreast of the bewildering progress of science throughout the world.
Electricity from Air Below is shown a Viennese inventor with his machine for generating electricity from the air.
At the right is the current-producing air wheel as it looks from the outside.
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They Earn Their Bread at The Risk of Their Lives
by ROY DEAN
Daredevils who hold down the most dangerous occupations in the world don’t depend on luck to keep them alive — they’re keen students who plan their stunts scientifically to put natural laws to work for them.
WHY is a daredevil, anyway—and why is it that firemen, circus acrobats, lion tamers, tight rope walkers, and race car drivers usually live to a ripe old age, or are cut down by measles, pneumonia, and other prosaic diseases which one would naturally expect would have the good taste to avoid these men who daily laugh at death?
There are several reasons why there are daredevils. In the first place, they must live the same as other folks, and the rewards in the game are high. Then, too, the daredevil is usually a man with an urge for adventure, and his occupation gives him the thrills he craves. Not all daredevils, of course, hold down spectacular jobs. Your window washer, working 30 stories above the street, is as much a daredevil as the chap who permits himself to be shot out of a cannon.
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HOT NEWS ABOUT THE SUN
Not in the future—but right now—scientists are putting to work the limitless energy of the sun.
By Lester David
SOON, a native of East Punjab, India, will walk into the local version of the neighborhood hardware emporium, plunk down 80 rupees and buy a newfangled kind of stove. Back home, he’ll proudly unwrap the shiny gadget, set it up and tell his wife to start dinner.
Less than an hour later, she’ll call out the Indian equivalent of “Come and get it!” and the family will sit down to a meal—a meal cooked by sunshine in the world’s first mass-produced solar stove!
This initial Solar Cooker—a device simple to operate, easy to maintain and economical to use—is actually in production in India right now and is just about ready to go on the market.
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How Will the World End?
WHAT will the end of the world be like ? In the Fels Planetarium of the Franklin Institute at Philadelphia, recently, thousands of persons witnessed a preview of this spectacle, the most gripping that man will ever see. “Canned” sound effects from great electrical storms added realism to the thrilling images of cosmic cataclysms thrown on the planetarium dome by a giant projector to dramatize four possible ways in which life on our planet may be destroyed—by burning, collision, freezing, and explosion. Paintings reproduced in these pages show the tragic scenes they suggest. Sometimes a star becomes a “nova,” or mysteriously flares up in brightness.
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Safety Caravan Hauls Poison Gas
CREEPING at a snail’s pace, a motor caravan of bottled death trundles twice a week through the streets of New York City in the early hours of the morning, as poisonous chlorine gas is transferred from railroad cars to plants where it is used to render liquid sewage germ-free. At the factory in Syracuse, N.Y., the chlorine is piped into cylindrical containers made of steel more than an inch thick.
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You can buy this movie that this article is about from A/V Geeks on a DVD titled Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today. Hmm, I think I’ve heard that tag line somewhere… Paleo-future also posted it a few months ago.
HOUSE OF TOMORROW
By BRUCE WARD
THE HOME OF THE FUTURE MAY WELL BE POWERED by a fuel cell, efficiently managed by a computer and most important to you—provide electronics engineers and technicians with a large slice of a new multibillion dollar market.
The Philco-Ford home of tomorrow shown and described here is part of a research project headed by George C. Crowley which actually crystallizes a great number of random ideas about the future of home environment and (significant for the electronic community) presents a total electronic concept.
We would like to have you join us on a limited room-by-room tour of this exciting home. Then we’d like to make a suggestion on how to reduce the lead time needed to move this project from the planning stage into the construction and maintenance stage—which is where the electronics industry should reap its largest benefits.
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The Steel of the Future
By H. W. Magee
FROM bronze to iron, from iron to steel, and now a new era—that of steel and its alloys—such is the story of human progress.
Before the Napoleonic wars, this was a world of hard labor. Then came steam to lighten toil, and to lift loads off men’s backs.
Iron supplanted bronze. Steel displaced iron because it was stronger. Certain kinds of alloys today surpass ordinary steel in physical properties— strength, toughness, hardness, resistance to oxidation, the action of chemicals, stability at high temperatures, electrical characteristics and luster.
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Modern Hotel is a Huge Machine
A Glimpse at the Mechanical Servants That Perform Superhuman Tasks Hidden from the Sight of Guests
By ALDEX P. ARMAGNAC
SIX o’clock in the evening. New-York’s forty-three storied hotel— the highest in the world above the street and the deepest below—is preparing to open its doors to the public at midnight. An army of workmen complete last minute jobs, engineers and managers hurry through the corridors.
A flash and a sputter. Trouble on the sixth floor. A whole panel of electric fuses has blown out. Half the building is plunged in darkness. And only six hours before the opening.
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