Mirror on Table Beside Typewriter Serves as End-of-Page Indicator

YOUR typewriter bell signals the end of a line, but it is difficult to tell when you are on the last line of a page. If your typewriter is the kind that has no shield covering all the lower parts of the platen, a small mirror laid beside it on the right-hand side of the typewriter table will reflect the bottom of the platen and show when the end of the paper is reached. The mirror can be held in place with pieces of adhesive tape. —O. D. COWLES.

That’s actually a kind of cool idea.

CIGARETTE IS LIGHTED BY SCRATCHING END

Cigarettes that light themselves without matches have been made before, but this novelty in a new form has just been introduced by a San Francisco manufacturer. Ten cigarettes are packed in a box, each provided with a tip of yellow composition. Scratched like a safety match, upon a special surface of the box, a flare results that lights the cigarette.

A strong wind does not interfere with the lighting, according to the maker. He claims his composition is free of objectionable taste in burning, overcoming the principal problem of other inventors who have sought self-lighting cigarettes.

Play Tag with Dynamite!

IF YOU had the job of handling fifty-seven varieties of death in a day, could you keep your nerve? Could you avoid the one mistake that might blast you to kingdom come? Here is the thrilling story of experts who risk their lives to make high explosives safer for everyone to use.

By EDWIN KETCHUM

CANNONS boom and underground blasts rock the earth at one of the world’s strangest laboratories— the U. S. Bureau of Mines’ experimental station at Bruceton, Pa. Here “explosive engineers” risk death a dozen times a day, handling nitroglycerin and deadlier substances, in an effort to find a blasting agent that miners, farmers, and highway engineers may use in safety.

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All Ready, Lift! Brains only Need for Strength Feats

FEATS of strong men all remind us—” no, that’s wrong as far as quoting poetry is concerned! What we do want to say is that brains — not strength — is the prime need for all these stunts we see performed almost every day.

Take the case of a small 100-pound girl. She can resist the efforts of the strongest man who strives to lift her from the floor by getting him to place both his hands on her waist. Unnoticed and quite unconsciously her right hand rests on his left wrist and her left on the jugular vein region of his neck. With a slight outward pressure of the left hand and a gentle pressure downward with the right, the strong man’s strength is deflected.

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Injection Destroys Fag Nicotine
THE pernicious cigarette can no longer be accused of coating the lungs with nicotine, for a German chemist has discovered a chemical which, when injected in the cigarette with the syringe shown above, rids the fag of this harmful drug, and thus renders it harmless.

ALARM CLOCK COOKS HIS BREAKFAST

A SIMPLE attachment for any alarm clock converts it into an instrument that will start a stove or a radio by electricity at the same time that it wakens the sleeper. The inventor, Alfred C. Alves, of San Antonio, Texas, uses it to turn on a light and cook his morning toast.

The necessary apparatus consists of an electric switch in the form of a hollow cylinder fitted to the side of the clock. The uncoiling alarm spring closes two electric contacts, turning on the current. By using a multiple socket, not only can a light be turned on, but several different appliances may be started working at the same time.

In cold weather the device could be adapted to close the windows and turn on the heat.

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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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Steam Engine Made of Pipestone
RECENTLY a model steam engine, made back in 1888 by L.O. Pease, who was then 20 years old, was resurrected from a dusty attic. This unique engine, which caused quite a sensation in its day, was made entirely of pipestone, a soft, close grained stone found on the Sioux reservation in Minnesota. The only tools used were common household knives and files, and a crude lathe made from an old sewing machine. The engine is of the U valve type, with a 1-1/4-inch bore and a 2-1/4-inch stroke. Even the piston is of pipestone with stone piston rings.

FOR Fun-Loving EXECUTIVES
THE makers of this postwar “dream desk” imply that it began as a designers’ joke, but its reception at a Chicago exhibit has brought it into actual, though limited, production. All set for work or play, as the drawings indicate, it is made by the Gunn Furniture Co., of Grand Rapids. The price: “Well into four figures.”

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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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Hawaii Changes Road Signs
BECAUSE Hawaiian societies and historians objected to metal roadside signs depicting Hawaiian warriors pointing to local attractions, on the grounds that a warrior would never assume such an undignified pose, authorities have replaced the signs with new ones in which the warriors merely stand with folded arms. They are the only type of outdoor sign allowed in Hawaii.