"Airplanes" replace queens and "general staffs" play the part of kings in a new pastime known as "double chess." Devised by a Russian inventor, A. C. Yurgelevich, the game is gaining popularity in that country. It is derived from chess, but the rules and strategy have been modified.
Equipped with a movable pilot house that can be hoisted to a height of twenty-two feet above the waterline, or lowered to ' the main deck, one of the strangest of tow-boats is being built for service on the Chicago River.
It’s kind of crazy to contrast this with the way modern rope is made (video). ROPE MAKERS OF SPAIN TWIST STRANDS BY HAND In surroundings that suggest a buried city, its telegraph poles half-covered by sand, native rope makers of Palma, Spain, ply their ancient craft. Actually the “telegraph poles” are frames that support the [...]
To put the voice of a coloratura soprano on the air with fidelity, broadcasting engineers have devised a cellophane "bell" within which the singer stands. Covering her down to the waistline, the transparent envelop is said to do for the human voice what a mute does for a cornet or violin, and the singer can render her highest notes without fear of causing unpleasant vibrations in the microphone.
What drug do you think it was? Meth? It was definitely Dinitrophenol. Click here for the Wikipedia entry on its use as a diet aid. Their paper is introduced here SAFE DRUG TAKES OFF TWO POUNDS A WEEK Discovery of a drug that enables overweight persons to reduce safely without exercise is reported to the [...]
HOTEL BUILDS MONUMENT OF BROKEN CHINA By constructing a monument of all its broken crockery, a hotel at Hildenborough, England, has provided its grounds with an unusual landmark. The pile of china fragments serves as a gentle admonition to careless guests and attendants, inviting them to refrain from adding to its height. In spite of [...]
New facts about health lamps are being discovered in a Cleveland, Ohio, laboratory by scientists armed with the largest spectroscope in the world. Behind the construction of this giant instrument lies a story that shows the lengths to which experimenters must go in obtaining the tools with which to work. When General Electric engineers set out to design an instrument technically known as a "double monochromator," with which the intensity of any particular wave length of light could be measured with great precision, their plans called for prisms of crystalline quartz with faces four times as large as those commonly used.
Easily fitted to any typewriter, a new device eliminates the use of carbon paper, and its attendant muss and inconvenience, in making copies of letters and business forms. It comprises a series of swinging arms, each one bearing a replaceable disk of special carbon material, mounted on a frame that can be attached to the machine or detached in a few seconds. As many disks are inserted between the sheets as copies are desired.
CYCLISTS’ MOLDED MASKS For races on cinder tracks, daredevil New York motorcyclists wear grotesque masks to protect their faces against flying particles from the wheels of each other’s machines. The racers dip the masks in water to soften them and then press them against their faces. When dry, the masks take on the contours of [...]
Monster Clock Has No Hands Moving numerals, three feet high, will tell Londoners the time when a monster clock now under construction in one of this British city’s railroad stations is completed. The big timepiece is believed the largest without hands ever built. Three endless belts of steel slats, driven by an electric motor, carry [...]
Automobiles, houses, trolley cars, boats, bridges, forts, steam shovels, factories, doll furniture and hundreds of other things—build them with STANLO. And best of all, every piece in a STANLO set is finished in brilliant colors so that you can obtain almost any color combination. • An entirely new principle is used in fastening the pieces together and the finished project is absolutely rigid.
BIG ACCORDION WORKED WITH PEDALS To provide musicians with a larger accordion than could be carried conveniently on a strap around the neck, a foot-pedal instrument of ingenious design has been devised and patented by Samuel Sater, New York City inventor. One of its two pedals expands the bellows; the other contracts it. The notes [...]
UP-TO-DATE COAL STOVE. Here is a mod-ern coal range. It is so perfectly insulated that you can rest your hand any place on it but on the cooking plates. Coal is fed to it automatically and it burns only eight pounds a day. It has two ovens, one thermostatically controlled for baking, the other water-jacketed to keep the temperature under the boiling point. Hot water is available from a tap at the front. Draft is regulated by the lever at left. "Hot" and "medium" cooking plates are provided with this modern range
SINK-DRAINSTRAINER
The appliance shown above prevents refuse from washing down the sink drain. It also acts as a stopper when the handle is turned. It is easily lifted out so that the drain and its connecting pipes can be kept clear
By Sterling Gleason
ACTING as human guinea pigs in the war on a mysterious disease, three courageous scientists are now working in an isolated laboratory of the United States Public Health Service. Deliberately they have exposed themselves to the bites of mosquitoes suspected of carrying epidemic sleeping sickness (encephalitis) which, at this writing, has gripped nearly a thousand persons in St. Louis. If, as they believe, these insects carry the deadly virus, they will contract a malady for which medical science has no sure remedy.
Whether the three brave experimenters recover and learn the secret of the dread disease, or succumb to a heroic death, the fight they are waging will go on. It is but one phase of a war today being fought on many fronts.
Wild Creatures from South American Andes Thrive in Captivity and Make Their Owner a Fortune in the Mountainous Sections of Our Western States
By Andrew R. Boone
IF YOU want the world's finest fur coat, with wool long enough to thread a needle and fine as a spider's web, you can get it, not from animals roaming at large in faraway places, but from captive rodents.
On three farms in Idaho, Utah, and California these tiny chinchillas grow. Naturalists call them the "missing link" between the rabbit, the squirrel, and the rat.
From the South American Andes, a former mining engineer, alone of the scores who have sought with fortunes and considerable skill to remove these strange little creatures from their native haunts in Peru and Chile to European and American pens, has transplanted a dozen. Today his herd numbers 160, only twenty more than would be required to make one large coat like the one illustrated at the extreme right.
ADVANCING with easy, graceful strokes, a young girl swims under water across the field of the movie camera. Ahead of her lurks that strange monster of the deep—a huge octopus whose frightful tentacles move slowly to and fro. Apparently unaware of the danger, the swimmer comes within reach of one of the slimy arms. . .
With this dramatic scene, Leon F. Douglass, wealthy sportsman and inventor, was trying out a new camera of his own design. His stage setting was an especially designed swimming pool on his estate of fifty-five acres at Menlo Park, Calif. The star of his exciting movie was his seventeen-year-old daughter, Florence. An expert swimmer, she readily volunteered to do sham battle with a twelve-foot octopus brought in a tank from Samonica Bay, Haiti. The huge creature seemed exhausted by its long trip and was supposed to have little fight left in it.
I would have killed for one of these when I was a kid. BEAUTIFUL ELECTRIC SKY RIDES The model C SKY RIDE ……………………………………………. $7.95 Includes two towers 25″ high, one illuminated car with automatic controlled motor to stop and start oar at towers, two 32″ rails to make span of 64″ between towers. Beautifully finished [...]
By George H. Waltz, Jr.
CATHODE-RAY tube, having a phosphorescent screen, makes it possible to broadcast to a distance messages that can be read as fast as written
SWEEPING across a mysterious screen like an invisible pencil, a beam of electrons recently penned the message of welcome that opened the National Electrical and Radio Exposition in New York City.
Seated before a small black box, Clarence L. Law, president of the New York Electrical Association, wrote his official greeting with a pencil-shaped stylus. Simultaneously, in a far corner of the exposition hall, the words of his message flashed across a screen in glowing script. As though guided by some unseen hand, a weird green spot traced out the luminous letters of fire just as they were written. This was the first public demonstration of the latest wonder of science—the cathode-ray pen.
IMAGINE a motor truck so large that it dwarfs the biggest locomotive in the world —a veritable ship of the land, rolling on pneumatic tires as high as a bungalow. Fit this juggernaut, in your mind's eye, with a boat-like hull, a Diesel motor, and an electric drive; add a propeller and rudder so that it can navigate in the water as well as on dry ground; fill its capacious hold with hundreds of tons of cargo, and send it roaring across the continent or through a wilderness to its destination. Then you will have a mental image of the 1,500-ton, amphibian super-truck that Eric R. Lyon, associate professor of physics at the Kansas State Agricultural College, predicts will be the freight-carrying vehicle of the future. To prove it feasible, he himself has worked out the engineering design of such a machine, which he calls the "navitruck," and which our artist illustrates here and on the cover of this issue.
GIVE CHILDREN ENDLESS FUN AT HOME
By Morton Bartlett
UNIQUE comic-strip "talkies" can be given in your own home at trifling cost. The pictures are thrown upon a screen by means of a simply made magic lantern, and the children speak the lines of the various characters through a home microphone connected to an ordinary radio receiving set.
The materials are listed on page 85. The first step is to make the lantern. Its width is equal to the focal length of the magnifying glass which will be the lens. Determine this by tacking a piece of paper against the wall 10 ft. from a lighted lamp. Hold a ruler perpendicular to the paper, and run the lens, perpendicular to the ruler, along the inch marks. At some point a clear image of the lamp will be seen on the paper. The focal length may now be read from the ruler. This distance is the dimension YM in the drawings. Having found this basic dimension, cut ten pieces of wood as specified in the list.
