Scientific Sleuths Give an Invisible Public Enemy the Third Degree with Odd Instruments
By Walter E. Burton
N AN amazing laboratory at Pittsburgh, Pa., a group of scientific sleuths are waging a never-ending war to protect American workers everywhere from the insidious and deadly menace of industrial dusts.
DENTYNE - FOR A HEALTHIER MOUTH. Our early forefathers' teeth were kept in good condition by natural means — by foods that required plenty of chewing. Our foods today are soft — we need Dentyne because its special firmness encourages more vigorous chewing — gives mouth and gums healthful exercise and massage, and promotes self-cleansing.
By Robert E. Martin
FOOD from the test tube, strange acids that conquer disease, complex chemicals that make up the vital ingredients of human flesh and blood—these are recent creations of pioneers in a fascinating, unexplored realm of chemistry, far afield from the normal and conventional affairs of workaday laboratories.
Like seekers of another age, hunting an "elixir of life," these modern alchemists are brewing odorous broths from tons of fish and bales of vegetables in order to extract and study the raw materials of living things. With their new-found knowledge, they are succeeding in putting together extraordinary substances that only nature knew how to produce before. Nearer and nearer they are coming every day to penetrating the age-old mystery of life.
Roller Skates Have Tractor Treads LOOKING like a pair of toy army tanks, roller skates invented by a Japanese school teacher are fitted with endless treads like those used on tractors. This novel feature is said to make it possible for users to skate over rough surfaces that would stop conventional skates.
CAMERA MAKES EIGHT MOVIES ON ONE FILM By making eight successive rows of pictures upon a single strip of standard film, a pocket movie camera designed by a British actor approaches the ultimate in economy. As many as 144 of its midget views are packed in the space that five full-size frames would occupy. Mechanism [...]
This is the precursor to those little coin-op TVs they used to have in airports. ONE-MAN THEATER HELPS KILL TIME To help travelers while away the time when waiting for trains, a one-man movie theater, suitable for installation in railway terminals, has been designed by a New York inventor. Entering the booth of one of [...]
BIGGEST RADIO SET HAS FORTY TUBES What is believed to be the largest and most powerful radio receiving set ever assembled is the latest achievement of a well-known Chicago radio engineer. Designed for world-wide reception on all wave lengths, the mammoth receiver has a complicated circuit which employs forty tubes. Five separate loudspeakers, operating simultaneously, [...]
MASKED CYCLIST SOUNDS GAS-ATTACK WARNING Sounding a loud alarm through a loudspeaker clamped to the handlebars of his bicycle, a masked rider wheeled through London streets recently, like a modern Paul Revere, to test the efficiency of a new method of warning the public against sudden aerial gas attacks in war time. Equipped with gas [...]
ENDLESS LADDER GIVES EXERCISE TO CLIMBER Climbing, pushing, pulling, lifting, and other forms of exercise are provided by a vertical treadmill designed by an Oregon inventor. Two endless chains, running over sprocket wheels, are joined by steps to form a rotary ladder. An adjustable brake regulates the needed motive force.
Wait. That’s a zoo? I thought it was the Alaskan wilderness! MURALS MAKE BEAVERS FEEL AT HOME Beavers in a den at the Belle Isle Zoo, in Detroit, Mich., now cavort amid scenes resembling their natural habitat. To minimize the artificial appearance of the surroundings, an artist reproduced a colorful forest panorama, complete with pine [...]
TRUE SPY STORIES, FILTERING THROUGH THE MASK OF SILENCE MAINTAINED BY GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, REVEAL A NETWORK OF ESPIONAGE DESIGNED TO FERRET OUT THE SECRETS OF OUR NATIONAL DEFENSE FOR FOREIGN POWERS
By Thomas M. Johnson
SCIENTIFIC spies for foreign powers are picking Uncle Sam's pockets. As war tension heightens abroad, more and more of them invade our shores. They sneak across the oceans from Europe, where last year $50,000,000 was spent on secret service, or from Asia, where Japan alone spent
$12,000,000. These spies are no fools, fantastically disguised, whispering, scowling. They are intelligent men and women, using clever tricks to steal from this wide-open country the countless military appliances and inventions that American ingenuity produces. With our own weapons, pilfered from us, foreign powers are arming for the next war. For that purpose, the scientific spies lurk unsuspected in our midst.
Wow, if I hadn’t read the headline I would never have known it was there! CAMOUFLAGE CONCEALS UNSIGHTLY WATER TANK Members of the famous art colony at Provincetown on Cape Cod, Mass., recently redecorated a local water standpipe so that it no longer constituted an eyesore to the community. Following a carefully planned camouflage scheme, [...]
Producing Cold With Electricity and A "Quicksilver Heart" That Beats Are Only Two of the Amazing Tests You Can Perform Easily With Simple Substances
By Raymond B. Wailes
YOU are accustomed to seeing an electric element in a toaster or radiant heater grow red-hot when current passes through it—but did you know that when electricity flows through joints of certain metals, it produces a cooling effect? Have you ever made a drop of murcury behave as if it were alive or prepared a pair of magical alloys that are solids when separate, and a liquid when mixed?
These are a few of the fascinating experiments that you can perform with metals, using three in particular that you may not have employed before in your home laboratory—mercury, antimony, and bismuth.
BOSS’S MOVING OFFICE KEEPS WORKERS BUSY When the manager of a European shoe factory discovered that shop work lagged on the floors that he seldom visited, he adopted the novel solution of transferring his office into a special elevator erected against the outside wall of the building. Now, by merely pressing a button, he can [...]
By Edwin Teale
STREAKING through the skies with the speed of crack express trains, feathered racing champions, trained by amateur pigeon fanciers, are shuttling across the map on amazing flights. In recent years, the sport of pigeon racing has spread rapidly. In the United States alone, upwards of 10,000 amateurs own lofts, and each year the American Racing Pigeon Union sends out half a million numbered aluminum bands that go on the legs of newly hatched "squeakers." As this is written, all over the East and Middle West fanciers are grooming their prize birds for the Chattanooga National, the Kentucky Derby of the air. This annual event, held about the middle of June, sometimes attracts as many as 1,700 entries. Last year, a one-year-old male pigeon, which had never won a contest in its life, carried off the prize. It averaged almost fifty miles an hour for the 535 miles from Chattanooga, Term., to its home loft at Washington, D. C.
This seems like it would just be really awkward and end up giving you a headache. Actually, if you read the reviews on Amazon of people who actually used these glasses most seem pretty happy with them. PRISMS AID BED READER To make reading in bed easier, a British inventor has devised “lying-down” spectacles. Prisms [...]
TWO NEW AIRWAYS MAKE IT POSSIBLE FOR ANYONE TO BUY A TICKET FOR A TWENTY-DAY AERIAL JAUNT AROUND THE GLOBE
By John E. Lodge
OUT of the sky over Lakehurst, N. J., a few days hence, the enormous silver Von Hindenburg, biggest Zeppelin ever built, is scheduled to nose down for a landing at the end of its maiden voyage to America. Not many weeks later, the four-engined, twenty-five-ton China Clipper will head out past the promontories of the Golden Gate on its first passenger flight to the Orient.
Those two events will forge the final links in a vast chain of airways to encircle the globe. Before the end of this summer, you will be able to buy tickets for an aerial circuit of the earth as easily as you now purchase them for a round-the-world cruise by steamer. Years of preparation, the flights of daring pioneers, and the latest advances in engineering and radio have given a solid foundation to what, but a few short decades ago, was a seemingly impossible dream.
WASHING MACHINE CHARGES BATTERY
Gasoline-powered washing machines, used on farms and estates not served by power lines, now can be fitted with a small generator unit to charge storage batteries for tractors, automobiles, or radios. Mounted on the platform with the engine, the generator is hooked up to the pulley by means of a drive belt
BOTTLE OPENER HAS SEALING CAP
To preserve the freshness of beverages after the bottles are opened, a new cap lifter contains a rubber sealing plug which can be clamped over the bottle lip. It gives an air-tight seal on all standard necks, and cannot be blown off easily
ODD-SHAPED EYEGLASSES EXPRESS PERSONALITY “Individualized” eyeglasses are becoming a fad in England, and makers, departing from the convention that lenses and frames must be round or oval, are producing them in bizarre patterns. A heart-shaped pair, for feminine wearer, is illustrated.
WATCH-CASE PHONOGRAPH Called the world’s tiniest talking machine, a miniature phonograph has been built into the case of a watch. When wound by the watch stem, a small spring mechanism turns a midget record. Sound is reproduced through a diminutive horn.
