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U.S. Navy Inventions Build Great Industries

by John Edwin Hogg, Lieut., U.S.N.R.

An amazing scientific workshop afloat —that is the peace-time function of Uncle Sam’s Navy. The discoveries made by navy engineers and scientists have been responsible for the creation of vast new industries, from which you benefit in many ways, as told here.

TO THE average person, perhaps, the American navy is a tremendous engine of destruction draining the Federal treasury of approximately $350,000,000 every year, and serving no useful purpose to the nation except in time of ‘war.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The American navy in times of peace is a great progressive institution that extends its ramifications into many fields—scientific, mechanical, social, and diplomatic.

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Auto Racer Carries Pet Lion

IN ORDER to carry his pet baby lion around with him while motoring about town, a prominent San Francisco sportsman built a special side car device on his runabout, as shown in the photo below. The lion has been trained to “stay put.”

Atomic Golf Ball

IT may not be world-shattering news, but golfers will welcome one of the newest atomic developments once it emerges from the experimental stage. It’s a golf ball that can’t get lost. Minute quantities of radioactive materials are embedded under the cover of the ball so that if you carry a portable Geiger counter, you can locate it even in dense woods. When you’re getting close to the correct location, you’ll know by the signals on your headphones.

Below, Dr. William L. Davidson the inventor lets Lawson Little, famous golf pro, left, hear the tell-tale clicks. At the right, he gives the fairer sex a chance to marvel at modern science.

Scale-Model Railroader

MAYBE you’ve never noticed it but somewhere in every full-length Walt Disney picture there’s a railroad. This busy producer of animated cartoons belongs to that fast-growing group of executives who have adopted model railroading as their hobby.

Thus he keeps one jump ahead of his fellow hobbyists—he not only designs and builds his trains but draws ‘em as well.

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Air Liners to Europe ~ How Soon

Trans-Atlantic flyers are getting less and less acclaim with each successive crossing. Those who made the trip in 1930 created scarcely a ripple when compared to the sea of honors which swamped Lindbergh in 1927. This is as it should be, for it shows that the public is accepting the air as a logical medium of transportation.

THREE successful east to west crossings of the North Atlantic during the past summer of 1930 revived the old question of how soon the old and new worlds will be linked by air.

The Southern Cross hopped from Ireland to the Canadian coast, carrying four men. Coste and Bellonte in the Question Mark flew non-stop from Paris to New York, reversing Lindbergh’s flight. And a Dornier Wal boat, piloted by Captain Wolfgang von Gronau, with three companions, made the trip from northern Germany to New York in a series of easy stages.

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Grotesque Heads “Carved” from Pasteboard
Masks and heads bearing a striking resemblance to the persons caricatured are “carved” from plain cardboard or tin sheet metal by a Polish sculptor and painter. Scissors and paper clips form his only tools in fashioning the grotesque figures which have attracted attention in European art circles and won him praise.

It’s good to know that if I crash into a wall, my tires will survive even if I don’t.

Auto Crashed into Wall in Tire Test

DICK GRACE, famous movie stunt man, added another thrilling exploit to his long list recently by driving an automobile at a speed of nearly 40 miles per hour into a brick wall to test the endurance of a new type of tire.

When the 3,500 pound car was stopped abruptly by the 10 ton brick wall, however, Grace did not sail gracefully over the wall into the soft mixture of cork and sand placed there to absorb the shock of the fall as he expected, but was first thrown against the dashboard, his body bending double, and then hurled out onto the ground at the side. Grace had his usual luck and suffered only a slight injury to his knee.

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STILT CYCLE HAS TWO LEGS INSTEAD OF WHEELS
Wooden legs replace the wheels on a stilt cycle made by a Los Angeles man who proudly boasts that he can now sit down while walking. The two legs are pedaled like a bicycle, the rider balancing on a seat at the end of a vertical bar.

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Denmark’s Amazing Submarine Plane

The Danish Navy recently secretly tested a successful plane which not only flies, but which can fold its wings and travel undersea—a perfect submarine!

AT LAST the flying submarine has been invented. This hybrid craft which has already undergone successful tests off the Danish coast, will travel over land, run down a beach and launch itself into the sea, and then it is able to turn itself into a submarine and continue to travel underwater. This important military invention, developed by the Danish Navy, can then rise to the surface, unfold its telescopic wings and fly away from the scene of operations.

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The New Century of Progress

HOW would you like to make a trip around the world in a day, stopping for an hour or two in England and Prance, seeing the sights of Italy, Spain, Ireland and Switzerland, paying a visit to Germany and China and catching a glimpse of such out-of-the-way places as Tunis and Morocco ?

This is part of the lure of the Century of Progress for 1934 which has been transformed into an international exposition by adding to the wonders of industry and science shown last year more than a dozen foreign villages, each a faithful miniature of the nation it represents.

These foreign communities, depicting the architecture, industries, customs and dress of most of the principal countries of the world, will give visitors an insight into other nations which could be obtained otherwise only by expensive travel or by weeks of intensive reading and research.

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A Electronic backpack won’t let you get lost
It’s called a position locator, and Westinghouse makes it for the Army. The locator automatically computes the distance and direction traveled by a wandering soldier on patrol, who then determines his location by reading map coordinates on a counting meter and comparing them with grid lines on a military map. The system consists of a 14-pound backpack computer plus boot antennas (top right) and a display/control unit (lower right). The antennas count and measure each step by an exchange of electronic signals fed to the backpack, which contains a compass device. The system can also be used in forestry work, in exploration, or for preliminary mapping.

North Sea Drainage Project to Increase Area of Europe

If the extensive schemes for the drainage of North Sea are carried out according to the plan illustrated above, which was conceived by a group of eminent English scientists, 100,000 square miles will be added to the overcrowded continents of Europe. The reclaimed land will be walled in with enormous dykes, similar to the Netherland dykes, to protect it from the sea, and the various rivers flowing into the North Sea will have their courses diverted to different outlets by means of canals.