News Carrying Pigeons Aid Japanese Press

Latest news and undeveloped photographic film frequently are rushed from the scene of a big event to Japanese newspapers by pigeons. The birds have been found a handy substitute for telegraph and telephone, being sent winging to headquarters with the latest scores of games
or news bulletins. This flying messenger service has been operated successfully between Yokohama and Tokyo. Exposed film is placed in a case resembling a fountain pen and attached to the bird’s back, while news reports are carried in aluminum capsules fastened to the bird’s legs.

Big Fun – Big money

Learn to MOUNT Birds and Animals
Be a TAXIDERMIST

Learn this WONDERFUL new, fascinating and PROFITABLE art at home by mail. This old famous school, with over 100,000 students GUARANTEES success. Thousands of Popular Mechanics readers have already enrolled. Mount and preserve GAME ANIMALS AND BIRDS like life. Mount common and domestic animals in highly amusing and human-like groups. The actual squirrels shown above, MOUNTED AND DRESSED up. cost but a few cents for materials, but sold for $40 for a window display. Rabbits, frogs, mice. cats, pigs, sparrows, pigeons—ALL can be mounted in funny and interesting groups, imitating human situations. Great fun, tremendously fascinating, extremely profitable.
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Portable Globe House for Well-Rounded Living

Only 15 feet in diameter, low-cost home offers all the conveniences of a larger one. And, it can be delivered by boat, truck or even helicopter.

IT looks like a satellite that just fell out of orbit. But actually it is a down-to-Earth, low-cost portable home—with all the modern conveniences you would expect to find only in a more usual-looking (and usual-priced) house. Called the Kugelhaus (Kugel is German for “ball,” and haus means just what it sounds like), it is nothing more than a 15-ft.-diameter hollow ball. Its eggshell-like construction is of either lightweight reinforced concrete, metal or plastic. Just one inch of concrete gives good results, says the inventor, Dr. Johann Ludowici. The house can be completely assembled in the factory—with whatever furniture or other equipment is wanted—before delivery. As portable as a house could be, it can be flown to wherever you want it by helicopter, towed in by boat (it floats), or, more conventionally, carried on a truck.
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Pneumatic Tubes Shoot Hot Meals To Homes

WHIZZING at mile-a-minute speed through pneumatic tubes far beneath the streets of Berlin, Germany, are thermos bottles each containing part of some housewifes meal. A phone call is enough to bring, in less than fifteen minutes, a complete meal ready to serve, containing exactly the desired quantity and kind of food for each course.
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Only geeks from MIT could come up with a scheme where every girl going to a dance gets publicly weighed on entrance. Perhaps they could also charge by body fat percentage or cup size.

Dance Fees Set According to the Chemical Value of Coeds
THE true chemical value of the coed ranges between fifty cents and a dollar. This strange fact was revealed recently when students of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were required to pay the chemical value of their co-partners as an entrance fee to an annual dance.

This strange method of payment is not at all unusual for Massachusetts Institute students. In the past, on this occasion, girls have been paid for according to both weight and intelligence.

The girls, upon entering, are asked to step upon the scale. This scale determines their weight, and it is shown upon a breakdown calculator in terms of chemical elements.

The variation of chemicals per pound in different bodies is not great enough to cause an error in this large scale method of determination. The reason for the low value is that the body is composed almost entirely of water.

How a helicopter hangs by its “elbows”

Straight up, straight down, forwards, backwards, or just hovering— the Piasecki “Work Horse” Helicopter’s peculiar flying maneuverability rests in its rotor assemblies. It is these flexible “elbows” that adjust the pitch of the ‘copter’s great blades. Each unit involves more than 625 separate parts. To machine and assemble them, Piasecki depends on Lycoming for precision production.
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Restored Enchantment

Radio is better with Battery Power

At a turn of the dial a radio program comes to you. It is clear. It is true. It is natural. You thank the powers of nature that have once more brought quiet to the distant reaches of the radio-swept air. You are grateful to the broadcasters whose programs were never so enjoyable, so enchanting. You call down blessings upon the authority that has allotted to each station its proper place. And, if you are radio-wise, you will be thankful that you bought a new set of “B” batteries to make the most out of radio’s newest and most glorious season.
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How Lasers Are Going to Work for You

The light fantastic is no longer a scientific curiosity: It’s now being used for just about everything from moon measuring to tire checking

By C. P. GILMORE / PS Consulting Editor, Science

At RCA’s David Sarnoff Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., Dr. Henry Kressel handed to me what appeared to be an odd-looking gold-colored bolt about three quarters of an inch long. The threaded part was ordinary enough. But a small block perhaps a quarter of an inch long and half that thick was built onto one side of its flat head. A wire from the head arched up and connected to the side of the block.

“That’s the laser,” he said, pointing to where the wire joined the block. “This metal block?” I asked.

He took the device, walked into a laboratory next door, put it under a powerful binocular microscope, and peered into the instrument as he adjusted it.
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Telegraph Kisses Are New Fad
Sending kisses by wire is a new use for facsimile telegraph transmission. Recently a New York girl kissed a telegram blank and the lipstick impression was placed on the facsimile transmitter, as at left, to be reproduced for delivery in Chicago.

Liquid levels monitored hundreds of miles from your central office by Bendix electro-span!

Important storage reservoirs for water, crude oil, gas, brine and other liquids are located in many remote and isolated sections of this country. It takes crews of men stationed at these points to keep a constant check of volumes and to open and close valves to balance supply and demand. The work is lonely, expensive to maintain, and sometimes dangerous.
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FLUORESCENCE

ITS RAINBOW COLORS MAY LIGHT TOMORROW’S CITIES

by Samuel G. Hibben

Director of Applied Lighting, Westinghouse Lamp Division.

AGE-OLD mysteries of flourescence and phosphoresence are being solved today because the demands of war and the foretaste of post-war electrical living have spurred scientific research and development, formerly dormant for several generations. A great incentive has been given to extend scientific studies of this subject—generally termed “luminescence”—through recent developments of the practical methods of producing the chief ingredient, “black light.” True, black light, which is another name for invisible ultraviolet radiations just out of range of the human eye, does exist in sunlight, but it is overcome by the much more powerful visible radiations.
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MYSTERY RAYS “SEE” Enemy Aircraft

AMERICAN and German War Departments announce simultaneously new rays capable of “seeing” enemy aircraft through fog, clouds, or dark, at distances of up to fifty miles. First tests in this country are being held at the Lighthouse Station near Highlands, N. J., by the War Department, the details of the invention being closely guarded by military police.

No larger than a penny match box is the German mystery ray machine, a highly-perfected ultra-short wave radio transmitter.

Groups of these transmitters, mounted along the border of a country and adjusted to send their “feeler” beams into the sky at a fixed angle, could be used for air defense. The 5 to 15 centimeter long beams act much like invisible light rays, and are reflected back to earth by aircraft.

Groups of ultra-short wave receivers stationed some distance from the transmitters would pick up one or more of the beams reflected. With each transmitter sending out a different type of signal, something like the interrupted signal produced by a dial telephone, and each receiver connected to the central switchboard, the distance and height of the plane could be calculated automatically and almost instantly by a machine built to interpret optical and trigonometrical formulas. With this data, air defense guns could be aimed accurately at the unseen targets.