.Keeps Air-Raid Map Under His Hat
Although not quite so good as a steel helmet, the black derby hat owned by an Englishman living on the east coast is a handy headpiece to have along in the event of an enemy air raid. For inside of his bowler, this Britisher has pasted a map on which the location of local air-raid shelters is plainly marked. When an air-raid alarm sounds, he has merely to doff his bombing bonnet and look inside it to find the location of the nearest underground hide-out.
The original OCR transcript of the first sentence read:
IN Vancouver, Washington, a quavering feminine voice inquired over the telephone if the tourist bureau of a large oil company provided a sex-vice for absolutely any emergency. “Yes,” replied the unsuspecting clerk.
.100 Million Road Maps Can’t Be Wrong
By Irv Leiberman
IN Vancouver, Washington, a quavering feminine voice inquired over the telephone if the tourist bureau of a large oil company provided a service for absolutely any emergency. “Yes,” replied the unsuspecting clerk.
“Well, I’m parked right around the corner from your office,” the woman said, “and there’s a mouse in the driver’s seat. And I won’t leave for New York until he goes away!”
Although this is not a typical question, routers in tourist services frequently are confronted with such out-of-the-ordinary requests. This is in addition to thousands of demands for regular travel information which pour in to them through the mails. And they distribute more than 100 million road maps to Americans on the go.
.Machines Help Map Makers
Topographical maps, many of which are sold to the public for as little as ten cents each, are made on specially designed machines costing $30,000 each. There are only three of the machines, which are known as aerocartographs, in the country and they are operated by the U. S. Geological Survey Bureau in Washington, D. C.
.Highway “Beam” For Motorists
War-born device will guide peacetime motorists unerringly to their destinations —or plot their course as they go along.
EARLY one morning last year, just before sunrise, two men in a jeep found themselves lost in Washington. That is a horrible fate which can happen to anyone and often does, but in this case it was serious. In the back seat of the jeep was installed the first model of a secret new device which was being delivered under cover of darkness to the Army Engineer Board at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It had to be there at 8:00 a. m. to be inspected by a full board of high Army officers. But the two men in the jeep, newcomers to Washington, were stymied.
This is how they make Google Maps.
.Australian Device Makes Maps Of the Ground It Covers
The odd apparatus at left is the Australian “co-graph,” which automatically maps the ground over which it moves. Named for its inventor, Lt. Col. H. J. F. Coe, the machine can be operated by a pedestrian or set up in a trailer (PSM, Dec. ’44, p. 134). The co-graph obtains direction by being oriented with a sensitive compass; gets distance from a calibrated ground wheel. Drive from the wheel turns a paper-carrying roller under a fixed pencil, and thus a course is plotted to scale. The co-graph’s upper part —sighting tube, compass, mirror, and map-making equipment—weighs only 10 pounds and is strapped to the user’s body.
