This Is What The Future Looked Like In The 1920s

Welcome to another compilation video where I've gathered up my videos covering articles about futurism, science, and technology from the 1920s. I think these articles show that a lot of people in the 1920s were more modern than many people today would assume. There are so many precursors to the present day, it's pretty amazing. But anyway, let's get into it.

What the world will be like in a 100 years by W.L. George. The New York Herald, May 7th, 1922.

There is a good old rule which bids us never prophesy unless we know. But all the same, when one cannot prophesy, one may guess, especially if one is sure of being out of the way when the reckoning comes. Therefore, it is without anxiety that I suggest a picture of this world a 100 years hence, and venture as my first guess that the world at that time would be remarkable to one of our ghosts, not so much because it was so different as because it was so similar.

In the main the changes which we may expect must be brought about by science. It is easier to bring about a revolutionary scientific discovery such as that of the X-ray than to alter in the least degree the quality of emotion that arises between a man and a maid. There will probably be many new rays in 2022, but the people whom they illumin will be much the same.

From which the reader may conclude that I do not expect anything startling in the way of scientific discovery. That is not the case. I am convinced that in 2022 the advancement of science will be amazing. But it will be nothing like so amazing as is the present day in relation to 100 years ago. A sight of the world today would surprise President Jefferson much more, I suspect, than the world of 2022 would surprise the little girl who sells candies at Grand Central Station. For Jefferson knew nothing of railroads, telegraphs, telephones, automobiles, aeroplanes, gramophones, movies, radium, etc. He did not even know hot and cold bathrooms. The little girl at Grand Central is a blasé child. To her, these things are common place. The year 2022 would have to produce something very startling to interest her ghost.

The sad thing about discovery is that it works toward its own extinction and that the more we discover, the less there is left. It does not follow that scientifically the year 2022 should fail to be amazing. I suspect that commercial flying will have become entirely common place. The passenger steamer will survive on the coasts, but it will have disappeared on the main routes and will have been replaced by flying convoys, which should cover the distance between London and New York in about 12 hours. As I am anxious that the reader should not look upon me as a visionary, I would point out that in an airplane collision which happened recently, a British passenger plane was traveling at 180 mph, which speed would have brought it across the Atlantic in 18 hours. It is therefore quite conceivable that America may become separated from Europe by only 8 hours. The problem is mainly one of artificial heating and ventilation to enable the aeronauts to survive.

The same cause will affect the railroads which at that time will probably have ceased to carry passengers except for suburban travel. Railroads may continue to handle freight. But it may be that even this will be taken from them by road traffic because the automobile does not have to carry the enormous overhead charges of tracks. Certainly food, mails, and all light goods will be taken over from the railroads by road trucks. As for the horse, it will probably no longer be bred in white countries.

The people of the year 2022 will probably never see a wire outlined against the sky. It is practically certain that wireless telegraphy and wireless telephones will have crushed the cable system long before the century is done. Possibly too, power may travel through the air when means are found to prevent enormous voltages being suddenly discharged in the wrong place. Coal will not be exhausted, but our reserves will be seriously depleted, and so will those of oil. One of the world dangers a century hence will be a shortage of fuel. But it is likely that by that time a great deal of power will be obtained from tides, from the sun, probably from radium and other forms of radial energy. While it may also be that atomic energy will be harnessed. If it is true that matter is kept together by forces known as electrons, it is possible that we shall know how to disperse matter so as to release the electron as a force. This force would last as long as matter, therefore as long as the Earth itself.

The movies will be more attractive as long before 2022. They will have been replaced by the kophone which now exists only in the laboratory. That is the figures on the screen will not only move but they will have their natural colors and speak with ordinary voices. Thus, the stage as we know it today may entirely disappear which does not mean the doom of art since the movie actress of 2022 will not only need to know how to smile but also how to talk.

One might extend indefinitely on the number of inventions which ought to exist and will exist, but the reader can think of them for himself. And it is more interesting to ask ourselves what will be the appearance of our cities 100 years hence. To my mind, they will offer a mixed outlook because mankind never tears anything down completely to build up something else. It erects the new while retaining the old. Thus, many buildings now standing will be preserved.

One might extend indefinitely on the number of inventions which ought to exist and will exist, but the reader can think of them for himself. And it is more interesting to ask ourselves what will be the appearance of our cities 100 years hence. It is conceivable that the capital at Washington, many of the universities and churches will be standing a hundred years hence and that they will almost unaltered be preserved by tradition. Also, many private dwellings will survive and will be inhabited by individual families.

I think that they will have passed through the cooperative stage which may be expected 50 or 60 years hence when the servant problem has become completely unmanageable and when private dwellings organize themselves to engage staffs to cook, clean and mend for the groups. That cooperative stage will be the last kick of the private mistress who wants to retain in her household some sort of slave. In 2022, she will have been bent by circumstances, but she will have recovered her private dwelling, being served for 7 hours a day by an orderly. The woman who becomes an orderly will be as well-paid as if she were a stenographer, will wear her own clothes, be called miss, belong to her trade union, and work under union rules.

Naturally, the work of the household which is being reduced day by day will in 2022 be a great deal lighter. I believe that most of the cleaning required today in a house will have been done away with in the first place through the disappearance of coal in all places where electricity is not made. There will be no more smoke, perhaps not even that of tobacco. In the second place, I have a vision of walls, furniture, and hangings made of more or less compressed papiermâché bound with brass or taping along the edges. Thus, instead of scrubbing its floors, the year 2022 will unscrew the brass edges or unstitch the tapes and peel off the dirty surface of the floor or curtains. Then, every year, a new floorboard will be laid. One may hope that standard chairs, tables, carpets will be peeled in the same way.

Similar reforms apply to cooking, a great deal of which will survive among old-fashioned people, but a great deal more of which will probably be avoided by the use of synthetic foods. It is conceivable, though not certain, that in 2022, a complete meal may be taken in the shape of four pills. This is not entirely visionary. I am convinced that corned beef hash and pumpkin pie will still exist, but the pill lunch will roll by their side.

But at that time, few private dwellings will be built. In their stead will rise the community dwellings where the majority of mankind will be living. They will probably be located in garden spaces and rise to 40 or 50 floors housing easily four or 5,000 families. This is not exaggerated since in one New York hotel today 3,000 people sleep every night. It would mean also that each block would have a local authority of its own. I imagine these dwellings as affording one room to each adult of the family and one room for common use. Such cooking as then exists will be conducted by the local authority of the block which will also undertake laundry, mending, cleaning and will provide a complete nursery for the children of the tenants.

Perhaps at that time we shall have attained a dream which I often nurse, namely the city roofed with glass. That city would be a complete unit with accommodations for houses, offices, factories, and open spaces. All this carefully allocated. The roof would completely do away with weather and would maintain an even temperature to be fixed by the taste of the period. Artificial ventilation would suppress wind. As for the open spaces, if the temperature were warm, they would exhibit a continual show of flowers, which would be emancipated from winter and summer. In other words, winter would not come however long the descendants of Mr. Hutchinson might wait.

The family would still exist. Even though it is not doing very well today, it is inconceivable that some sort of feeling between parents and children should not persist. Though I am, of course, unable to tell what that feeling will be. I imagine that the link will be thinner than it is today because the child is likely to be taken over by the state, not only schooled but fed and clad and at the end of its training placed in a post suitable to its abilities. This may be affected by birth control which in 2022 will be legal all over the world. There will be stages. The first results of birth control will be to reduce the birth rate. Then the state will step in as it does in France and make it worth people's while to have more children. Then the state will discover that it has made things too easy and that people are having children recklessly. Finally, some sort of balance will establish itself between the state demand for children and the national supply.

Largely the condition of the family will be governed by the position of woman because woman is the family while man is merely its supporter. It is practically certain that in 2022 nearly all women will have discarded the idea that they are primarily makers of men. Most fit women will then be following an individual career. All positions will be open to them and a great many women will have risen high. The year 2022 will probably see a large number of women in Congress, a great many on the judicial bench, many in civil service posts, and perhaps some in the president's cabinet. But it is unlikely that women will have achieved equality with men. Cautious feminists such as myself realize that things go slowly and that a brief 100 years will not wipe out the effects on women of 30,000 years of slavery.

Women will work partly because they want to and partly because they will be able to. Thus, women will pay their share in the upkeep of home and family. The above suggestion of community buildings where all the household work will be done by professionals will liberate the average wife and enable her out of her wages to pay her share of the household work which she dislikes. Marriage will still exist much as it is today for mankind has an ineterate taste for the institution. But divorce will probably be as easy everywhere as it is in Nevada. In view, however, of the improved position of woman and her earning power, she will not only cease to be entitled to alimony, but she will be expected after the divorce to pay her share of the maintenance of her children.

As regards the politics of 2022, I should expect the form of the state to be much the same. A few rearrangements may have taken place on the lines of self-determination. For instance, Austria may have united with Germany. The South American republics may have federated, etc. But I do not believe that there will be a superstate. There will still be republics and monarchies. Possibly in 2022, the Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Norwegian kings may have fallen, but for a variety of reasons, either lack of advancements or practical convenience. We may expect still to find kings in Sweden, Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania, and Great Britain.

On the inside, these states may have slightly changed for there prevails a tendency to socialization which has nothing to do with socialism. Most of the European governments are unconsciously nationalizing a number of industries and this will go on. One may therefore presume that in 2022 most states will have nationalized railways, telegraphs, telephones, canals, docks, water supply, gas if any, and electricity. Other industries will exist much as they do today. But it is likely that the state will be inclined to control them, to limit their profits, and to arbitrate between them and the workers. We find a hint of this in America in the antirust acts. A 100 years hence the tendency will be much stronger.

It is worth noting as an international factor that by that time purely national industries will almost have disappeared and that the work of the world will be in the hands of controlled combines governing the supply of a commodity from China to Peru. Unfortunately, these international relations through trade are not likely to have affected political conditions. There will still be war. The wars of that period may be a little less frequent than they are today and be limited by arrangements such as the Pacific Agreement, the agreement between Canada and the United States of America to leave their frontier unfortified, etc. But it will still be there. I suspect that those wars to come will be made horrible beyond my conception by new poison gases, inextinguishable flames, and light proof smoke clouds. In those wars, the airplane bomb will seem as out of date as is today the hatchet. War may ultimately disappear, but this lies beyond the limits of this article and even beyond those of my mind.

As regards the United States in particular, it is likely that the country will have come to a complete settlement with a population of about 240 million. The idea of north and south, east and west will have almost disappeared. By that time, the American race will have taken so definite a form that immigration will not affect it. The American from Key West and the American from Seattle will be much the same kind of man. That is to say as regards race. But I feel that mentally the American of 2022 will have enormously changed. He is today the most enterprising creature in the world and is driven by a continual urge to rise to make money. That is because the modern American lives in a country that is only partly developed and where immense wealth still lies ready for him to take in 2022. That will be as finished as it is today in England. American wealth will then be either developed or known and all of it will belong to somebody. There will be no more opportunity in America than there is in England today.

Those Americans will know that it is practically certain that they will die much in the same position as the one in which they were born. Those Americans will therefore be less enterprising and much more pleasure-loving. They will have rebelled against long hours. The chances are that in 2022 few people will work more than 7 hours a day if as much. The effect of this, which I am sure sounds regrettable to many of my readers, will, in my opinion, be good. It was essential that the American race should be capable of intense labor and intense ambition if it was to develop its vast country. But one result has been haste, overwork, noise, all of which is bad for the nerves. In 2022, America will have made her fortune and will be enjoying it as well as she can. I think that she will be a happier country than she is today. The appeal of wealth will be less because wealth will be difficult to attain. So those Americans to come will be producing an art and literature infinitely more than they are producing today. Today in fiction, America leads the world by sincerity, faith, and fearlessness. But the American novel of significance is a novel of revolt against the thraws of money, of convention, and of puritanism. In 2022, American literature will be a literature of culture. The battle will be over and the muzzle off. There will be no more things one can't say and things one can't think.

No doubt there will be in 2022 people who think as they would have thought in 1922 or even a little earlier. But a great liberalism of mind will prevail. It is not my business to congratulate the future and I have no desire to do so as it is impossible to say a thing is good or bad. All one can say is that it exists. But in case some of my readers feel repulsion when they contemplate my lunch pills or my nationalized railroads, to those I would say that they are perhaps unduly anxious. The world takes care of itself. It has been doing so for hundreds of centuries and is still spinning. The world will take care of itself in 2022. That is its chief occupation. More than that, I feel convinced that though the world may lose graces, it will develop other graces. That on the whole and as time goes on, mankind grows more intelligent, more amiable, and more honest. The future will be difficult. What does that matter? So was the past difficult. Difficulties did not prevent its turning into a tolerable present.

Mechanical men walk and talk. Popular science monthly. December 1928.

Upon the rostrm sat a large and awesome figure, not unlike the giant warrior of brass at top the mountain in Shaherzad's tail. But this huge monster had the cold white sheen of tin, and the experienced eye could tell that aluminum was his substance. With his armor-plated chest, arms and legs, and sharp metal joints at the knees, he seemed like a grotesque enlargement of the knights in armor that frighten elderly lady visitors in museums. The thing's enormous size and the stark immobility of his face gave him a really terrifying quality. His lipless, toothless mouth a gape. His hollow eyes a slant. He stared into an audience that packed the Royal Horicultural Hall in London. Fairly Popeyed, they returned his lifeless gaze. They felt subconsciously that here was some strange symbol of relentless fate itself.

Their wonder mounted to amazement when, with a grinding, creaking noise, the figure rose and moved his stiff arms in a superfluous gesture, asking for silence. Suddenly the black dead eyes became alive with a ghastly yellow light. And then he spoke. "Ladies and gentlemen," came a rumbling voice. Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, it gives me great pleasure. The spell was broken. True, the voice had an unearly sound, but the pronunciation was that of the typical educated Englishman, and the words were the time-honored common places uttered by presiding officers the world over. In such novel fashion, the recent model engineering exhibition was opened in the British capital. A scientist of notes had promised to preside. But a few days before the opening date, word was received that he would not be able to appear. It was then that Captain WH Richards conceived the idea of constructing a man of metal to do the job. This creature not only would take the place of the defaulting chairman, but serve as a most appropriate feature for the engineering show. He set to work quickly and christened his aluminum creation, Eric.

Eric moved and had his being through the means of an electric motor, electromagnets, pulleys, and levers concealed in his body. For raising him from his seat, causing him to bow to the audience and resume his chair, another motor was concealed in the platform under his feet. Ingenious electrical instruments, a jealously guarded secret of his inventor, enabled Eric to hear questions and answer in a human voice. In large lettering on Eric's breastplate appeared the initials RUR, short for Rossam's Universal Robots, which years ago formed the title of a fanciful play by Carol Kappic, the Czechoslovakian playwright, in which his robot was a machine apparently endowed with human powers and human thought. Kappic it was who gave the world the much-needed word robot as the name for a working automaton.

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Only a few days before Eric's weird antics, another sensation was caused in the west end of London by the appearance in the streets of a walking robot taken for a stroll by his inventor, Captain J. A Roberts. Earlier still, the televox, another mechanical creature constructed by RJ Wensley, an engineer of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, had astonished a group of engineers in New York by answering the telephone and doing sundry other chores. Still another demonstrated soon after the appearance of Teleox was the product integraph developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge by Dr. Vanavar Bush, professor of electrical power transmission and his assistants. This marvelous contrivance was described by Dr. Bush as an adding machine carried to an extreme in its design. But the modest professor didn't go far enough. It is the nearest approach ever made to a thinking machine. And the last word in the mechanical man or robot principle was spoken recently when the New York Edison Company opened a new automatic power distributing station. A plant with an ultimate capacity sufficient to light the homes of from 200,000 to 300,000 families. A goodsiz city. Yet one that hasn't a human being in it, but is controlled by an operator three miles distant. The output of this manless plant is 32,000 horsepower, or about 320,000 manpower. In other words, the lone human operator at his switchboard 3 mi away is really the commander-in-chief of an army of 320,000 mechanical workmen. The absentee nurse of legions of docile, eminently useful robots. Here is a development of which Kappic never dreamed in his wildest fancy.

Though somewhat different in principle and application from the televox idea, a similar power sets in motion the Edison robot army cooped up in a small one-story building in uptown New York to supply lights and power. The manless plant is controlled through telephone wires over which a series of electrical impulses is sent. These impulses operate a relay in the station. The relay in turn causes the controlled control board to transmit the order contained in the electrical impulses to the apparatus in question. Likewise, in case any change occurs in the apparatus, for instance, if a feeder going to the consumer becomes overloaded or develops a short circuit, the circuit breaker opens and immediately a signal indicating this is flashed over the telephone wires to the controlling board where the lighting of a lamp and the accompanying ringing of a bell call the operator's attention to the fact that something is a miss. Robots in real action. Robots lighting your lamps and heating your wife's electric iron and oven. Would you have believed it 10 or even 5 years ago?

But that is not all. Soon after the opening of the manless Edison station in New York, Wensley, inventor of Teleox before the delegates to the American Electric Railway Association in Cleveland, demonstrated the feasibility of manning street cars with speaking mechanical creatures fashioned of copper veins, porcelain bones, and with insulated wires for a nervous system and vacuum tubes for vital organs. A week or two later, the claim was made in England that 40% will be saved in the cost of labor through a machine which lays 180 yards of railway track in an hour or relays 4 miles in a single night. The device was tried experimentally by the London and Northeastern Railway Company. Among its features are a circular saw for the automatic trimming of sleepers, an engine which generates its own electricity, and search lights. An official of the company declared that the track laying machine bodily picks up a section of old track 16 ft long, deposits it on the train, carries forward a new section, and gently lowers it into the position where the old track was. Another robot with a vengeance.

Shortly afterward, an anti-aircraft robot gun, which computes and holds its range against invading aircraft, was used for the first time in a sham war staged at the 10th annual meeting of the Army Ordinance Association at the Aberdine Proving Ground in Maryland and astonished nearly 10,000 spectators. The new gun is set in action by sound waves from the approaching enemy plane, which thus in a sense commits suicide when coming within its range. And also very recently, a peaceable robot did a neat job when Televox started the operation of a new $31 million sewage disposal plant of the city of Chicago. Winsley's teleox as the name indicates is a mechanism which can be operated by a voice from a distance. The control of mechanism from afar by means of electrical circuits is a familiar operation. A very faint electrical impulse will affect an electromagnet which by moving its armature over a small distance can be made to release energies waiting for the signal to get into action. Such an impulse may be conveyed either by direct wires as in the case of the Edison robot plant or by wireless. Thus, boats have been steered without a pilot, automobiles driven safely through traffic without a human driver, and even airplanes flown without an aviator at the control lever. These feats, however, have been mere demonstrations of possibilities for general industrial application. They are as yet too expensive and too uncertain. Wireless cannot be relied upon to work perfectly at all times, and the cost of setting up and maintaining a wire circuit over any considerable distance where it is used only occasionally is prohibitive. But telephone wires go almost everywhere. And in the Teleox, Wensley solved the engineering problem of utilizing the vibrations of the human voice transmitted electrically over a telephone wire and exploiting their power at the receiving end to produce oscillations in an electrical circuit.

And now three of these robots stationed at three reservoirs which hold the water supply of the city of Washington report to their chiefs in the war department whenever called upon to do so the depth of the water in their respective reservoirs. In the same city is the great brass brain of the coast and geodetic survey and it is surely one of the most useful robots in existence. To it. Every day men put questions about the future, which it answers with such precision that tens of thousands risk their lives and untold millions of wealth are staked upon the accuracy of its forecasts. It predicts the tides for every port in the world for years ahead. The great brass brain is a form of harmonic analyzer operating mechanically instead of electrically. It occupies a space 11 ft long, 6 ft high, and 2 ft wide, and does without error labor which otherwise would require 50 to 100 human computers working continuously and subject to the inevitable percentage of human errors.

Have your thinking done while you wait. The product integraph of Dr. Bush of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a robot performing this startling function. Where workers in the business world ordinarily are satisfied with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of numbers, the engineer deals with curves and graphs which represent for him the past, present, and future of the things in which he deals. In other words, whereas the ordinary adding and calculating machines are limited to handling definite numbers or constants, the new invention deals with those indefinite and inconstant qualities known as variables. These are quantities whose changing values depend on other variable quantities. Strange to say, the mechanical brain of the integraph, which solves in a few minutes problems so complex that it would take an engineer from a month to a year to work them out, resembles nothing so much as the electric meter in your home. It performs its thinking processes and reaches its solutions by running as a motor, translating the problem into terms of electric power and expressing the answer in the same manner.

And so the age of the robots is now really upon us. Perhaps Carol Kappic in surveying the modern industrial scene is more surprised than any of us by the manner in which his fanciful prediction in a sense has come true. But the robots of his play were very different from the obedient, useful mannequins described here. Docile slaves of man at first, they finally rose in revolt against their masters and exterminated humanity, subsequently perishing themselves since they had no power of reproduction and wore out in time like [clears throat] any other piece of machinery. Such a disastrous development is of course out of the question in the case of the robots of science. But will they ever become so perfected? And will their numbers so increase that they will destroy the necessity for human labor? In the light of present knowledge, that seems not at all likely.

A writer of philosophic tales once told of a man who gradually grew crazier and crazier, tending one of those intricate mathematical machines and hoping each day that his mechanical servant would make a mistake. Many years went by and his hopes remained unrealized. Every sum was fatally right. Finally, the catastrophe came. A cog or two flew out and the machine reported automatically a whole series of results most gratifyingly erroneous. The machine had gone completely crazy first. Maybe it is one of the eternal varities that machine thinking makes no small mistakes but only big ones. Then too [music] consider that the robot cannot work without human direction and control. Eric's lifegiving levers are set in motion by a man pushing buttons. The stroller in London's West End could never walk alone. Telivox answers the phone only when called upon to do so by Wley or someone else equally acquainted with his inner workings. Without the lone operator at his board 3 mi away, the robot army in the Edison plant would have perpetual leisure. Thus, while the events foreshadowed in rur have come to pass in a measure, a realization of the dream of thinking machines is nowhere within the range of actual possibility.

What then does this interesting development really mean to all of us? Does it mean that before long most of the work of the world will be done by robots? Will the man of affairs soon go to his office in an automobile driven by a mechanical chauffeur who will be directed at busy intersections and per chance balled out too by a mechanical traffic cop? Will that same businessman at lunchtime be waited on by a robot waiter and in the evening be guided to his theater seat by a robot usher? Will his wife have a mechanical ladies maid to hook her up and back and his children a robot nurse to wash their morning faces and take them to school? Perhaps. But in any event, the robot and his development on a large and scientific scale will result in at least one great benefit to mankind. In the words of a high official of the New York Edison Company, "The mechanical man and his ultimate universal practical application will rid humanity of much drudgery and thousands of uncongenial tasks." Men thus freed from unpleasant chores, he declared, never need fear unemployment in a wellorganized society, but on the contrary may look forward to a better opportunity for the development of their inherent talents and intellectual powers. They will receive the gift of leisure which will enable them to apply their released energies to the achievements of a finer, fuller life than they can enjoy at present.

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The Snow Burner. Science and Invention. January 1925.

A simple experiment for seemingly burning snow is illustrated in the above drawing. A hole is first poked into the snow with the finger or with a stick. A piece of calcium carbide is then dropped into the hole and snow packed lightly on top of the calcium carbide. The moisture present in the snow causes the calcium carbide to go into chemical reaction with the water and evolve acetylin which burns on the surface of the snow when ignited. The heat formed will melt the snow and the heat of reaction will further aid the melting of the snow.

Based on the principle of the experiment previously illustrated, the suggestion for the experiment having been made by Harry E. Hail, the snow burner here illustrated has been devised. Essentially, this consists of a means of sprinkling calcium carbide upon snow, and as the gas is evolved, it is lit with a match. The sprinkler is then drawn over the walks, and the flames follow in its wake, melting the snow, which runs off in the form of water. Great care must be exercised in sprinkling calcium carbide upon snow, so that when the gas is evolved and ignited, it will not set fire to shrubbery, trees, or the house itself. Under no conditions should such a snow remover be used when a gale is blowing. And the individual drawing the mechanism over the road should always see to it that he heads into any slight breeze which may be blowing so that his own clothes will not be ignited. A slow procedure is best because a large area of snow will not be heated at one time and the flame area is considerably confined. The principal parts of the mechanism are illustrated. It will be noted that a hopper containing calcium carbide slowly drops the carbide into a pan revolving at high speed. The pan is covered on the front half by a shield so that the carbide sprinkled out because of centrifugal force will only fall in back of the mechanism. For eliminating small patches of snow, the best system is to sprinkle the carbide out of a pan.

Huge desert ship to speed over sand on wheels. Popular Science Monthly, April 1927.

An ocean liner on land is the monster vehicle proposed by a German inventor and pictured in our artist's conception above. JC Bishoff of Keel, the designer, sees desert travelers of the future embarking on a land ship that surrounds its 300 odd passengers with all the luxurious comfort of a modern sea liner. Within its windowed cabins, the traveler would have no fear of hunger, thirst, nor the once-dreaded sandstorm. Gigantic gasoline motors in the hole would turn the 40-foot wheels, which are rimmed with paddle-like blades to gain a firm foothold in the shifting sands. At the front of the 300 ft craft are the pilot house and steering apparatus. And from a nearby bridge, the captain issues orders. At night, a powerful search light would cast its beam over the sands through which the ship plows at 20 m an hour and an airline to its destination.

Starting on a journey by air in the year 1930, Popular Science Monthly, June 1921.

Travelers in the picture above are hurrying on foot and in railroad trains toward a terminal the like of which is strange to our eyes, but which may be an accomplished fact in only a few years. A glance at these persons hastening toward the terminal shows them taking the same kind of baggage that present-day travelers carry. And indeed, travelers through the air will probably start with as slight preparation as they now do for a railroad journey and with far less preparation than for an ocean voyage.

In the huge circular station built over a seapport, one airplane is shown about to land. A second is just starting on its flight and a third is waiting for its new quota of passengers. The airplanes start from and ali upon platforms swinging on a circular railed bed high in the air. The platforms are swung by two rotating arms, inclining a little downward and moving with the wind so that the machines always descend and ascend facing it. Essential in starting and aligning. A mono railway penetrates to the heart of the terminal and an elevator carries passengers to and from the airplanes. There is also a huge elevator for lowering the airplanes to the ground floor whenever they are in need of repairs. Such repairs are carried on in the interior of the structure in workshops where scores of skilled mechanics work to make the machine safer for transporting the human freight. Employing the most modern laborsaving machinery, working at top speed so that no unnecessary time may be wasted in an industry where every minute of idleness means financial loss.

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Luxurious railway coaches may take wing. Popular science monthly. November 1923.

Is around the world journey overland by rail and across oceans by plane without changing cars to be an aeronautical commonplace of tomorrow? Late advices from England indicate that British engineers and inventors are approaching success in just such an adventure into super transportation. The project contemplates great passenger compartment cars to be transported either on railway trucks or attached to huge airplane wings. Transcontinental trains arriving at an air drrome transfer point would shunt these air and land cars into the wings of a giant airplane. Thus, without waking in their sleeping accommodations, passengers would be racing on rails down the Hudson Valley one hour and on wings above the Atlantic the next. No time would be lost in rail and steamer connections, and rail economy would be combined with the tremendous speed of man-made wings.

The fascinating possibilities of such a scientific stride incite the imagination. We may foresee luxuriously appointed passenger cars equipped to furnish entertainment and comfort to passengers. We may imagine ourselves as these passengers one morning enjoying an Ohio landscape from the car windows on the evening of the next day looking down upon the conquered Alps. Engineers of the Pullman company for several years have been studying the possibilities of aerial Pullman's and will be ready to construct them the moment aeronautical advance makes them feasible.

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A vision of rapid transit 50 years hence. Popular science monthly May 1922.

The mileage of tracks will be increased in the future, not by the construction of new railroads, but by double tracking the single track roads and by triple or quadruple tracking the present double track lines. Great changes will be made in the hauling of freight. The freight car of the future will be simply a chassis that will carry one or more containers easily detached. These units may be loaded and carried if necessary on auto trucks and transferred quickly and cheaply to the chassis. At the end of the journey, they can be easily removed from the trucks, thus saving an immense amount of handling. The mails, for instance, can be loaded in the containers at the post offices and lifted on the chassis of the cars, saving probably half a dozen transfers in which the bags must be handled one at a time. At present, a container holding 20 tons of mail is often loaded and unloaded 10 times in shipment from one city to another. This is equivalent to handling 200 tons.

Locomotives in use 50 years ago appear as midgets beside those of today. The locomotives of the future designed with streamlined bodies will attain greater speed than ever before. Running time will also be reduced by improving grades and building cutoffs. Short hall passenger traffic will be handled by a combination of automobile and railroad car. These rail cars run by gasoline will reduce the cost of operation about 50% and will attain a speed of a mile a minute.

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The first great passenger liner of the air. Popular mechanics. December 1928.

Members of the crew of the graph zeppelin before the derigible took to the skies for its voyage to Lakehurst from Friedri's Hoffen Germany. The photograph gives a clear view of the forward control room and its comparative size. One of the big 520 horsepower Roarbach engines being hoisted into its gondola. There were five of these motors, each carefully set so that the propellers would not interfere with each other when all were working. The graph zeppelin was designed essentially the same as its predecessor, the Los Angeles of the US Navy, but it is 1 and 1/2 times as large and differs especially in the matter of the fuel it used. Instead of all gasoline, it burned a special gas which has approximately the same specific gravity as air.

Putting finishing touch on the fabric close to the zeppelin's nose. Mechanic inspecting one of the motors before it was installed. These engines burn either the new blue gas or gasoline. A rim of one of the big wheels of the R101 to be one of the world's largest airships now near completion at Cardington, England. It is for service on the England, Egypt, India route. View of a gas valve of the R101. This ship is 750 ft long and the gas bag has a capacity of almost 5 million cubic feet. Close view of the control room of the Graph Zeppelin with the passenger compartments toward the rear. Note the spaces for the gas bags, the fuel, freight and baggage storage, the crew's sleeping quarters, kitchen, dining room, and lounge. The dining room is large enough for 40 persons at one time and is handsomely furnished and ventilated through large windows, a special convenience when the ship sails over the tropics. The airliner in its hanger at Friedri's Hoffen with the gas inlet attached. Use of gas fuel of about the same weight as air made it unnecessary to have water recovery apparatus such as was devised by American government engineers to maintain weight on the Los Angeles as its engines burn gasoline. The recovery units condense the exhaust.

Dr. Hugo Eckner center with members of his staff in the pilot's cabin of the graph zeppelin during the last test flight of the big derigible before it started for America. It left at 12:52 a.m. October 11th and arrived at Lakehurst October 15th at 4:38 p.m. Having traveled through the air nearly 6,000 m and being a loft about 112 hours. It beat the best steamer time despite several mishaps from left to right. Anton Wittmann, navigator, Captain EA Lehman, first officer, and H. Von Schiller, navigator. Three members of the Graph Zeppelin's crew, who made their second derigible voyage to the United States with the giant liner of the skies. Their first trip was when the Los Angeles, now part of the US Navy, was safely sailed to this country.

The graph under construction for the great journey, showing some of the special ladders needed. One of the ship's officers peering from the pilot's cabin as it passed over Berlin on its last long test flight before the actual takeoff to America. Although the huge craft encountered unfavorable weather over a large part of the ocean trip, it showed that derigibles can successfully dodge storms as well as journey through them. The transatlantic flight took longer than had been anticipated, but the Graph Zeppelin had fuel for over 40 hours when it landed at Lakehurst. How the Graph Zeppelin compares in size with the Los Angeles and the Woolworth Tower. It is nearly 100 ft in diameter and has a gas capacity of 3,750,000 cub feet.

Leaving the hanger. Rear view of the big derigible showing the huge fins and the rudder with four of the motor gondilas in sight far down the ship's cigar- shaped body. Close view showing Robert Hartman, a cameraman, at the window of one of the gondilas of the giant ship just before the second test flight which proved it worthy for the trip across the ocean. Note how the gondola is streamlined to decrease resistance. The motors are 520 horsepower roar box and function splendidly throughout the journey. A minor mishap to one of the big fins was the only damage suffered in the 112hour flight against unfavorable winds and through fogs. All the motors and other parts of the ship are controlled from the forward cabin, the brains of the derigible. One of the most difficult phases of travel by derigibles involves handling the big bags when they land. Here is part of the expert landing crew of the graph zeppelin at the ropes just before the ship took to the air for its first flight. A view of the winddriven generator that supplies current for the ship's wireless system. When the derigible slows down, the generator slacken speed too, hampering the performance of the radio apparatus. Radio set in a German commercial airplane. The graph zeppelin was equipped with a special radio cabin fitted with the latest types of receivers and transmitters as well as radio directionfinding apparatus. Batteries were provided for operating the ship's wireless in case the wind generator was not running, but they were out of commission at first and the ship was cut off from communication until the battery system was repaired.

Building a modern skyscraper. Popular mechanics. January 1st, 1925.

The growth of a great skyscraper from the first excavations to the building of the stone walls around the steel skeleton is one of the greatest feats of modern engineering. To the city dweller to whom the site is an everyday occurrence, there still remains an endless fascination in every step. From the digging of the basement by steam shovels to the placing of the last stone. Modern skyscrapers go up so rapidly that the progress can be measured with the eye from day to day, which adds interest to the game of watching the workmen.

The steelwork rises into the air on a fixed schedule. So many feet per day, so efficiently is every detail planned. For instance, two men named Jimmy erected the steel for a 38story building in 4 days. Without help, they placed each column, girder, and beam in place and bolted the ends to hold until the rivet gangs could complete the job. There were 6,900 tons of steel in the towering skeleton. It was not accident that both the connectors, the title they bore on the contractor's payroll, had the same name. The elder was Irish and was Jimmy by accident, but the younger was Swedish and was Jimmy by choice. The reason is that the first connector, olden years, at what is essentially a young man's game, insists that his partner must bear the same name. And when one Jimmy quits, work halts until the contractor finds another to take his place. The connectors are the monarchs of skyscraper construction. The reason there were but two men to place all the steel in the giant building was that the floor area was small.

enough for a single Derek with an exceptionally long boom to reach every corner of it. For each Derek used, there must be two connectors in an erecting crew of seven men. The others including the foreman, engineer, hoisting engineer, and the two hookers who attach the cable to each piece of steel on the ground, sending them a loft in the order in which they are needed.

The building of a modern office skyscraper requires relatively few men on the scene, but back of them is the combined work of hundreds or thousands of others. In the ore mines of Minnesota, dynamite, steam shovels, railroad crews, and muckers get out the iron ore and start it down the lakes and steamers bound for the steel mills of Pittsburgh or Youngstown or the Chicago district. At the mills, the metal is extracted and from the furnaces pours as molten steel into the ingot molds to be rolled into bars and billets. At the fabrication plant, reheating and more rollers reduced the steel to beams ready to be drilled for the rivet holes.

In the limestone quarries of Indiana, channeling machines driven by steam cut out huge blocks of stone. Some to go to the saws to be cut into plain blocks for the plain wall surfaces and others to column fluting machines or hand carvers to be fashioned into the delicate ornamental parts. In the marble quarries of Vermont and Italy, other men are getting out the stone for interior finish. Cement quarries are reducing the rock to building material. Sand dredges collect the aggregate. Lumber for forms is cut from trees in the northwest. And from half a dozen countries, fine hardwoods are ordered for interior paneling.

Back of all their preparation lies the work of the artists and draftsmen and architects who conceived the design and executed the plans. And they in turn were followed by the substructure workers who dug down to bedrock and built the foundations.

Drawing the plans and preparing the specifications for modern buildings is a highly specialized work. One draftsman does nothing but design plumbing installations. Another handles the electric wiring, one the steam fittings, and another the structural details. Then there is a draftsman who takes care of the architectural planning, and as many as five who do nothing but create the exterior designs, passing them on to others who develop the various schemes. An average architectural office specializing in big buildings will have as many as three men who do nothing but write specifications, another man to obtain bids and let subcontracts and still another to see to the execution of the contracts and direct the core of building superintendence.

With the plans drawn and contracts let the first task to build the foundations which in modern skyscrapers must go down to bedrock. 30 years ago, in the early days of tall buildings, modern caisson construction had not been developed, and buildings were erected on crib works or forests of wooden piles. The result was that they slowly settled as the multitude of sewers, conduits, and tunnels under the streets drained the water away from the surrounding earth and allowed it to compress.

With the lower foundations in place, work begins on the basement, or rather basements, as there are usually from four to eight floor levels underground. Once the substructure is in place, the jimmies of the construction gang arrive. As soon as the steel structure gets started upward, the carpenters and cement men follow with their forms and liquid rock. The cement casing serves a dual purpose. It fireproofs the steel to prevent its melting under intense heat and likewise adds rigidity to the building. The last is by no means the least important. And it is for this reason that the cement forms follow so closely after the erection crew. Even when working only six floors ahead, there is considerable swaying and a slender skeleton of steelwork will buck as much as 6 in when the derrick picks up its load hundreds of feet below on the ground.

The stonemasons follow the cement men, and it is not at all unusual to see them start their work five or 10 stories in the air, resting the stone on steel ledges provided at each floor for that purpose. Before the days of steel construction, the walls carried the framework and on tall buildings were necessarily enormously thick. Nowadays, the process has been reversed and the framework carries the walls. The reason for starting the stonework several stories above the ground is that as a rule, only plain sawed stone is used there, while the elaborately handcarved stone for the lower floors requires more time to prepare and often is not ready until long after many of the upper floors have been completed.

Has skyscrapers reached their limits? Popular Mechanics. January 1928. Has the skyscraper reached its limit? Is the tall building becoming impossible for human beings to inhabit? There is some evidence to indicate that American cities are about to call a halt on these tall structures that reach into the clouds and down into the earth. Even the physical limits are being approached. The higher the building, the deeper the foundation must go. That is understood, of course, but it is not always so easy to keep on digging to find a solid rock bottom that will sustain millions of tons of concrete, steel, and marble.

The 34-story skyscraper of the Albany, New York State Capital offices has discovered this to be true. For nearly a year, the construction crews have been trying to find a solid rock bottom to support the great building. More than 2,000 concrete piles have been sunk into Capitol Hill, and the bottom needed isn't there. The vast excavation is getting deeper and in places has not yet approached the tops of some of the concrete piles which have been driven into the hill. Meanwhile, 10 floors of structural steel are in storage, awaiting something stable to support them.

While the troubles of the Albany contractors are many, engineers tell of similar conditions that are being encountered as the height of buildings increases. Geologists say that many cities are located on mounds of earth that are just short of liquid in their consistency. As far as proper skyscraper foundations are concerned, the troubles of contractors are illustrated by the amazing experience at Albany. It was estimated that concrete piles embedded 37 ft into the earth would each support 35 tons, and with enough piles, the building's height would be assured. The great pile driver sent the concrete log down to within 1 in of the 37 ft depth. It took three blows of the 5-ton hammer to drive the pile the last 1 inch, and there was but another inch to go. The hammer came down once and hit the pile again, and presto, the pile simply disappeared. Other piles showed the same result. There was not enough resistance, and the piles disappeared into the soft earth below. Then the engineers placed a 12x12 timber on top of one of the concrete posts and set the pile driver to work. The pile as a consequence went down 112 ft before it hit hard pan. Geologists who were watching said that solid rock was down still farther.

The Albany building is not a great skyscraper as such buildings are known. It is designed to be but 34 stories high and such a height is dwarfed in these days. While New York is located on solid rock, some geologists claim that the weight that can be piled on this rock is limited. Meanwhile, other cities continue to plan giant buildings. Harvey Wy Corbett, noted city planner who champions the skyscraper, predicts that American cities will soon have buildings twice as high as those of today, which many people are claiming as too tall. Major Henry H. Curran, also of New York, opposes Mr. Corbett and points to the impossibilities of such buildings in terms of human happiness as well as construction.

Mr. Corbett as an architect shows what he believes New York will look like in 1975. There will be other cities like it. Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis. Perhaps American cities will be composed of gigantic towers. He says pedestrian traffic will be separated on elevated highways from vehicular traffic moving in canals below. The big cities will be modern Venices with motors instead of water filling the canals. The big stores will have two entrances, one below for automobiles and one on the second story level for pedestrians. Shoppers will be able to walk from store to store undisturbed by traffic. The open park plazas will be lifted to a level with the pedestrian lanes and the space below will be used for parking automobiles.

The stepback skyscrapers of the future will have moving stairs on the outside of the buildings instead of elevators with facilities for passengers to alight at any floor. Mr. Corbett declared there will be airplane landings everywhere. Artificial light now in its infancy will revolutionize our life, turning night completely into day. The city's business hours will be 24 instead of 8 or 10. People will work in 6-hour shifts. The churches will be located at the top of the great commercial buildings commanding attention or be buried in nondescript buildings below.

Mr. Corbett bases his prophecies on a lifetime of leadership in designing great buildings and is a world authority. He continued, "Buildings will cover entire blocks, reaching in series of lifts and towers to supreme heights. Some of the skyscrapers will be a half mile high and will house small-sized cities. Stores will occupy lower floors. Then will come banks of floors devoted to offices. A top of this section will be the residential part. Floors where those who are employed in the business division of the structure might live. School rooms, churches, theaters, and social features will take over the next section of floors. The roof will be used for airplane landings or station stops for air transit to various sections of the country or for that matter the world. Imagine these new cities with no smoke. Where the heat, the power, and the light are all supplied by burning coal at the mine that is transformed into electric power and sent to the cities. Where the upper portions of the buildings are more attractive than the lower, where we can take advantage of our terraces and use them for our gardens if we wish."

But there are problems other than that of foundations to offset such a great dream, says Major Curran, who was council for the New York City Club and member of the New York Board of Aldermen and himself an authority on city activities. Major Curran sees in the skyscraper the cause of much discomfort. There are everyday workers who count their ribs on release from its elevators and the subways that take them to their offices. They must pop out of kiosks like prairie dogs and move in the center of crawling motors that spit fumes from curb to curb.

Major Curran continued, "Now a New York architect announces a building of 110 stories." This inverted spy glass is to rise 1,200 ft in the air, thus outstripping not only Detroit's effort, but also the Eiffel Tower in Paris, which is still the highest piece of construction in the world. The physical difficulty of digging into the earth may deter the super super skyscraper. Perhaps a great accident will have its effect. For as the new building's foundations must be dug, the old ones must be watched carefully, and frequently a new foundation must be placed beneath the adjoining structure. Such complicated underpinnings and transferring of loads running into thousands of tons are accomplished in the face of the ever-present menace of flood, fire, and explosion.

Raindrop bodies for automobiles. Popular mechanics, March 1925. Streamlined automobile bodies, motors at the rear instead of under a front hood, and other radical changes are among the developments promised for the near future by both native and foreign automobile designers. The raindrop body, completely streamlined to reduce air resistance to the lowest possible point, is already attracting considerable attention abroad and is being manufactured both in England and Germany. If the new school of design catches the popular fancy, and its proponents believe it will because the fully streamlined body is rational, they say, the motor car of the near future will at last escape from all vestige of the buggy and horse-drawn carriage motif.

Starting out with a one or two cylinder engine built under an ordinary one-seated buggy, automobile builders became so firmly imbedded in the tradition that they have never fully freed themselves of it. The first automobiles had buggy dashboards, buggy lamps, carriage wheels, and it wasn't much more than 20 years ago that one automobile designer put a car on the market equipped with a whip socket. The evolution of the automobile proceeded rapidly, but always with the impress of carriage builder designs. The dashboard evolved into an instrument board and cowl and a hood projected in front of it to cover the engine which in the early days was such an uncertain quantity that it must needs be placed at the point of greatest accessibility. Straight lines and alleged streamlines which paid little attention to streamline principles replace the more elaborate curves and angles of family carriage days. But the automobile still kept the same general contour laid down by the first builders who entered the new field.

In the meantime, a new industry was rising to build airplanes. And for the first time, exact studies were made of streamlines and wind resistances. Scientists were employed and wind tunnels constructed and the mysteries of the invisible air currents charted into an exact science. Now it is proposed to put that accumulated knowledge to work to build automobiles which shall be faster and cost less to operate than anything seen heretofore.

The engine to begin with is in a fair way of being relegated to what is described as its natural position over the rear axle. Modern motors do not require such constant attention as to make extreme accessibility necessary. The starter has displaced the crank. And in short, the principal reasons for having the engine under a front hood are gone. Next, the falling raindrop is being reproduced in wood and steel, just as it was in wood and fabric for the airplane, and the result made into comfortable automobile bodies. The latest thing in streamlining is designed to eliminate not only the vacuum drag against the rear of a car, but the power absorbing swirls in the air, which cut down speed and leave clouds of dust floating behind. The new bodies slip through the atmosphere with so little disturbance that the air currents slide back into place and the dust is hardly raised above the road.

The science of streamlining is founded on natural phenomena: the graceful curves produced in running water as it slips around a stick or other obstruction. For example, most people have watched a stream as it is divided by a bridge pier or rock or perhaps a fixed snag only to slip quietly together again. Nature likewise has produced a perfect streamlined body obstacle as it acts in the same way as water. It is true that air is nearly a thousand times less dense than water, but the surface presented by a motor car is almost a thousand times bigger than that offered by a fish. And a car moves at a much higher rate of speed, so that the reaction of the displaced air on an automobile in motion is proportionately much greater than that of water on a swimming fish.

Wind cutting shapes, torpedo bodies, and boat-shaped designs for racing cars have been used by automobile builders for several years, but the airplane wind tunnel tests show that almost without exception, they are scarcely more than a matter of fashion and hardly take into account the lines of least resistance. Bodies which seem to cut the wind actually offer practically the same air resistance as rectangular bodies. According to Jere, one of the leading European designers who for 10 years has helped improve Zeppelin designs. His investigations show the wind resistance of an ordinary car going at 22 mph eats up 60% more power than a streamlined body on the same chassis. At 40 mph, the wind resistance increases the power consumption by 90%. And at 50, the excess energy used because of resistance of the atmosphere is 110%. He concluded there was only one way to effectively streamline a car, and that was to enclose every part, even the wheels, in one streamlined body.

Wind tunnel experiments indicated that the greater volume of air displaced by a car should pass over it while the air near the ground must remain horizontal so as to stir up no dust. Eventually he worked out a shape which approximated the upper half of a dirigible cut on a horizontal plane and placed as near the ground as possible. Actual tests showed wind resistance of 1/4 to 1/3 that of ordinary bodies. That means that when a 16 horsepower car is running at an average speed of 22 mph or when a 40 horsepower car is running at an average of 31 miles, a saving of close to 30% of fuel is effected. At higher speeds, the saving runs as much as 40-50% or more. The result is that the driver who slows down when passing through villages and towns and then speeds up on open stretches to keep his average rate normal actually saves more fuel than if he had maintained the average speed for the entire distance. Cars with the new bodies which have been operated in Berlin and London have attracted considerable attention because of the peculiar design. But the builders deny that the machines look freakish. They rest their claims on the assertion that if nature had ever built a motor car, she would have taken the same design they have adopted to get the greatest efficiency.

Flaps its wings like a bird. Amazing auto gyro can land almost vertically. Popular Science Monthly, January 1926. At Farnborough, England a few weeks ago, a group of aeronautical engineers and aviation enthusiasts assembled to witness an event that may revolutionize completely the future development of the art of aviation. An odd, awkward-looking flying machine topped with a windmill arrangement that flapped like the wings of a bird rose swiftly from the ground, accomplished a trial flight of almost 50 mi, and then returned to its starting place, dropping almost vertically and coming to a full stop within 20 ft of the place where it first touched the ground.

This queer machine which conforms to none of the usual rules for airplane design is called the autogyro. It is the invention of Don Juan de la Cierva, a young Spanish engineer who has brought it to its present stage of development after 5 years work. Vice Marshall Sir Sefton Branker of the British Air Force after witnessing the successful demonstration of the machine declared that it is the greatest step in aeronautical progress since the Wright brothers flew the first airplane. That De la Cierva was working on a revolutionary type of aircraft has been no secret. Several articles describing various stages of his progress have appeared in Popular Science Monthly. The aviation world, however, scarcely was prepared for the sensational success of this public demonstration.

When Captain Frank Courtney climbed into the fuselage, the tractor airscrew was set whirling, the huge blades flapped, and within 300 ft, about 1/3 the distance required by the ordinary airplane, it had left the ground and was sailing gradually out of sight. Then at the end of the trip came the most remarkable part of the demonstration. When only a few hundred feet above the ground, the pilot shut off his engine. The tractor screw slowed up and ceased to revolve and the machine floated down almost vertically, landing without damage with a run of less than 20 ft. Here at last was an airplane that could land on a mere spot. The airplane possibly that may point the way to planes that can land on the roofs of houses or in city streets and parks and thus enlarge amazingly the utility and scope of aircraft.

The machine starts off in the ordinary way by aid of an engine-driven tractor screw. To start the lifting blades rotating, men haul away a steel cable wound around the base of the screw much as a string is pulled from a top. According to measurements, the autogyro leaves the ground with the low speed of 15 mph. Its maximum speed in the air is 70 mph. In order to stay in the air, an ordinary airplane must keep up high velocity. Even a small loss in velocity may result in an accident. It is claimed that the autogyro is very slightly affected by loss of forward speed. The real speed which counts for sustentation being that of the wing tips which travel over a spiral path at a much higher velocity than the speed of travel. Even if the engine should fail completely, the blades of the autogyro will sustain the plane in the air, allowing it to sink slowly and land safely.

Television for the home, Popular Mechanics magazine, April 1928. Groups of people sitting in various homes at Schenectady, New York a few weeks ago saw the performers in a distant broadcasting studio flit across a tiny screen and from the loudspeaker of a radio set heard them talk. Television, a laboratory plaything that has interested scientists for several years had arrived. A large square cabinet built somewhat like the bigger talking machine models is the first home receiver for radio transmitted images. The dials of a receiver protrude from its middle and above them at the eye level of the seated spectator appears a 3-in square window behind which is the screen on which the images are formed.

The one great problem that has perplexed television experimenters for years: How to synchronize the transmitter and the receiver was solved by simply ignoring it. Instead of all the elaborate and very expensive equipment necessary to keep the whirling disc of pinholes that paints the image on the receiver screen in absolute step with the corresponding mechanism that transmits the original image. The television receiver for home use has a simple rheostat control on the end of an extension cord that permits the spectator to do the synchronizing himself. If the receiving motor runs a trifle fast or a bit too slow, the picture will begin to get out of focus to slip off the screen. The effect is much like that at the movie theater when the frames of the moving film and the shutter do not work in unison and you see the bottom half of one frame and the top half of another on the screen. The operator makes a simple adjustment to the projector and the picture is restored to position. And in the same way, a slowing down or speeding up of the television receiver motor brings the picture back into place. It is as simple, explains Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson of the General Electric Laboratories, who developed the machine, as learning to drive an automobile. David Sarnoff, vice president and general manager of the Radio Corporation of America, predicts that within 5 years, television will be an art and an industry in this country.

Here is how the first practical demonstration in the home worked. In the studio, the performer stands before an ordinary arc light. Between him and the lights is a large disc revolving 18 times a second. And in the disc are 48 holes arranged in a spiral so that in each revolution successive beams of light are swept across each part of the performer's face. A photoelectric cell is directed toward the performer. And as each light beam is reflected back from his face, it affects the cell which converts the light into electrical energy. From there on, the transmission system differs in no important respect from the usual broadcasting outfit. The tiny current wave in the photocell is magnified and amplified into a powerful signal which is then dispatched into the air through the antenna on a wavelength of 37.8 m. The antenna is a new type. The wires arranged in a checkerboard square. Each wire being half a wavelength long and so coupled that they are always in phase eliminating the necessity of antenna tuning. The WGY transmitter on its usual wavelength of 379.5 m was used for the accompanying voice transmission.

In the home there are two receivers, one to pick up the voice on one wavelength and deliver it amplified in volume to the loudspeaker. The other operating on a different wavelength receives and amplifies the electrical signals produced by the image. Instead of being connected to a loudspeaker, the output of this receiver goes to a small cold light, a neon gas-filled bulb, which is so sensitive that it can be turned on and off a million times a second if necessary, with no lingering afterglow, and which has the peculiar property of producing its glow on one side of a target-like electrode only. In front of the neon globe, a duplicate of the pinhole disc at the broadcasting station is revolving 18 times a second.

Kept in step by the control in the spectator's hands. As its 48 apertures sweep in turn across in front of the light, they pass the pulsating light beams now rising in brilliancy for a highlight and then fading off for a shadow. The disc is 24 in in diameter and the 48 holes each 35 mm across. The distance between the outer and inner holes of the spiral is calculated to make an image only an inch and a half square. But between the disc and the spectator's window is a magnifying lens that doubles the picture each way, bringing it up to 3 in square. The rate of revolution of the disc 18 times per second produces a corresponding number of images or two more per second than are seen when movie film is operated at standard speed. The neon lamp invented by D. McFarland Moore, an engineer of the Edison Lamp Works of the General Electric Company gives the picture a distinct pink cast, one of the characteristics of neon which is seen in the new type of signs now in use.

In the demonstration at Schenectady, performers in the studio talked, moved about, lit and smoked cigarettes, exhibited their bobs and permanent waves, and performed other stunts. As all the apparatus as yet built has such small receiving screens, no attempt has been made to transmit an entire studio scene, an orchestra playing, or even a full-length portrait of a moving person. One of the interesting things about the television demonstration is that when the broadcasting of images becomes a regular feature, anyone will be able to build receivers for none of the principal features will be covered by basic patents. The revolving disc, the neon lamp, and the photoelectric cell are all old inventions. There are patents of course on the improved features of late models, but the basic ideas involved all date back before the days when radio pictures were thought of.

Menless monsters to decide future war. Popular Science Monthly, August 1925. On these pages are pictured a few of the marvelous new weapons of attack and defense developed by modern military genius. They represent the last word in war machines. Yet powerful and ingenious as these machines are, they would be helplessly ineffective beside the tremendous agencies of wholesale destruction predicted for the next great war. If such a war comes, scientists, inventors, and military men in active touch with the development of armaments practically are unanimous in the belief that a war of the future will be one of almost inconceivable annihilation. Death swifter than light, riding on waves of electricity, and obedient to the will of masterminds, they say, will blot out great cities and even nations almost in a breath.

One who has drawn a vivid picture of such a catastrophe is Professor A.M. Low of London, internationally known scientist and inventor, consultant to the British War Inventions Board during the World War. The no man's land of future war as he sees it will be the sea, the undersea, and the air. Their monstrous engines controlled by radio and obedient to human minds will strive to break through and destroy populated areas. Once the machines of either side break through with their deadly gases, chemicals, and explosives, the end will be only a matter of moments. Radio control, radio communication, and mastery of electric power will be deciding factors.

Among the predicted weapons are combined armored tank submarine airplanes for fighting on land, underwater, or in the air. Jets of water charged with electricity to kill off all life with which they come in contact. Deadly gases and chemicals. Battle planes developing wireless power to destroy aircraft within several miles. Wireless fire to devastate enemy territory. Wireless control of torpedoes, planes, ships, and submarines.

The possibilities of electricity as a lethal weapon are almost unlimited, says Professor Low. Men will fight not with their bodies, but with their minds. Their ingenuity will be directed towards supplying themselves with long-range weapons responsive to exact control and capable of keeping at bay the lethal engines of the enemy equipped with facilities for the destruction of whole nations at a single blow.

Where giant search lights turn night into day. This spectacular demonstration of New York City's defenses against aerial attack was staged recently at Fort Totten, which guards the eastern approach of East River. Notice how powerful searchlight beams illuminate targets for anti-aircraft guns. Shoots 23 mi. The most powerful long-range gun of its type, just perfected for the U.S. Army. It will throw a 1,560 lb projectile a distance of 23 miles. Two of Uncle Sam's seaplanes hiding behind a thick smoke screen laid down by other planes at Bayshore, Maryland. A screen hundreds of feet high and as impenetrable to human eyes as a brick wall can be laid down by an airplane at the rate of a mile a minute by a new method developed by the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service. This means of concealment it is believed would be of tremendous aid to attacking planes during a naval engagement.

Modern tanks proof against bombs. Above is a spectacular demonstration of the effectiveness of modern tanks against bombs. The photograph was taken just as a bomb exploded among the First Division tank company during recent maneuvers at Miller Field, Staten Island, New York. At the right is a gigantic two-ton airplane bomb 14 ft long. Compare its size with that of the soldier. How trees were crumpled like straws before the onslaught of tanks in recent mimic warfare at Miller Field, Staten Island. There, 15 great tanks rumbled irresistibly over stone walls, trees, and ditches. This picture gives an idea of the tank's great power.

Age of Wonders still in future. Popular Mechanics September 1927. Will sun energy supply the power of the future when coal, water forces, and gasoline have been exhausted? Why the future? Said Charles F. Kettering, inventor of the self-starter for automobiles and many other things that have advanced the science of motoring. Isn't sun power our main power today? He asked. We are but using up the energy the sun stored away for us during countless centuries prior to the time when man first learned the uses of steam and gasoline. The time will come, however, when we must use the sun power given us every day. The world will use more and more power and gradually our natural resources will give out. Not in our lifetime certainly, but geologically speaking, just a short time ahead. Then we must turn to the sun and to the spots on Earth where the sun is most active.

Mr. Kettering says the world is interested generally in sun machines that are being invented with a certain degree of success. But he doesn't believe a sun machine in itself will be the method to be adopted for the use of sun energy. Coal fields, he points out, came as the result of vegetation brought forth by sunpower. A learned scientist is now experimenting in Cuba where it is possible to raise 11 tons of sugar to the acre. He said in these temperate zones, we may do our own experimenting, that of making fuel from vegetation, but the method is too slow for this swiftly moving world. We must plant our corn in the spring, wait for the sun to develop it to maturity, and harvest it in the fall, all before we are ready to make commercial use of what the sun has accomplished. Now, in the tropics, this process is shortened by months. And so, when the time comes for us to turn our eyes toward the sun, we must take to the tropics.

Visions of the world of tomorrow have been painted by other scientists following the success of sunpower machines operated during the sunlight hours by means of great lenses to generate steam. Predictions have been made that the generations that will follow a gasless and coalless age will people the great deserts. But the engineer who made it possible to start an automobile without cranking and who heads one of the greatest research laboratories in the world asks why bother with engines at all when the sun is at work constantly to produce man's greatest necessity: fuel. Who knows but that the time may come, he suggested, when man will learn to use directly the sun power. That instead of waiting for the sun to place its energy into a grain of corn which man can remove in the shape of alcohol, such energy may not be put to work at once as a slave to the ingenuity of man.

In stressing the importance of fuel, Mr. Kettering emphasizes that mankind is merely taking its first toddling steps in science and cites the case of J.W. Mettler of Great Falls, Montana, who in 1888 received a suit and overcoat for dumping 20,000 barrels of gasoline into a creek and not getting caught at it. Gasoline was the white elephant to the refiner for when too much of it was left in kerosene, lamps exploded. He gladly paid anyone to get rid of the dangerous stuff. Today, as Mr. Kettering says, more than 1/2 of the horsepower produced in the United States is developed by gasoline. When our crude oil is gone, we must learn how to cause the sun to make us more, not in the process that requires ages, but quickly, he says.

Mr. Kettering believes the greatest danger in the world today is the belief generally held that this is a wonderful age. When man first learned to fashion knives and hatchets of flint, he thought that he lived in a wonderful age, he illustrated. Next, when a smarter generation fashioned their implements of bronze, they too considered themselves wonderful and so on through the ages. Now we have automobiles, radio, steam engines, airplanes, and radium. And we go around boasting about our wonderful age. But we are just learning to walk. Mr. Kettering often lectures in his laboratory and loves to illustrate. His favorite is the small electric furnace in his laboratory. In the furnace, we'll take a piece of iron bar and heat it red hot, he said. Over the furnace while the iron is red hot, we'll place this piece of ice and notice that it doesn't melt. On top of the ice, we'll put this skillet and in it drop an egg. You notice the egg fries while the ice does not melt. That is all very simple because all we have is a transformer that sends out electric radiations. When we place in the furnace a piece of metal, these radiations induce electric currents in the metal which make it hot. We all know that electric currents will not flow into ice. So the ice does not get hot. We get all our heat from the sun whose rays pass through space that is absolute zero. And it is only when they strike something that they are converted into heat. The heat was generated in the bar but not in the ice.

Gasoline as the important fuel, says the engineer, is being made better today than ever before. And yet, he affirms scientists have just taken their first steps in getting all the power out of gasoline. The world must accept new things or die, he declared. We all know that every civilized country that became satisfied with its old things passed away. We must quit saying we are living in a wonderful age. For the wonderful age is yet to come.

Living on the highway to Save Rent. The Literary Digest. June 11th, 1921. When the landlord raises the rent or sells the house over your head, take to the road and take your home with you. Oh yes, it's being done this season. At least we are so assured by William Malin writing in the Highway Magazine. Mr. Malin says that motor and horse-drawn bungalows are becoming popular here and abroad from Paris, New York, and San Francisco. He is getting news that people are figuratively hitching up their homes and hitting the trail for freedom from rent hogs and one-room pueblos. The birds solved the problem centuries ago, argues our writer, when they began to migrate north and south. Now many families are taking a tip from the feathered creatures and are not only migrating with the seasons, but are moving their homes with them. He goes on to explore the idea with enthusiasm. And why not? No property taxes, no coal bills, no rent collectors. Truly, it is the life.

Look at the accompanying photographs. Here we have Charles A. Hyde, formerly a farmer of Hagerstown, Maryland, and his family who started hoboing in a house on wheels when homes became scarce and expensive in their native state. Mr. Hyde designed the house, which was built by an automobile concern at a cost of $16,000. The vehicle has accommodations for six and is completely equipped with office and home furniture. There are two separate heating equipments and a miniature electric light plant as well as a telephone system to be attached at any point along the road. There is also a phonograph, an adding machine, and a typewriter. The house boasts of separate heating and cooking systems and cellar space. The family will spend the winter in Florida, traveling northwest in the spring, and probably settle in California in the winter of 1922.

The Live Where You Like House is the name of the resident's vehicle recently introduced in Paris. The Parisians are said to be surprised at nothing, but it is recorded that when this house on wheels was drawn through the streets of the French capital, pedestrians stood aghast. The furniture is simple but practical and built to take up a minimum of space. The house is 8 ft wide and 15 ft high, but through means of sliding walls, the roof may be lowered like a telescope, thus reducing the height to about 9 1/2 ft when traveling under bridges. Under ordinary conditions, the house consists of two floors. On the ground floor is the living room and kitchen divided by a curtain. On the upper floor is a bedroom and a library also divided by a curtain. A staircase in the central part of the house connects the two floors.

Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Bang, farmers of Westchester, Connecticut, lost their home by fire, so they built a bullock-drawn house. It is seen in an accompanying photograph while at 135th Street Riverside Drive, New York City, en route to California. This modern crusader plans to travel about 10 mi a day and to reach the Pacific coast in a year and a half. The house has drop beds, oil stove, refrigerator, as well as many other devices. A cart, also drawn by a bullock, carries supplies. An extra tent under which to house the stock is also carried. As the recent census shows that almost as many people, more than 51 million in fact, live in rural districts as in the cities, the man who places his residence on wheels and migrates will not be lonely.

To the moon at 7 miles a second. Engineers plan strange new 5-ton rocket by H.C. Davis. Popular Science Monthly, February 1927. When Charles Fitz Hugh Talman of the U.S. Weather Bureau prophesied in last month's Popular Science Monthly, the marvels of meteorology we may see in 1927. One of the possibilities he mentioned was that Professor Robert H. Goddard of Clark University might perfect his long-awaited moon rocket. Man's fascinating dream of reaching the moon is progressing from a Jules Verne fancy to a cold problem of mathematical and engineering calculations. That such a feat is considered within the range of possibility is evidenced by the activities of scientists in Europe as well as in America.

Two of them, Professor Hermann Oberth and Dr. Franz Hufe of Vienna are constructing a five-ton rocket ship in which they hope to reach the moon in two days. Already they have experimented with small model rockets which are reported to have reached altitudes of several miles returning to Earth by means of parachutes which opened automatically when the rockets ceased their climb. Another project is that of Max Valier, young Austro-Hungarian astronomer and aviator who is also at work on a rocket-driven spaceship. All of these plans are based on virtually the same principle. Each proposes a projectile-shaped ship propelled by the continuous combustion of fuel which it carries. The reaction or kickback from the blast of exhaust gas they calculate would drive the rocket at terrific speed. Professor Oberth's design, for example, calls for a triple rocket in one unit. That is, the shell of the rocket would contain three explosive chambers in the rear. The first carrying alcohol and the other two liquid hydrogen. Such a rocket, he estimates, could exceed a speed of 7 mi a second. As the rocket progressed, its speed would be increased by dropping off the shells of the exhausted explosive chambers, lessening the weight.

What would it be like to travel through space in a ship of this kind? In the first place, once the regions beyond gravity had been gained, the passengers would float like spirits in midair, a detail the moon voyagers have provided for by supplying straps with which the passengers will be fastened to the walls. Since no liquids would flow, the passengers would be forced to suck their drinks from bottles through rubber nipples. How the rocket could make a safe landing on the moon, or how the return voyage could be accomplished are problems apparently unsolved. Dr. Hufe, however, has invented an ingenious steering device to guide the rocket and prevent it from wandering aimlessly in space. A few weeks ago, a number of astronomers, engineers, and physicists meeting in Vienna formed a society for the exploration of the universe to promote Oberth's project. The initial plan on its program is to shoot a flashlight rocket to the moon and observe its explosion through a telescope.

Making the cop's life a little easier. Popular Science Monthly, June 1926. A novel traffic signal. The unique device is a breath-saving whistle used by the officer who directs the traffic in the big square in front of the city hall, Providence, Rhode Island. It is operated by the plunger he is grasping. Getting the bandits. Chicago police use these new fighting top cars to pursue holdup men. One of the firing squad ready to shoot may be seen standing in the tank in a sort of pit designed to hold two men prepared against fog. A fog is trying on the police. Here is a New York traffic cop protecting himself with a lantern. And here is a London Bobby clad in life-saving jacket and armed with hook to pull out unlucky fog victims who fall into the Thames. He keeps his feet dry. Birmingham, England traffic policemen wear an easily distinguished white rubber coat and stand on rubber mats as protection against wet weather. Boston police taught to shoot on the life-sized silhouette. Boston police learn how to bring down a fleeing criminal. This unique target has been set up in the First Cadet Armory, Boston. The picture shows an instructor pointing out the more vital spots. Roller skates for patrolmen. James Moore of Seattle, the first policeman to patrol a beat on roller skates. Others covering outlying districts are now following his example.

Movie film from camera to screen. Popular Mechanics January 1925 beginning its work of reproduction with the glamorous click of the movie camera. The more than 500 million feet of film yearly consumed in printing the numerous reels of motion pictures daily exhibited in theaters, halls, offices, and factories is subjected to many delicate operations before it is finally ready for the projection machines. Whisked from the camera at the studio or on location, the precious ribbons are rushed to the developing laboratories by speedy and trusted messengers who guard them carefully against injury or exposure to light. When fully developed, they become the negatives from which any number of copies may be printed for screen showings. Such negatives are the only products resulting from the labors of scores of highly paid actors and months of planning and building the sets and scenes the worrying cameras record.

On receipt of the undeveloped films at the laboratories, they are started through a maze of dark shadowy rooms under dull rays of deep red lights where they are treated with various solutions that disclose the hundreds of tiny pictures and set the coating on the strips so it cannot be disturbed under careful handling. A positive print is then made and returned to the studio for inspection, while the negative is deposited in a fireproof vault to await future requirements. Raw film from which the positive or exhibitors reels are made is received in circular metal cans, each containing 1,000 ft. The packages are opened only in a dark room equipped for that purpose and reach the printing department without being touched by any light other than the dull red glow under which all work is performed until the strips have been passed from the fixing or hypo baths when light becomes harmless to them.

As a reel may contain both interior and exterior scenes, exposure time must be determined for the various degrees of tones and shadows covering the different sections. Experts in the measurement of exposure estimate the periods while passing the negatives across a glass panel illuminated from beneath by a strong light. Each change is carefully marked and a machine cuts notches along the edges of the ribbon so that a warning buzzer on the printing device can be operated to notify the attendant when the period of exposure is to be decreased or increased. When prepared for copying, the negatives are wound in lengths of 200 ft and run through the printing machines. So fast do these work that but 4 minutes are required to complete one of the wound lengths. As soon as the reels are exposed, they are wound over large flat racks for developing and fixing in another room. Thoroughly washed in pure water, they are allowed to drain and are then put into a rapidly rotated device which drives off most of the remaining moisture by means of centrifugal force. In the laboratories of the Rotheacre Film Manufacturing Company, drying is accomplished by means of gigantic revolving drums fitted with grooves to receive the film racks. Constant motion through filtered air while on the wheels removes any traces of moisture the draining.

operations may leave on the film. After inspection, the film is taken to the assembling rooms where the sections are united in one continuous length. The film is first polished and waxed along the edges and then is projected on a small test screen for inspection. Here, flaws are revealed that generally are not visible on the bare film. Digs, scratches, dirt, misprints, and misframing call for replacement of those sections where they occur. Substitute film which has been prepared for this purpose is used for the corrections and a final inspection certifies the reel for the cleaning that precedes its packing for shipment or storage.

[music] World's largest ocean liner. Popular mechanics July 1922. Allocated by the Treaty of Versailles to the British government and sold by it to the White Star Line. The former German steam ship Bismar has been converted into the liner Majestic, very suitably named for it is the world's largest ship and in many ways the most luxuriously fitted vessel afloat. This oceanborn palace is 956 ft long, 100 ft broad, its whole 102 ft deep, and its tonnage is 56,000. It has nine decks with a total area of 7 1/2 acres, and its main deck is 75 ft above water. It has accommodations for 4,100 passengers and a crew of 1,000. Its power installation is the largest ever fitted in a passenger vessel, consisting of four huge turbine engines, each weighing 375 tons for forward driving and four reversing turbines. With 48 boilers, it is fitted with a modern oil burning system and consumes about 5,700 tons of liquid fuel in a single crossing. The total horsepower is 100,000 and its normal speed is 28 m an hour. Passengers can take their daily walks in any kind of weather for the prominade deck is more than 50 ft above the sea and is enclosed for a great part of its length with glass panels. On this deck are a restaurant, a palm court, and a lounge. From a grand foyer is an unbroken sweep of 250 ft down the center of these apartments. Provision is made for outdoor sports in a special section of the boat deck. Two public rooms of special interest by reason of their size and location are the library and the smoking room. Contrary to custom, both are situated at the forward end of the passenger decks, one above the other. The library on the same deck as the lounge, has shelf capacity for 4,000 volumes. The room affords facilities for personal correspondence or any kind of literary work. Besides the luxuriously furnished first class accommodations, the ship has second and thirdass quarters which correspond in character with the other parts of the ship.

London's five levels of traffic at Charring Cross. Managing the public at one of the world's busiest corners. Popular Science Monthly, January 1921. Charring Cross Station in London is one of the busiest spots in the world. It is the main junction of the underground railways where 2,290 trains stop daily. In one day, 190,000 ordinary ticket holders enter and leave the station together with 32,000 season ticket holders. The station carries traffic at five levels. About 25 feet above the Victoria embankment, charring cross railway bridge marks the location of the historic Hungerford suspension bridge which it replaces extending across the temps. A double tramway track occupies the outer edge of the embankment while 17 ft below its inner edge are the electrified rails in the district railway tunnel. Below this are the two railways. The Hamstead platform being 50 ft below the east side of the bridge while the Bakerloo platforms are 63 ft in depth on the west. As indicated in the picture, a further stairway and short subway are being built from the street level to the top of the elevators to relieve congestion by separating ingoing and outgoing passengers at rush hours. At these periods, the whole of the underground honeycomb is literally swarming with the masses of hurrying humanity.

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