POPULAR SCIENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3696, 4 December 1912, Page 7

POPULAR SCIENCE.

CHEMICAL BOOTS.

Speaking at the biennial conference at the Leathersellers’ Hall, Mr. W. F. Reid said that possibly the time might come when the industrial chemist might be called upon to manufacture not onl3 r new tanning materials but even leather itself. Certainly the time would come when the area available for the production of the raw material of leather would be so limited in proportion to the needs of the human race that someone would have to step in and produce a substitute. With regard to other possible developments in the chemical industry, they all knew that the processes of tanning wore not confined to vegetable extracts, and possibly even the electric furnace might in time produce material which would be quite as efficient as tanning extracts for producing leather of a kind.

OIL-DRIVEN LOCOMOTIVE. A petroleum-electric main line engine of a horse-power up to one thousand is in course of construction and will be given an exhaustive trial on one of the leading British railway systems. Its inventor, Mr. W. P. Durtnall, claims foi the new engine that high speed and economy will go hand in ha ml; that it could on one of the ordinary expresses travel sixty or seventy miles an hour at a cost fifty per cent lower than the present locomotive. The carriages would be lighted by electricity generated on beard, and the danger of fire after a collision would disappear. Steam and smoke would be absent from the termini, says the inventor, as well as the accompanying acid-charged gases, which would mean a. great reduction in the matter of painting. Mr. Durtnall states that the economies effected wiij allow thct companies to charge lower rates for transport, whether of passengers or goods.

THE STENTORPHOXE. The Greek herald Senator was reported to have a voice as loud as those of a. hundred, men combined. This remarkable performance has now been easily excelled, not by human voice, it is true, but by a curious instrument. It is an invention which has just been perfected by Air. H. A. Gaydon, of Ponge, and is henceforth to be appropriately known as tlie “Stentorphone.” Very little apparatus is required, and from ordinary eighteen-penny records a volume of sound can be produced which can be distinctly heard over a mile away. At a quarter or half a mile distant the tone is remarkably pure and full, and not the slightest sound of scratching or harsh, metallic vibration can be discerned. The invention has wonderful possibilities in providing entertainment in reproducing speeches, and in any 'wav where the conveyance of sound in hitherto unexampled volume is required. The inventor lias been ten years working out his idea.'

WOAIAN’S PRICELESS INVENTION. A little apparatus which automatically cuts off the gas in a burning building and thus prevents explosions and the spreading of the flames, has just been patented by Airs Isabella Gillen, the wife of an American plumber. The .idea for this device came to her after reading of the death of a fireman, who fell into the basement of a burning building and was asphyxiated by gas escaping from a meter which had been melted by the heat. There are “cut-off men” whose duty it is to turn off the gas supply of burning buildings, but often, they arrive too late, and in winter when there is ice and snow in the streets it is often difficult for them to find the “cut-off.” Mrs Gillen’s device consists of a little termostat filled with mercury, and so arranged that when the temperature of a room exceeds 155 degrees the mercury rises and closes an electric circuit. The instant tlie circuit is closed a spring is released, and this throws a lever which cuts off the- gas. The thermostats, which are very small, can bo placed in every room of a. building, so that.no matter where a fire occurs tlie gas is shut off at once.,