Medicine: Inventions

Inventions, discoveries reported last week included:

In London, a “master-film” bearing letters and figures in many styles of type, which, when operated by a keyboard, typewriter-wise, fractionally exposes a sensitized base to desired characters, where they were photographed. The base thus articulated, corresponding in function to type set by a linotype machine, can be inked and run off on paper. Different sizes in type are obtained by automatic adjustment of the focus of the camera lens.

A single spool of master film, 3 in. wide, 2 in. in diameter, contained the equivalent of 2,700 fonts of type. Spacing, column-width, style of type are determined with equal facility and speed. Telegraphy and wireless telegraphy can be utilized to operate several of the machines in various towns simultaneously. The importance, as prophesied by “two men in a back street,” the inventors: to printing, especially that of newspapers, by saving millions in capital outlay for type fonts, many valuable minutes getting to press.

In Berlin, Dr. Karl Mueller claimed to have discovered a process for reducing metal foils to a thinness of one-millionth of a centimetre,* retaining elasticity in foils transparent as oculists’ glass. The importance: to telephones, radios, musical instruments; to study of atomic structures.

In Vienna, there exists (as reported by the Compressed Air Magazine, Manhattan) a benzene-driven ice-wagon equipped with a vertical compressor behind the chauffeur’s seat for making ice, by the motor’s power, between and at customers’ doors.

In Manhattan, the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Co. demonstrated a “panatrope” and “panchords,” announced that both would soon be marketed. The panatrope is a new music-making machine constructedon the principle of radio-telephotography, using vacuum tubes and a photo-electric cell to replace the horn and soundbox of the phonograph. Where the phonograph caught and reproduced, at best, only 50% of the frequencies (sound waves) given forth by an artist or orchestra, it is claimed the panatrope catches and reproduces 90%, eliminating extraneous noises of machinery. The panchord is a film-record, having sound waves fixed upon it photoelectrically, capable (largest size) of playing continuously for an hour without “changing the record.’*

Within 24 hours of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender demonstration, the Victor Talking Machine Co. announced, without describing it, a music-producing instrument which was destined to “revolutionize the industry.” At Washington, Philip P. Quayle . the Bureau of Standards added considerably to man’s knowledge of ballistics.

He invented an electrical apparatus which enabled him to take pictures of a bullet speeding through the air at 2,700 feet a second and its following gases. This is done by means of an electric spark which has a duration of roughly a millionth of a second.

This invention proved, contrary to theory, that a bullet rapidly draws away from the gases within a few inches from the muzzle. It was supposed that the gases followed closely, increasing the speed of the bullet for some distance.

*Gold can be reduced to a thinness of 0.00008 mm. Tin can be reduced to .0254 mm.